In the work that I do, and in the news and content that I consume, a common topic of inquiry is how the energy that we (humans) produce and rely on is causing catastrophic and increasingly irreversible harm to the planet. Here, I want to consider the question of moving away from unsustainable energy sources in a more figurative sense.
Since I began writing online in 2017, a lot of my motivation for doing this work has been some form of indignation. There are many reasons to be angry at many different people and entities. It is my personal belief that some people and entities in particular are deserving of outrage, such as those who have power over others and who wield that power to serve their own interests, often by manipulating and gaslighting people who question them, challenge them, or ask them to be treated as fellow human beings deserving of dignity and respect.
It’s easy to write about these people and entities and be angry all the time. And over the past few years, a lot of what I’ve been paid to write about—“corporate power and political influence,” as I currently sum it up—has been fueled by indignation, usually the righteous kind. (Feel free to draw your own conclusions about the incentives of the media business these days.)
As my most recent book review makes clear, I am still exceedingly angry about many aspects of the world in 2025.1 Anything that falls broadly into the category of “people who have power taking advantage of people who have less power” is going to make me angry. And that’s how I want it to be. I don’t want to shy away from impunity and injustice—two things that reliably anger me—just because anger is an uncomfortable feeling.
What is changing for me, however, is that this sense of righteous indignation, while still present in my work, is no longer fueling the work.
Recently, I have been able to let go of some of this anger, and as a result I have found more space for compassion and curiosity (and more energy to write). Or maybe it’s the other way around, and in cultivating more compassion and curiosity, I have managed to displace some anger.
Whatever the case, indignation no longer seems to be fueling how or why I work, or how I see the world. This evolution has proven motivating, liberating, and a bit perplexing.
***
In my (generally hopeful and largely not angry) book Reframe the Day, I quoted Dan Harris, a former ABC News anchor whose 2014 book 10% Happier introduced me to mindfulness meditation.
I don’t meditate much these days, but I do occasionally listen to podcasts about meditation (which is probably the most millennial sentence I’ve ever written).2 Earlier this year, I was listening to Harris tell podcaster Rich Roll about his professional and personal trajectory since leaving the TV business to become a full-time mindfulness evangelist.3 During their two-hour conversation, Harris offered the following:
If you look at our contemplative traditions, from Jesus to the Buddha to Gandhi to Martin Luther King, if you look at science, modern psychological research, it will show you time and again that hatred and anger are not clean-burning fuels. You will burn out. […]
I just don’t see any evidence that anger and hatred—which are natural, and you’re going to feel them. I feel them. I’m not saying you’ve got to be some sort of saint for whom these emotions never arise. But if you’re using that to fuel all of your actions, you will burn out.4
These are not groundbreaking observations. But hearing them crystallized something I’d been struggling to understand, and helped tie together two threads that I had previously kept separate in my mind.
***
September and October of last year saw the publication of a couple stories I had been working on for years. In September The American Prospect published “A Ponzi Scheme of Promises,” which was based on ideas I’d been exploring and reporting I’d been doing since before I started freelancing in 2021.5 The following month DeSmog published my lengthy investigation into how American PR firms have been cashing in on the image of Neom, a futuristic city in Saudi Arabia.6
After these two articles finally went live, I felt burned out. A lot this exhaustion and subsequent lack of motivation stemmed from the economics and isolation of freelance journalism (which I touched on in an essay earlier this year).7 The subject matter of the stories was also a contributor: These were not exactly feel-good investigations.
So at the end of last year, I emailed a few editors to let them know I’d be going dark for a while, until I figured out whether I could find a way for journalism to play a sustainable role—financially and emotionally—in my life. (I am grateful to those kind and understanding editors for being so kind and understanding.)
Around the time those stories were published, America, as readers may recall, held an election. While I was processing my professional burnout and trying to decide whether to try to keep writing, I was also trying to understand why the presidential election had left me feeling unexpectedly patriotic.8 (It was not the outcome.)
I concluded, in short, that on election night some part of me accepted that existing in a perpetual state of self-righteous indignation about all things Trump and MAGA and the precarious state of the union would be neither sustainable nor productive. I realized, mostly subconsciously, that it might behoove me to attempt a different approach to the era of the second Trump regime and U.S. politics more broadly, and that perhaps this approach should be driven as much as possible by compassion and curiosity, rather than rage. (Still some rage, for sure, but not only rage.)
What I had not yet seen was that I needed to apply a similar transformation to my work.
***
Clarity can emerge at unexpected times. In my case, it took Dan Harris stating what generations of activists and organizers have learned and taught—that “hatred and anger are not clean-burning fuels,” as Harris put it—to surface what in hindsight seems somewhat obvious: that writing about climate change and corporate power and political corruption will not be sustainable unless I find a cleaner way to power it.
Of course, letting go of anger is not something one simply decides to do. Like meditating or exercising or listening, it is a practice.
But the first step in developing a practice like this is awareness. And the more aware I’ve become of how much of my work has been powered by indignation, the more determined I am to find a cleaner, more sustainable, and more energizing source of, well, energy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2025/05/no-more-tears-johnson-johnson-alzheimers-health-care-book-review/682856
https://www.richroll.com/podcast/dan-harris-904; https://www.danharris.com/p/i-just-went-through-a-career-earthquake
This excerpt combines two different sections of the podcast.
https://prospect.org/power/2024-09-17-ponzi-scheme-of-promises
https://www.desmog.com/2024/10/25/money-in-exchange-for-silence-behind-neoms-green-image-western-firms-cash-in-on-saudi-commitment-to-oil
