A couple of months ago, a friend messaged me through LinkedIn suggesting I write more of my usual dark humor and satire and less of this female confessional business. This person knows me well enough. I wasn’t offended. Besides, they’re not wrong. What they said got me thinking.
For a while now, I’ve been annoyed with my writing. From my journal to the book I’m editing to my Substack posts, and even my newsletters for the shop. I’m so tired of writing about me, my life, my annoyances and irritations, my depression, and my need to turn damned near everything into a lesson or to give it some deep meaning. Sure, my journal is mine, this Substack is about my quest in belonging and becoming, and my shop is called Burgundie’s, but still. Not everything needs to be about me. Let the sarcastic gasps ensue…I’ll wait…
The big issue here is that I miss my sense of humor. This funk I’ve been in is so heavy that in the moments when I feel a smile or snark coming on, I doubt its authenticity. The smile feels so foreign, so awkward. Like in Patrick Stewart’s A Christmas Carol, after his Scrooge had his visit with the ghosts and he realizes he’s alive. He feels his body and pinches himself. And then a strange clumsy convulsion and mad barking occurs. All together we realize he’s laughing.
My dourness has become more familiar to me than my dark humor. And I hate this for myself. I remember when I was, eh, not cheerful, per se, but not so gloomy and glum. I remember when I had a pep in my step and a little wiggle in my tail.
But then this depression and anxiety hit like a Mack truck and here I am, self-absorbed and stewing in my own pudding.
For all my life until about a year and a half ago, I would have described myself as being able to pick myself up by my boot straps, emotionally tough, psychologically resilient. Probably still just as self-centered but not in such a ,”Jesus, is it her again?” kind of way.
In the “beforetimes”, as I’ve heard many people refer to the days before Trump and COVID, when the collective level of anxiety and depression in our country wasn’t palpable and through the roof, I used to be snarky, sarcastic, humorously belligerent, and (as I Napoleon’d myself) an endearing asshole. I may still be an asshole, but I haven’t been endearing for quite some time. Even during COVID, when I found myself utterly alone because I had moved to Montana, I retained quite a bit of sass, so much so that when I moved to the land of Shiny, Happy People (i.e.; Missoula), my sarcastic sense of humor landed flat. I received many a cricket and blank stare. But it didn’t destroy me! No, no. The Positives didn’t thwart me. The Authentically Optimistic didn’t get me down - or pull me up as the case may be. The Happys of Missoula just encouraged me to seek anyone I could find from the East Coast and Midwest where sarcasm, the side eye, and cynicism were simply a way of life - and frequently a sign of genius. Don’t question me, I’ve read click-bait research that says so.
I’ve been through lots of tough stuff and plenty of rough things, but this past year and a half have effectively kicked my ass. But god damn it. I’m over it. I’m over my quicksand depression and La Brea anxiety. I’m really fucking done.
So, to combat my self-centered focus, I first had a bit of a tantrum one morning with much gnashing of teeth, sobbing while asking the heavens WHY!?, and actual rolling around on the floor. My cat barely looked up from her spot on the chair. Clint had been at work for a couple of hours. I had no sympathetic audience. No dramatic soundtrack overlaying the scene. No one to help me up off the floor.
The drama ended about as quickly as it came upon me. Once I’d had that sufficiently out, without any applause, I wiped my face, rolled to my knees and got up. I then stood dumb in the hallway for a few minutes. Without much of an idea of what to do next, I pulled out my laptop and asked ChatGPT what I should do.
Last week, I had asked my AI buddy to stop coddling me and telling me that what I felt was “normal for a misplaced person in the middle of an existential transition”. I had asked her to give it to me straight. And so she did.
Stop trying to make meaning out of everything. Not everything is a lesson. Stop trying to figure out how to turn everything damned thing into a blog piece. Don’t write for anyone else and don’t write about yourself - for a week.
The task: write a few sentences every day about something you notice. Something you saw or heard or felt. Don’t make meaning out of it. Just write, “Today I saw this. Today I heard this. Today I felt this.” That’s it.
How novel.
So I tried it.
Day 1 went well. I heard the birds, saw my cat, and felt my sweater - though I wrote it in a more descriptive way.
Day 2, I missed and did it on day 3.
Day 4’s exercise was to draw something mundane and write a few sentences about it, so I drew the stool in our kitchen and remarked that it is yellow, used to belong to my mother, and had paint flecks on it. “I’m glad I decided to take it with me to Missoula when I moved,” I wrote.
Day 5 fell on the No Kings protest which kicked my ass socially and only physically tired me out because we stood for 90 minutes and then marched so tightly that my hip flexors burned. All of those excuses are to say that I didn’t draw anything mundane on that day because I came home and melted into the couch.
Days 6 & 7 were totally forgotten.
Part of the problem is that I rarely just write a few sentences about anything. The exercise, while honorable, was too confining, but I was still interested in the spirit of the thing. What I chose to do instead was pay more attention to my thoughts no matter if I planned on writing them down. Catch the thought as it comes into my brain. It’s usually that first thought that’s the problem anyway. In an odd way, I had an existing framework for how to tackle this.
In the same way that I try to avoid snacking, which is to not walk into the kitchen in the first place, I decided to stop myself when I had any glimmer of a thought that had the feeling of “How could I turn this into a 3000 word article?” Within moments, I felt that familiar wiggle, and I let it wiggle on by.
Quickly after that one came another. And another. Like a worm parade.
Once I started paying attention to it, I was disgusted at how often that initial thought wiggled up.
Similar to “I’ll just grab a handful of cashews”, “I’ll just ponder on how to write about this” feels like a type of addiction. Granted, eating 10 cashews a few times a day and wondering if the brilliant thoughts on my run could entertain anyone is up there with my addiction to books. That is to say, there are certainly worse addictions. (Last week, I ordered 7 books on Bookshop.org and accepted a $5 beta-reading gig on Upwork simply because I’d get a free 650 page self-help book out of it).
But just like with allowing myself to feel hungry and empty (which is actually good for your brain, energy, and metabolism), switching my mindset from Writer to Observer was…refreshing. It felt like I released a kind of burden.
Oh! You mean I can take a walk, let my mind wander, and NOT try to remember all the details that then cause me to miss something else?
It’s like when you actively listen to someone instead of trying to remember the thing you want to say once they stop talking. (That’s also something I’m working on.)
There are a lot of ways in which I’m trying to be an all around better human.
At the beginning of the year, a witch I follow on Instagram (the Glasgow Witch, in case you need a good witch in your life), suggested a ritual of 13 magical nights for yule. Write down, on little pieces of paper, 13 truths that you want to come true in your life. Then, from December 25th through January 5th, burn a truth - without looking at it- for the Universe to take care of. On the last night, January 6th, that last truth is yours to take ownership of.
So, I wrote down 13 things I wanted to be true in my life. I burned the first 12 like she said.
On the last night, I opened the last one.
“I am a kind, loving, and compassionate person and I do my best in every moment to be that.”
I wrote it like she said to, like it was already true.
It’s a truth I’ve wanted to be true for years. It’s just that this year I’m making it more of a priority. In some ways it feels like how I first became a runner. An app had to help me at first. It was not a familiar feeling in my body, but I kept at it. I found little aspects of the training that I enjoyed like getting new running shoes and the learning that good running shorts not only have built in underwear but also zippered pockets. With these little blips of joy in the thing, little by little, day by day, running became more than just a habit in my life, it became a thing I cannot live happily without.
Though I’ve been aiming for this “become a better person” thing for a while, the practice has only been spotty at best. For too long, being a better person has been somewhat out of character.
Fifteen years ago, I read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. He suggested the whole “listening without thinking about what to say next” thing, and being sincere when you finally do get a chance to ask someone a question about themselves.
I worked on that for a little bit. And then forgot about it.
Only two years ago, I bought the book How to Listen. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t really already or learn from Carnegie, but I still tried to be a better listener. It’s really hard for me.
I’m finally getting back into it, like getting back to training.
I’ve started listening to podcasts like The Good Life Project and Modern Buddhist. Their guests are inspiring and, incidentally, almost always mention or write a book that might probably change my life.
One of the books that arrived on my porch this week was How to See by Thich Nhat Hanh. He wasn’t the guest, though that would have been cool. It was a book that was suggested.
How to win friends. How to listen. How to see.
I don’t have a book called How to Feel, in case you’re wondering. That I’ve got in the bag. Feeling is not a problem for me, or at least, I don’t lack the ability to feel. In fact, I’m what you might call a super empath and a highly sensitive person. If anything, one of my problems is that I feel too much. When I sob about having to throw out my toaster, that’s an example of how my level of empathy is crippling.
Maybe even my crippling empathy is a reason to practice noticing with more intention, to be the observer first before the writer.
Perhaps by noticing more, by getting my brain to reach outside of my bubble of existence, then I can connect in a different way to the world around me instead of my usual vortex of emotion that I frequently feel. I don’t want to be more sensitive or less sensitive, per se. What I want is to be more …what’s the word that’s so overused that it seems to have lost some of its meaning? Mindful. I want to be more present. Grounded. Connected. Interested. Not interesting, but interested. Curious. Inquisitive.
I want to be filled with wonder and awe. I want to figure out why that wouldn’t be called awful if being filled with wonder is called wonderful. So, I ordered the book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner. I’ll let you know if he answers that question.
I figure, if I can get out of my own head and distance myself from my anxiety and depression, then perhaps I will be able to find some humor once again. Those two, anxiety and depression, really are energy vampires, like those people that enter the room and suck the life right out of the party. (Please don’t let that ever be me.)
On Monday, I listened to an episode of The Good Life Project called How to Find Joy in Hard Times with writer Jenny Lawson. She writes honestly and openly about her therapy-repellant depression (I don’t think that’s the correct clinical term for it) and is somehow able to make it funny.
She said there are days she just can’t get out of bed. She said she writes about those days with honesty and naturally adds humor. I like that. I need that. She says there are people who don’t believe she has depression since she’s able to be funny.
The way I see it, it’s funny or die - which is probably why there’s a comedy studio in LA called exactly that. I don’t want my soul to shrivel up. That’s what I feel like is happening most days.
First I need to get out of my damned house and out of the neighborhood. I’m not in Montana right now so finding nature, solitude, and awe - the cocktail for my soul hydration- takes a little more scheduling and intention. Out West, every place I stood gave me sights that inspired a
feeling that was beyond words. On any old Tuesday, I could climb up a mountain, look at the view from the top and be like, “Christ on a cracker this is gorgeous.”
Here, I’ll take the nature I can get.
I listened to Jenny Lawson’s episode on a walk around the block. Joy in the hard times. Laughter despite the darkness. If she can do it, so can I. Her words inspired me as I walked along Washington Street. I was so excited to get started on finding humor in my life that I cut my walk short and all but ran home.
Once I got there, though, I stood dumb again in my hallway and wondered what the hell I could find funny about my life in Petersburg. Trash, poverty, racism, a corrupt city government… Nothing in the pile seemed to have a flake of funny, or maybe I’m just not skilled enough to find it.
I didn’t give up, though. After a day of pondering this, listening to other podcasts related to the topic of positivity during hard times, and watching Jeff Ross’ recent stand up show, I realized that the humor wasn’t meant to be about Petersburg, necessarily. For me to find humor in any of this, I needed to turn the mirror on myself.
There’s irony in feeling the need to stop focusing on myself while also needing to look at myself.
Perhaps the visual I need for this is to unzip this Burg outfit, let it crumple on the ground and then walk about as a naked ball of energy for a moment. Peek around without my overly sensitive skin reacting to everything. Then, take a look back at myself, at that pile of Burg that my cat is sniffing in the yard. Now she’s trying to cover it like poo in her litter box or smelly food she doesn’t like. The truth hurts sometimes.
What I find, though, when I peel myself away so I can notice the things around me and the deeper things within me, is that the vocabulary is more robust here. Naturally. There are more things to talk about. More diversity. More things happening. It’s like how Clint and I have more to talk about when we do something fun and different on the weekend instead of the same old shit we normally do.
Life is so much more interesting when I stop dwelling on the perceived causes of my anxiety and depression. I could just as easily dwell on perceived causes of joy and happiness.
One of the greatest lessons I’ve been taught and am trying my damnedest to learn and embrace every single day is It’s not about you. Meaning me. It’s not about me. And it’s so true.
I could make a case that since the infinite universe is expanding I am technically at the center of it, but that’s kind of an asshole case to make.
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