Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice: Vol 4, Iss 23: Everything is Real Weird Right Now, Right?
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Hi friends! We released another podcast episode this week. You can check it out here and wherever else you get your podcasts. Nicole’s birthday is this weekend and we both are looking forward to deliberately stepping away from “productivity” for a bit. I don’t have much of a preamble in me this week and we can jump right into things after I share this photo of myself. I had to be maybe three years old here? I remember being obsessed with sticking the bows on my head and telling people I was a gift without actually realizing how hilarious and on-brand that is until adulthood.
I’m just gonna come out and say it as I know I’m not the only one feeling this: shit is real weird and hard right now. It has been for a while, on the global level, on the national level, and for many folks, on the personal level. It feels absolutely wild that we are still expected to do our jobs every day while there are multiple active genocides happening, LGBTQIA+ rights are being ripped away, reproductive rights are increasingly scarce, etc. We are also supposed to celebrate holidays? At a time like this?
I have wall decor that says, “Joy is an act of resistance,” and while I firmly believe that, we can’t joy-and-good-vibes our way out of the current and ongoing traumatic events. If I hear one more person say, “You can’t have rainbows without rain,” I’m one cranky day away from replying, “And you can’t eat nachos without teeth so miss me with that.” Everything terrible happening in the world isn’t just a learning experience for people who don’t have it as bad and that’s a gross way to view the suffering of others.
As I said, I know I’m not alone in this liminal space of anger and despair and grasping at joy wherever we can find it and then feeling guilty that we had that small moment of peace or rest or laughter. I know I’m not alone because whenever I ask anyone, “How are you?” not a single person has answered “fine” or “good.” It’s always an open-armed shrug and a “Oh, you know” or a “I’m managing,” “I’m surviving,” and my personal go to, “I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got.”
One of the things that is keeping me from tearing my hair out is reminding myself that life is never 100% anything. There is always someone dying in one place while someone else is being born in another. I’m not saying this as some kind of rude “It is what it is” moment but more that I constantly try to remind myself that we do not live in a vacuum and that many things can be true at once. It is also true that I can feel many things at once. I can be deep in grief and still have times of feeling joyous or silly or hopeful. I am doing my best to allow myself the complexity of emotions that can occur and also point that lens at the world to realize that not everything is great all at once and not everything is awful all at once. It all happens concurrently, not sequentially.
The other thing that is keeping me from having a mental breakdown is realizing that it’s not just me. So many people are having a rough time and for some of us it may even be exacerbated by the holidays. Knowing this, I’m doing my best to do two related things. First, extend extra compassion and grace toward others. Coworkers, family members, friends, spouse, neighbors. While the phrase, “Assume best intentions” makes my eye twitch, I am cutting people so much slack whenever and wherever I can. Likewise, the other thing I’m trying to do is to give myself the same amount of grace. Just really trying to treat myself with gentleness in ways I historically have not. I see how I can extend this toward others so I know I can do it, I just need to direct some back toward me.
If this resonates, please let me know. It can go unexpectedly far to acknowledge that we are in community.
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