i feel like one million dollars!
and the difficulties of being stuck in my feelings without a math rock band to express them :(
After having ended my job six weeks ago, I spent a lot of my time…working.
On the subject of math rock, here is some Mood Music for the rest of this post:
My time went into recruiting for my next job, making plans with friends, improving this newsletter, pushing forward a group writing project, optimizing grocery orders using Excel, and planning a move from Seattle back here to my parents’.
You don’t need to know all the gory details. OK fine, maybe just one. I’d scheduled so many Reminders in my phone to keep on track that I’d wake up to the terrifying thought of having fallen behind. I’d intended to enjoy the warm lethargy of an indoor summer, but instead, I was scrambling to feel productive, to fill this void in me where work used to fit.
Then, something magical happened. Now, I spend most of my time playing video games, creating Instagram stories, reading young adult fiction, skateboarding in the house, judging soil fertility, naming color contrasts, and conducting séances. Because life’s too short to not live it on your own terms.
Wanna know my secret?
The Secret, Get Ready!
OK calm down; here’s the secret. I learned to pay more attention to how I’m feeling at any given moment, to the actual body sensations happening inside me, instead of the cause of or solution to them.
When I lived a planned life, executing Reminder after Reminder, there was a need to quash my own emotional protests in the ruthless pursuit of Reminder-hunting.
The problem is that every situation creates feelings. They’re unavoidable. Whether it’s failing a math test, listening to acoustic guitar, or betraying a friend to the Mafia, your nervous system is bound to react. It can be so overwhelming that it’s tempting to jump to solutions or distractions.
A common “solution” I find myself using is blaming or romanticizing outside situations in my life for producing these feelings inside me. It’s something all of us do and is in fact part of our culture.
Take the trope of action heroes getting carried away by revenge, for example. Entire plots of movies revolve around a wronged man exacting gratuitous revenge against some human symbol of Power & Greed & Nefariousness. Imagine if instead, all of Bruce Willis’s characters, thirty minutes into his movies, knelt down in a bedroom corner and performed a three-minute breathing exercise? With Aphex Twin demos playing soothing background chords?? And then he joined a Buddhist monastery??!! In a single camera take??? And then the movie just ENDED?!!? I wonder what we’d be like if we watched those movies growing up.
But all Willis-jokes aside, it’s not just our reactions to situations that make it tough to listen to feelings. Feelings can also come from physiological changes, which further complicates things because they’re easy to mix up with situational feelings.
Say I eat too much bread, or cheese, or whatever. My tummy will swell up, and I wriggle around uncomfortably, which creates helplessness and anxiety. I then deduce that my discomfort comes not from the carb overload but actually from something rude a friend said three years ago, and I live for years not knowing that I’m lactose-intolerant, gluten-sensitive, etc.
How will I even know what’s going on with me? What’s the real root cause?
All this stuff on feeling-processing is common, actually. I read three articles just this past week on the very topic of listening to feelings (after I ideated this blog post, for all you scavenging IP lawyers) and so consider myself a professional on the matter:
Joe Edelman for What Are Feelings.
Haley Nahman for Having an Instagram Following Is Weird.
David Cain for Focus on the Inputs.
I recommend each of them. And while I’m here listing things I like, here are a few more:
Other Cool Things!
I’ve got a few other cool things to share with you guys…
Solstice’s…Blog. Friends of mine have built a network of DJs and other musical creatives and launched an online radio community. I’ve brought my writing skills as well to include reviews, interviews, and more. My music review of BADBADNOTGOOD’s new single “Goodbye Blue” is out! Would love if you checked it out below and then listened to the song and then fell in love with it:
LowLiftAsk. A hilarious newsletter co-created by a charming fellow I know. I don’t want to give away too much, so I’ll just say that I chuckled ‘n’ chortled multiple times each post, many of which involve detailed childhood anecdotes of famed politician Newt Gingrich.
Anyhow, it’s way too easy to mix up situational feelings and physical feelings. Maybe I’m just bad at separating the two—I dunno. It would be cool if we had two separate hearts to process each. Or if the stomach had its own heart, which could Zoom call the main heart to gossip about my life. Or an Endocrine Spirit, a guardian angel to examine my digestive processes from the outside and arrest organs culpable for my distress. But I am getting carried away.
Instead, I ignore the feelings altogether by stacking responsibility on top of responsibility, Reminder on top of Reminder. Programmed by the lifelong stress of work, college, school, and the womb, I often feel lost just being with myself, so I tend to seek comfort in accomplishment.
I tried so hard to be productive that I felt empty. Some of those commitments for which I stretched myself thin were supposed to be fun! They were important to me! Yet each lost its appeal when it donned the cold, uncaring cloak of Google Reminders.
Woe Is Me! What Do I Do?
Fret not, as I’m trying a couple new strategies. One: eat fewer carbs. Two: when I wake up to three Reminders buzzing to tell me what I’m behind on, just allow myself to feel the vertiginous whiplash of comfort becoming panic.
In other words (and please note that my authority is questionable as I am not, I repeat not, a certified yoga instructor) don’t have thoughts about your feelings. Or rather, when thoughts or past conflicts or wise quotes pop into your head, just let them pass. Your body will attempt to clamp down on the uncomfortable sensations sizzling through its nerve endings. Sit in your own sensations, as unpleasant as they may be.
I advise (again, no real authority) that next time you feel a negative emotion, check to see whether or not some part of your body is clenching. I imagine that any behaviors or reactions (throwing things, yelling, slapping people) are an outward version of the suppressed feeling fighting for control, like a rodeo bull bucking its cowboy.
Eventually, once the feeling’s been processed, it’s easier to identify where it came from. The trap is in trying to figure it out while it’s still having its way with you.
Discovering which of my feelings come from emotions and which are mere digestive byproducts has defined an exciting new era in my life (and a topic on which I’ve held a TED Talk). The two are so easy to confuse that I end up ignoring both altogether. But if you really listen, you can not only distinguish the sources from each other but also conveniently label your moods. It’s been a fun exercise in just being. In fact, right now, I’m feeling a little cocktail of wistful-insolent—my shoulders are sore from the devilish combo of yesterday’s pushups and barometric pressure change.
In the last week of being more present, I’ve learned more about which foods agree with me and which don’t. I’ve spent more time doing nothing, just stretching, gazing out the window, and wondering which of my friends has read a novella. Of course, while I’d prefer that this pandemic weren’t happening right now, quarantine has given me dense forests of feelings to work through every day, like a high-octane obstacle course of the heart.
Also been trying to pick up on things I’m feeling more and more. Diet is big, eating late etc. one thing I learned, crazy as it may seem, is watching intense movies at night makes it hard to sleep!?! Great post.
Pictures make your point. Thought the old guy looked familiar:) Liked how you connected food and feelings. Old saying was as the man thinketh. Now it's as we eateth!!