the snail shell


2 Focus 2 Positive

a few obvious things

how is this relevant now

When I’m in the muck, nothing seems good. the positive voices seem like Pollyannas. I can’t change it once I’m there. it’s like Severance. the miserable innie doesn’t want to listen to the outie who’s living the good life.

Unlike in Severance, the innie would rather not exist. he doesn’t like being miserable. being miserable and heard is better than being miserable and ignored, but not being there is better than both. So maybe the deal that outie-me can strike with innie-me is: if we, together, can focus on the upsides more, you (innie) don’t have to exist as much

But it’s also hard talking with him without treating him as an object or a problem, and I assume either of those stances will make him shut right down, and I wouldn’t blame him.

a friend blogged this a while ago, and the phrase stuck with me. I do this a lot:

An example:

so now what

Ok, I have a little more energy right now and life seems hopeful. Current practice, then, includes “stop being victim of metonymy, befriend innie, focus on the positive.”

“focus on the positive” is too much to bite off, though, so I’m starting with “orient”: just focus on the outside world, feel my senses, feel connected with it all. I think this is basically the same thing that most everyday practices point at: Alexander technique, meditation practice off-the-mat, “stop and smell the flowers”, “take a deep breath.” Life is a little easier if you just chill out right now.

I’m gonna get so good at it.2

  1. usually, including in this case, it’s “victim of synecdoche”, but using “metonymy” instead is a synecdoche I can live with ↩︎

  2. comic by owlturd.com where B says “hey type A friend, stop and smell the flowers” and the type A friend gets so aggressive and tries to become the #1 flower smelling champion ↩︎



Micro-frustration

I was going to write about how frustration is the most common emotion I feel these days, but I’m not sure. Exhaustion is right up there. They’re kind of the same.

Here’s a feeling that happens a lot: I’m under little pressure, but I become frustrated because any single move is impossible, and I am rewarded with the sonic and emotional equivalent of intermittent electric shocks.

Here’s a concrete instantiation of that feeling: kid and I go to the playground. It’s 5 blocks away; let’s walk! On the way, the following things happen:

A more zen person than me would realize that we are just killing time so who cares if it takes a while? And I am kind of like that; most of these things, I don’t force him to move on, I just let him explore and take his time. But it is exhausting for me. Exhausting because we are changing directions multiple times a minute. I just get started walking this way… and now we’re walking that way. (And if I try to get him to walk this way again, he’ll either ignore me or start screaming and crying.)

I wish there was a word for this. Micro-frustration. Everything’s a yak shave. It feels like if you had allergies, but every so often when you went to wipe your nose, it didn’t work and an airhorn came out of your nose instead, so you had to gently coax your nose back to working.

The frustrating thing is that the answer doesn’t seem to be psychological. It’s not like “I just have to let go of my anxiety around ___” or “realize that I don’t have to control ___.” It feels like being a little bit on fire, and the only solution is to “just get ok with being a little bit on fire.” That feels like a much harder adjustment to make, than to update some thinking patterns.



Some Claims About Our Present World

I keep struggling to write anything about the present state of the US, but it seems important to, so it’s blocking me writing anything about anything else. The block is something like: once I make A Claim, then I have to Substantiate It, and each of these would take hours to do well and I don’t have that kind of time or energy.

So, to unblock myself, I’m just going to throw these out there: