Ah, New York. My plane landed at 6:45am after I got a total of 15 minutes of sleep all night. It took three hours for me to get from Newark Airport to my house in Brooklyn and then I slept for two whole days.
This week I focused on avoiding negative thoughts. Any time I reminded myself of this project, I overpowered my goal of positive thinking with all the stressful things in my life. I’m unemployed, I’m unprepared for a massive trip I’m taking reeeeaallllyyy soon etc etc. It seems when you try to think about having positive thoughts all you think about is how you should be focusing on the things that bring negativity into your life.
I had a similar feeling when my Uncle John passed. I was so upset and it was wreaking havoc in my life, but I felt like I needed to be upset. I wanted to be upset because that meant I was thinking about him, and if I didn’t think about him he’d go away.
The reality is he was already gone, and my problems won’t be fixed by laboring over them in bed at 1am.
It has also shown me that I’m not entirely great at taking compliments. Somewhere inside of me I feel shame for the life I live. I’m nowhere, in that deep, dark thought. I have nothing and I am nothing. So when someone tells me they’re proud of me, or inspired by me, or excited for me, I make some weird comment on how things will probably blow up. (This article induced these reflections).
(Side bar – I came home to a letter from my first NY employer taking me to court because they don’t want to pay my unemployment… so.)
This is all to say that we’re in this beautifully annoying age of self care, where positivity is a weapon and it’s used to fight self doubt, societal pressure, used to pave the path for all the hard work we do to follow our dreams. It’s up against debt and financial woes, the ever-growing complications of intimate relationships and communication, the reality that dreams don’t pay bills but corporate jobs do and aging which actually hurts.
Sometimes it feels impossible to juggle the mere responsibility of being alive and participating in the US and also tell ourselves we’re okay and beautiful and capable of love.
However, when has a negative thought done anything other than fan the flames of your problems? Is it not the most uncomfortable feeling to be unhappy? I’ll admit I’m one of many people who feed off of depression at times, getting a creative fuel from it. But the nagging disappointment of one’s own life is not inspiring in the least and tends to feel more like pressure. It’s gross. It’s a gross feeling. Like when you’re too hot but can’t take off layers so you just have to stew in your sweat (it’s still really hot in NY so this is just an immediate feeling for me).
So I still believe in positive thinking. I don’t know that I truly believe that positive thinking will bring you all your fame and fortune (because I’ve been coasting off that belief forever, but it turns out believing you’ll succeed doesn’t actually do the hard work of succeeding) but it will certainly ease the discomfort.
Here‘s another cute article as a final thought on that.
This week will be a whirlwind. I’m getting all my doc appointments out of the way (is it a broken rib? Is it Tietze? Stay tuned, I’m getting an x-ray. My money is still on swollen organ). I was also brought on for New York Marathon and that gig starts next Monday. It goes from then until the week after the event (Nov. 3rd) which will leave me just a week or two out from Europe.
There’s a lot of prep to be done, but in the meantime I just finished a (bad) book and so this week’s project is one I’m actually pretty interested in.
Tim Baker and Kate Etue wrote a book called Why So Many Gods? and it’s pretty much a 2000s rundown of a select bunch of religions. I’m pretty sure both authors are Christians, so we’ll see how this pans out. It’s actually really hard to find anything on Tim Baker, because as you can imagine, everyone and their dog is named Tim Baker (Tim Barker, for the latter…).
I’m curious to see how factual this information is and possibly learn a little about other religions. I’ve spoken a lot about my relationships with Christianity but I honestly know very little about other religions. Such is growing up white in America. Here’s to being accountable for the information we fill ourselves with (and here’s to filling myself with potentially biased information).
Well, wish me luck this week and give me deets on the religion you practice, one you’re interested in learning about, or your experience with religions. OR READ THE BOOK WITH ME. I’m so alone.
JACLAND 