Go ahead, take off work the day after the election. You need it

hillary clinton benghazi brush your shoulders off brush yo shoulders off brushes shoulders Mercifully, the final presidential debate is over but cruelly, there are still 19 days left until the actual election because it turns out there’s no mercy rule in politics so they can’t call this thing early and let everyone vote now. The problem with Trump’s likely defeat at this point is how much carnage he’s willing to create on his way to the loser’s circle, how many mangled carcasses of decency and American political decorum he’s willing to leave by the roadside in his kamikaze last few days.

Election burnout is real; we have in some sense been in this campaign since for a staggering 14 months already, as the first Republican primary was held in August of 2015, if you can even remember a time that far back. That’s not even factoring in the actual physical and mental stress this election is creating, with therapists reporting a spike in Trump-related anxiety and survivors of sexual assault being forced to relive their own trauma over and over again just by watching the news. I have seen several female friends, more than half seriously, ask whether you can sue a presidential candidate for emotional distress.

You deserve a day off, we all deserve a day to breathe after this election and remind ourselves there is a real world outside of politics and tweets and just batshit weird tweets about politics. So let’s dub Nov. 9 a new Adult Skip Day and give ourselves a break; you’re probably not taking enough vacation days anyway.

Seriously, take the day off and do something nice for yourself. Just spend it letting all the bad poisons of the past few months seep out of your brain. Those poisons will probably also include alcohol because fuck to you if you don’t think we’re all drinking ourselves stupid on election night.

We have never suffered through an election with this wattage of intensity before: the rushing streams of social media, wall-to-wall news coverage, a candidate with an itchy Twitter finger and a legion of racist ghouls rising from the backed-up gas station toilet of the internet, the most vitriolic outlash of public sexism that has cumulated in a huge conflagration around the question of whether a qualified, experienced, smart woman should be elected to the most important job in the world over a guy who thinks it’s all an audition for a reality show. I have at times found myself in a bar these past few weeks where others were discussing politics, politics I agreed with, but had to leave, because if we keep beating the drum of this election any more we’ll all be deaf and hate music forever. I have asked bartenders to turn off post-debate spin room analysis, the very existence of which angers me to my journalistic core. It’s the most momentous election in our lifetimes, but friends and I have had to declare “no politics” zones at certain weekend hangs just so we can let our brains breathe in the air of some other conversation topics for a night.

Let’s get away from it, for at least one day.

Here are some things you should do on Nov. 9 with your time off:

Turn off your television/log off Twitter/don’t look at Facebook.

Call your mom/dad/parent and say something nice to them that isn’t about the election.

Start making Thanksgiving plans.

Then drop your phone in a toilet.

Go read a book in a bar.

Drink a nice hard cider.

Attach a speaker to your bike and cruise around the neighborhood blasting this.

Take a walk to a garden store and buy some nice, soothing plants.

Go see a film at the new Alamo Drafthouse.

Go sleep in the woods for the night.