Staying Human Now #2: Define Your Waypoints

Confusion is the tactic. Navigation is the countermeasure. This tiny move helps you plan your own path.

About This Series

This is Staying Human Now — a weekly series offering a few strategic actions inspired by my viral post 80 Tiny Moves for Staying Human in the Authoritarian Harm Complex which has had over 30,000 likes and shares. These tiny moves are not productivity tips or wellness fluff. They are survival tools for people trying to stay human and strategically grounded inside Trump-era chaos. Think of them as scaffolding to bridge the gap between overwhelmed withdrawal and always-on activism. The goal is to enhance our strategic versatility, range, and agility.

If this work matters to you, please consider supporting it. You can upgrade to a paid subscription or send a one-time donation via Ko-fi. Your support helps me keep doing this work and sharing it widely. Thank you.

We’re All Bushwhackers Now

In hiking, bushwhacking means moving through wilderness where no clear trail exists. You can’t just follow the markers or stick to the beaten path — you have to find your way step by step, often through dense, disorienting terrain.

That’s the world we’re living in.

Authoritarian harm is dismantling public life faster than new paths can be built. The institutions, norms, and assumptions that once helped us navigate are eroding. We can't simply follow old trails anymore. But we can still find our way.

In bushwhacking, it helps if you establish waypoints — specific locations or landmarks that help you stay oriented when the trail disappears. Waypoints don’t tell you exactly how to get there. They just mark where you need to reach next. How you find the path between waypoints depends on your read of the terrain, the weather, your resources, your own capabilities, and who you're traveling with.

Waypoints don’t prescribe the route. They give you something to move toward.

This week’s tiny move is about building your own internal wayfinding system:

Create a folder called “Waypoints.” Fill it with anything that helps you navigate.

I have a Waypoints folder on my phone. It's a place I turn to when I start to freeze — when I catch myself doom scrolling, staring out the window, or making my fourth trip to the fridge in an hour.

My Waypoints include photos of family and friends, a few poems, lines from songs that have stayed with me, and this prayer I wrote during a hard season:

The Defiance Prayer
Please grant me audacity to choose values and goals worth fighting for;
Persistence in the face of failed attempts;
And the wisdom to know the difference between acceptance and giving up.

These are not rules or instructions. They're reminders of what matters most to me—and what I’m still willing to fight to protect.

Your Waypoints folder will be different. That’s the point.
Build your own map. Place your own markers. Trust your own navigation.

What would you put in your Waypoints folder?

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Tiny Moves, Bigger Than They Look

Strategy doesn’t always look like a blueprint. Sometimes it looks like lighting a candle. Saying no. Checking in. Telling the truth.

If even one of these gave you a foothold, let that be enough for today. Come back when you need another. Or make your own. This is not a finished product—it’s a growing map. One we build together, one small move at a time.

Support This Work

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New moves drop every week. Let’s keep building.

Where This Work Leads

This blog is part of a larger project called Progressive Strategy Now which is more than just my blog’s title. It is my attempt to meet the moment, a growing collection of resources and consultation to help mission-driven people and organizations stay human and stay strategic while navigating moral injury, institutional destruction, and the lived realities of authoritarian harm. If this post gave you words for something you’ve been carrying, you’re in the right place. This is one dispatch in an ongoing series.

Stay human. Stay strategic. Shape tomorrow.

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Strategies for Staying Human in the Face of Authoritarianism

If you’re looking for practices, tools, and deeper reading to help you stay grounded under pressure, this growing list is for you. It includes some of my previous posts and a section for other resources. These are starting points for staying human in hard times.

My Posts

• The Harms Are Cumulative. Your Overwhelm Is the Goal. Let’s Get Unstuck
  Trump and Musk weaponize chaos to exhaust our capacity for resistance. Recognizing the patterns of harm gives us the framework to protect our humanity and reclaim our strategic power.

• Befriend Yourself: A Strategy for Staying Whole While They Dismantle Everything That Matters. Trump and Musk want to disappear you into a cell of despair. Kindness to yourself is how you stay human—and begin your escape.

• When They Gut Your Mission: Start Here…. You’re still standing. That means you get to choose where to go next.

Blogs I recommend

• Invisible Threads. Veteran journalist Kate Woodsome is pioneering coverage at the intersection of democracy and mental health.

• The American Pamphleteer. “Because freedom won’t fight for itself—but together, we sure as hell can. Subscribe for bold, unfiltered takes on resisting fascism, building real community, and living with guts in chaotic times.“

• How To Resist. Great blog about sustainable ways to remain engaged in activism and mutual aid.

Other Resources

• ACT for Moral Distress, online course by Dr. Jaimie Lusk. “Navigate moral distress with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a powerful evidence-based treatment that allows us to hold our pain while taking valued actions.”

• In Tumultuous Times, Think Like a Hostage. “Guidance given to hostages can foster psychological flexibility in tough times.” Very clever article by Dr. Jaimie Lusk.

• Please drop additional suggestions for resources in Comments

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My Consulting Services

Need a new strategic plan that protects your mission and your funding during hard times? I partner with progressive leaders to navigate threats and build stronger, resilient organizations:

• Strategic plan revisions to meet the moment.

• Fundraising and communications.

• Resilient data system to track unmet needs and the downstream harms resulting from authoritarian aggression.

Let’s talk. Direct message me to start the conversation.

***From Progressive Strategy Now, a publication of Paul T Shattuck LLC. The views expressed here reflect my personal analysis as a researcher and consultant, and do not represent the positions of any employer, clients, or affiliated organizations.