Blog Posts

judgement

As I work through a newly subscribed system, attempting to purge myself of ill will, I realize I have a lot of hang-ups for someone who’s ostensibly adapted the catch-phrase “everyone is doing their best.”

Even to take a tired old expression into consideration – There’s a fox in the henhouse – I’m compelled to acknowledge that, although I’m taking a metaphor literally, the fox is doing what he knows to do. My proclivity toward peaceful living and understanding that I am not a carnivore does not stop the fox from being a fox anymore than it stops the hen from being a hen. There are a number of things I can do to protect the hens from the fox, but changing the motivation of the fox isn’t really one of them.

So, too, I must allow cops to be cops, and robbers to be robbers, Donald Trump be Donald Trump, artists to be artists… and so forth. I can never say that “If I were that person, I’d do things differently” because if my life was there’s, and I made all the same decisions up to this point, I can’t rationally say I would do anything differently now. I realize I’m getting into the concept of free will being an illusion and I’ll stop short of that because I’m not really knowledgeable enough to speak on that, other than to say: If I was Jeff Bezos, I’d be Jeff Bezos… and notion of making decisions like Dave Johnston would be out the window.

So when I find myself in a place of judgement, I really have to cool my jets. I can’t rightfully pass judgement on anyone… and yet I do. Whether it’s ‘this band sucks’ or ‘that person is a junkie’ or ‘so & so is a jerk’ I must first acknowledge that I am out of my depth. Not only are these people doing their best – because we all are – but there is redemption for them – redemption being a thing I’ve spoken on before (and will again: spoiler alert) – because if there’s no opportunity for redemption, then there is no point in living.

The one I’m the most critical and harsh with… is me. I can berate myself to the ends of the earth about the 10 lbs I want to lose, or the struggles I have in my life. But if I heard my kid talk like that about herself it would break my heart. A friend showed me that fact recently when I shared my negative self-talk and it’s really stuck with me. If I’d want to intervene in someone else’s negative self talk, then why wouldn’t I want to stop myself from doing the same?

Food for thought… every day.

I’m not big on new years resolutions so much as I try to make changes when hey need to be made rather than waiting for a specific day… but since the new year is upon us, it really would serve us all well to be a bit kinder to ourselves. The kindness to others is sure to follow.

I haven’t been posting much about fitness lately, but I’ve been working my old half-marathon program at the running track at my gym that will carry me through until the thaw, which I hope comes early. Hopefully you’ve found something constructive and sweat-inducing to get you through the shitty months.

Much love.

what’s more

I can’t be the only one coming out of the holidays feeling like a bag of shit. This is something I’ve spoken about before. Beyond the nutrient lacking dessert-fest that the void between Christmas & New Years can be, beyond the complete upset of routine and schedule, beyond the stresses of people-pleasing and anxiety-inducing familiar visits, spending money for the sake of spending money, and yes – even genuine excitement, is the event itself.

Steeped in tradition, wrapped in a bad sweater, and wrung out over the dining room table is that little nugget of an event that we’ve blown way out of proportion. It; too, is exhausting – as exhausting as the contemplation of how we can do Christmas better next year: “Should we host a meal?“  ”should we hide under the blankets until it’s over?“  ”should we give ourselves an early gift of a tropical vacation that takes us away for the holidays?“  ”should we spend less?“  ”should we favor quality over quantity?“

There’s no right answer, and there’s no wrong answer, and for most of us, the month of December will once again take on a life of it’s own, flinging us to the edge of our social capabilities before demanding a resolution for January 1st no matter what we think we’re deciding now.

I have a child – and just one – so calling a moratorium has never been an option, but fortunately that child ages each year, and gradual changes are inevitable, which honestly helps keep me interested.

But this…

This feeling of post-holiday malaise feels similar to the day after running an endurance race. I’ve run an endurance race and I can make that comparison with freedom, but if you’ve never done it and are still willing to compare the Christmas holidays to running a marathon, I will assure you that you’re not far off.

Christmas for my family, which has historically been a long, drawn-out ordeal has been summed up quite nicely into 3 days. Next year, I hope to narrow it down to 2 – and preferably not consecutively.

On December 22nd I ran 10 kms and on December 26th I ran 7 kms and in between was a blur. I’m comforted by the fact that running 7k on boxing day is not something most people did, and that it set my head right. I’ve definitely shaken off the holiday blues faster than ever before but it still came up and surprised me all the same. Perhaps it is constant. Perhaps I could even set my watch to it’s predictable intrusion.

But feeling this way is not wrong.
I just hope you can shake it off when it’s time.

You don’t have to be a sloth for that week between Christmas & New Years… but you don’t have to beat yourself up for not being productive, either. Just act when it’s time to act.
And when the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling above you, but your own mask on before helping anyone else.
In other words…
Just be kind.
To you.
And then everyone else.

redemption

I think one of the most dangerous things you can be right now is a lonely GenX’er. Over the past few years, sprinkled evenly between the apocalyptic number of boomer-aged celebrity deaths has been an even match of 40 & 50 something’s taking their own lives. It happens so often that nobody asks how anyone dies anymore, we all just assume that another casualty of depression, anxiety, and loneliness sat in our midst without our knowledge.

I can’t speak to the state of mind of someone toeing up to the ledge at any age, because I know what dark thoughts are and I know that they’re not all the same. What I can speak to, is that doling out guilt by way of telling everyone to ‘check in on your friends‘ can’t possibly work – this coming from someone who has always answered every question about my own well-being the exact same way: I’m fine – and when I do so, it’s either because I actually am fine, or I don’t want to get into what is not fine.

I’ve taken to planting seeds. Or trying to, anyway.

I try to speak openly about attainable notions in mixed company. I’ll often be caught dropping lines like “everyone is doing their best” because I truly believe they are. I’m always down for both light and heavy conversations about things like self-improvement, goals, and likely what is most important – redemption.

Redemption. The notion that it is entirely possible that I am not the same dipshit I was when I was 22 years old. The very idea of human advancement and growth is predicated on the idea that we can not only do better, but that we can absolve ourselves of our wrongdoings.

I won’t pretend that the vultures don’t gather, rubbing their talons together at the prospect of squeezing money from every searcher among us, because that’s a real thing and a real concern.

However, the notion of meeting someone on a spiritual level and being of service – just humans being human to each other – can turn things for anyone. No church or holy book required, and not just checking in on people, but actually seeing them – looking them in the eye – and relating to them on a spiritual level that goes beyond stylistic choices, upbringing, body fat percentage, musical taste, or any other judgement that can be passed.

I used to think and say “everyone’s just waiting for their turn to talk” but the truth is that they’re waiting to be heard, and seen, and respected – which, if we’re being honest, respect is a suitable substitute for love, and love is what we really need.

All this from a borderline-reclusive introvert.
I know, I know… but there’s redemption for me, too.

For what it’s worth, I’m not posting this in an emotional response to the Christmas season, or New Years, or any of that, so I hope this isn’t lost in the holiday well-wishing shuffle. I actually wrote this at the beginning of November.

Much love.

always searching

With each passing day, it becomes more clear to me that the 40-year game of addiction whack-a-mole I’ve been playing isn’t about substance at all so much as it’s about pacification. Pacification. I almost wrote ‘nurturing’ in place of that word, but it would have been in error.

I’ve not known what I needed or how to go about getting it so I’ve put a metaphorical soother in my mouth to hold back any crying I might have done (but let’s face it, crying still happened) in some half-hearted attempt to appear strong or attractive or badass, all of which worked. For a while, anyway. If these things didn’t work, then we wouldn’t use them as coping mechanisms.

That’s why drugs, sex, money, alcohol, gambling, food, jumping out of airplanes, and social media are such a problem – they work and they are powerful… that is, they work until they don’t, in which case not only do you have to go back to solving the problem and dealing with your newfound (powerful) addiction, which is hard – much easier to spin the ‘wheel of misfortune’ and find something else to; yes, pacify.

That’s what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.

That’s also why junkies & fuck-ups get really into Christianity, or body building, or 12-step programs, or workaholism, or become gym rats and health freaks who find themselves running low on bare skin with which to tattoo something meaningful – this is feeling self referential now, I’d better watch it – and these things will work, too, especially if you don’t want to do the work. Nobody is going to go up to a well dressed man in a $700 suit driving an Acura and tell him he’s clearly got a problem, nor does an Olympic gold medal bring about an intervention, because these things are great achievements… as though great achievements and successes couldn’t be the result of an addiction, or at very least a fixation.

Don’t misread me, though – I’m not saying that the desire to be successful or the desire to be the best at something is unhealthy. Goals are healthy. Achieving them is fantastic. However, these accolades can serve to mask a deeper problem… such as Elon Musk’s fixation on putting people on Mars as an effort to escape his relationship with his own father, or Donald Trump’s fraudulent aspirations for success, for the same reason.

I couldn’t blatantly say something like that anymore than I could say that everyone who does intermittent fasting has an eating disorder. It’s simply not true, though intermittent fasting is an excellent way to mask an eating disorder.

I’ve been told somewhere along the path that I should not become too good at the wrong thing, because the success will keep me unhappy for the rest of my life. As much as I have done that in my professional life, it means something different now.

Now, I’m gonna keep running, and keep playing music, and keep working on cars, and keep getting tattoos, because… fuck you I won’t do what you tell me – possibly forever – but these things have to; for me, anyway, operate in conjunction with doing the brain work, and the soul work, as well as the body work.

It all has to be in alignment or the machine doesn’t run right.

new growth

I have a monstera plant in my home, and allow me to assure you beyond any doubt that it has lived up to it’s name in the 8 months it has dominated our living room. The growth of it’s dominion over our front room was slow, anarchistic and seemingly uncalculated until one day I found myself with a bit of a stiff neck that I can only attribute to my passive attempt at seeing the TV; first around, then through, it’s overt foliage. It’s menace seemed even more obvious when we moved it to an empty and freshly painted room only to discover that it required a quarter of the space in the room.

When it eventually suited me, I found some information online regarding how to prune and take proper care of this plant and was reminded of several things I already knew about plants – the first of which is that there is a specific way to do it. This; I knew. This is why I didn’t just dive in unlearned. The second: that strength and new growth is possible through pruning, sculpting, and when required – bracing.

The aptly named; and to my surprise, toxic, semblance of vine, tree, and massive leaf, needed all three aspects of pruning, so adhering to the guidance of the hostess of the YouTube channel ‘fun with plants and cats’ I cut back the most obviously superfluous 25-30% and propped it’s main stalk up with the strongest bamboo stake in the garden shed before commenting to myself that as though the framework for growth is in place, it’s not where I’d like it to be just yet.

For starters, it’s amazing that the cumulative 12 minutes of time I’ve invested (7 of which were spent watching a video) has led to an expectation of performance based on my investment. It’s also interesting that I began to relate to it, and even as I write this the parallels between the structure and framework I’ve given it and the structure and framework I am giving myself make for easy comparison.

This is the strongest and most ridiculous plant in the house, and thus it takes up a lot of attention. It is loud and boisterous, and at times obnoxious – but it is also the most obviously in-need of assistance, guidance, and nurturing of all of it’s leafy brothers and sisters here. It is beautifully vulnerable but it is not weak.

Perhaps I could stand to be a bit more vulnerable as well.

when it gets dark

First, a brief synopsis.
Then, analysis.

The book of Job is a book of the bible, that for all intents & purposes is sorta just wedged in there. We’re given no real parameters for the setting. All we know is that Where Job lives, in Uz, is far away from Israel, but we’re given no context of time, which seems intentional. The story itself starts with the introduction of the character: Job. He’s ultimately a good dude and is a righteous follower of God… and God says so. In God’s court; however, The Satan or The Accuser contests this and tells God that Job is only a devout follower because he’s prosperous, and that if Job’s prosperity were removed that he would curse God… and inexplicably, God plays this game and allows The Satan to torment Job.

This is where the record scratches off the turntable for most people. Why would God go along with this? Well, spoiler-alert – that question never gets answered. The book gets into more about whether or not God is just and fair. The assumption made by the humans (again, Job, a non-Israelite, and his non-Israelite friends) is that God works the same as most of our modern assumptions about Karma might work: Do good things, get good things / do bad things, bad things happen.

This means that Job, who is a good dude as the book states, is being unjustly punished – meaning that either God is not fair, and unjust – or that his punishment is not from God at all. Job’s friends disagree, and assume that Job has sinned against God, and even start to speculate how.

Another friend comes along and provides a third alternative explanation: God uses suffering to teach and build character. But – Job is choked and starts questioning God… and God shows up.

God makes clear the many unfathomable moving parts of the universe he’s created, not stopping short of the Leviathan and the Behemoth, (both of which are already namesakes for metal bands) in order to show Job the real dark stuff that still has purpose and beauty. Eventually Job apologizes, they reconcile, and Job is made more-than whole for his trials.

It’s not a feel-good story.

I came across this story through unconventional means, I suppose… through recovery channels, but being raised a church kid means I’d heard of the book of Job the same way I’d heard of all sorts of books of the bible that I hadn’t read. Through these channels I’d also learned of a series of drawings by William Blake that outline the brooding darkness of the Leviathan and Behemoth as he understood them to be. They are dark and brooding, of course, but not shocking in the way they would have been when they were new, like so many installments of Friday The 13th movies that gave kids nightmares in the 80’s and have become appropriate Saturday morning viewing for kids by today’s standards.

Upon analysis; however, Job and God look the same in these drawings. I naturally concluded that Job was created in God’s image, and that God is inside him as we’re told when we’re young.

However, if God is within us and God has created all these dark entities that we don’t understand then me must also conclude that the dark parts of ourselves that we stumble across from time to time are NOT ONLY there by design, but that they have purpose and function beyond our own understanding.

This might not help you to understand yourself at all, but it helps me to understand the many sides that form me. We all have a capacity for darkness but that capacity for darkness must then also be God’s… and that I am not waiting for God to save me so much as I am conjuring the power to save myself, because God’s power is also mine. I have had a moral compass within me all along, and what I needed to know is that when I struggle with loss or anger, that God holds on to the pain until I can carry it myself. It’s part of an internal process for anyone who’s ever said “it just hasn’t hit me yet” when coping with the shock of tragedy, for example.

In other words: I am the hero I am waiting for.

To go one further, I could also conclude that since these things are within me, that when I hear something that resonates with me and stays with me, allowing me to change or adapt, that this is either the voice of God speaking to me, or an echo of the voice of God, keeping me on my path.

God talk turns a lot of people off and I am sensitive to that. It turns me off sometimes, too, but if you read this far then I thank you. That said, I don’t really write this for anyone’s approval, and for all I know I’m dead-wrong about a lot of things.

I’m just working my way through.
Same as you.

bracing for festivity

“What I know of my own behavior as a consumer is that it has developed it’s own selfish tendencies, partly as a defense mechanism and partly as an unwitting and occasionally problematic habit, so it’s not hard for me to confirm that, yes – my blind willingness to stay home and eat brownies on the couch rather than put on a nice sweater and exchange pleasantries…”

As we encroach on the season of giving (used here in a fit of irony and humor as we’re all quite aware that this season of giving has been co-opted and rebranded as “shopping season” as though there was a season that wasn’t predicated on spending money), I can already feeling myself recoiling into my couch, here in my safe domicile where I am protected by warm slippers, and even warmer dog, and even warmer vegan baking.

Why am I so reluctant? I may blame the cold, and the cold may have earned it’s fair share of blame, but I know at my core that I am a social creature by nature. And if it is by nature that I am social then it should come naturally as the term indicates, so again I ask myself (in greater analytical detail): what unnatural urge has beset me that I am so keen to draw the shades and hide from the outside world? It’s only the 25th of November and I am already feeling the post-holiday malaise.

Let’s excavate. What I know of my own behavior as a consumer is that I’ve developed selfish tendencies, partly as a defense mechanism and partly as a coping mechanism, I’m sure, so it’s not hard for me to confirm that, yes – my blind willingness to stay home and eat brownies on the couch rather than put on a nice sweater and exchange pleasantries with other people in the spirit of the season, where I will permit myself to talk about myself, but not too much, and then allow someone else to talk about themselves – careful not to interrupt, or change the subject back to something I find more interesting.

That sounds like a lot of work. Even my vague and figurative explanation of what might transpire is a bit cynical in nature, which reinforces my desire to hide.

The truth; however, is that I am resistant to engage with people.
Why?
Because people exhaust me.
Why?
Because people only want to talk about themselves.
Why is that a problem?
Because I want to talk about me.
Why?
So that I can control the narrative about myself.
…
So that they don’t draw their own conclusions.
…
Because I want to be accepted.
And loved.

That’s right – There’s a strong likelihood that I don’t want to go socialize because I want to be accepted. Sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it?
This is starting to sound like an exhausted parent telling a child why we can’t go out for ice cream: “We don’t have to go out to be accepted and loved, we have acceptance and love at home.“

So we’re back to square one, reframing the same question in more and more critical ways to point out our own unwillingness to change: Is my resistance really me, or is it some mish mash of hormones and laziness enabling me to embrace my ill-informed preference? Knowing that tomorrow I’ll feel completely left out, especially after I log in to Instagram and see the myriad of photos of people I know enjoying a function I opted out of and not really being consoled by the minor dopamine hit that I might get from the half-dozen likes I got on the picture of my dog I might post instead.

It’s happened before. I’ve quit jobs, bands, and clubs in the past and then promptly; as if on cue, felt left out as though the situation wasn’t of my own design.

I ought to go put that sweater on and drag a brush across my head.
God forbid I accidentally connect with someone.