We're halfway there, folks! September 2nd, 2022, was the 900th day since I locked down for 6-8 weeks (42-56 days) and began counting the squares on the calendar (900 days.)
I've been on a sort of HOH Magazine haitus. I began, stalled, re-began, stalled, and re-began an issue of HOH Magazine for March of 2021, listing the names of the various humans whose lives were directly, literally threatened by a literal angry mob, and still decided to vote to not convict the man responsible for telling the angry mob where to go to find these very same people and inflict treasonous violence against them. That's weird!
People are complicated. Like me! I've backburnered that edition of the Magazine and managed to post a 2022 top-of-the-annual issue for y'all to enjoy instead, which I've already completely forgotten about. This year has been...a lot. In mostly really, unfathomably good ways. But there's still been lots of obvious struggling. Mostly mentally! As the the cage around myself only shows the rust on its bars, the paint flecking off every time I witness people behave and act outside of the world I choose to live in for my personal and public health & safety. I want to be where those people are, but I do not want to be where the people are. You dream about going up there, but that is a big mistake, etc. etc.
 |
| Artist unknown, I hate to do that I'm sorry but I tried every reverse-image search trick in my book. |
I also turned 30 this summer, and it's sinking in how much the back half of my twenties were sapped away by other peoples' painful selfish dipshittery -- It shoulda been entirely my own! Had I known this, maybe I'd have fucked anything that moved and yadda yadda yadda we've talked about this before and before and before. Maybe re-reading it can spur some sort of epiphany: myself telling myself about myself. That's where I'm at. four years gone in what feels like two, max. What a steal!
That's a mental cage as well. But, I've recently been working more directly on a part of that. See, unlike certain United States Senators I actually really attempt to adapt and change my behavior when I brush up against external motivators or make people mad at me. It's a spine thing.
 |
| Flashback to 2016. |
By the time I turned fifteen I ceased to have any motivation to learn to drive. I'm not gonna retroactively claim it's another symptom of feeling part of an infantilized generation that gets frozen out from owning homes and having jobs at 18 or whatever. It was honestly just a disinterest. A totally neutral "nah." I don't think I really had the dreams of doing it as a kid, so there wasn't much of a thread of ambition left by 15 to tie that urge to the possibility. I'd rather have had a bike with propellers so I could fly everywhere, 50 feet off the ground.
 |
| That's the teenage dream right there. |
And I never needed to learn, until external motivators provided an outweighing argument. That's the theme of this segment.
Flash forward: I am no longer fifteen, but the year is: 2015. I'm finally learning to drive, because I have a job I never looked for and didn't plan on (I enjoy it, but that's a whole other story, I just deem it apropos to the segment to mention it that way) and so I'm catching the bus to catch the train to catch another bus -- which departs within a minute of the train arriving a block away and not coming again for 40 minutes so that's a tumultuous window -- to get to work. And then taking the reverse home every day. And that's cool: I get to listen to music, and Harmontown, and write in my diary, and space out. But when I'm not doing that, my parents are giving me rides to and from the office. And it was in the interest of taking the load off their shoulders that I decide sit my white ass down behind the wheel and listen.
I also don't work in downtown Minneapolis, but I have to go deep into the heart of it to get where I'm going via public transit...which is otherwise a 30-minute commute. But that's not as big a contributing factor: I want to learn to drive to lessen the burden on my parents. So at 23, in early 2016, after one failed test and one success, I got a little plastic thing with my face on it that lets me run green lights all day long.
––––––––––––– ✍ ✍ ✍ –––––––––––––
And so too does this compulsion apply to "coming out of my shell."
Socially, I mean. Not pandemically. Though the two are tragically intertwined now.
The social de-shelling (un-withdrawing?) is a tussle of two wolves within me. Or every butterfly in my stomach vs. my stomach. In this month's therapy session I was able to come to a new level of acceptance of a fact that I've always felt, but has now been put into [more] words.
I am fundamentally introverted, and that manifests in enjoying alone time. (I already knew that, this is just ground-laying.) But, as a consequence of that, it means I generally don't go asking friends to hang out. I usually wait passively for them to hit me up first. "That way," I rationalize, "I'll know it's something they want and I'm happy to oblige." ...But the inverse of this is that I fear hitting them up to do something is bothersome, and so not doing that may make me appear as not wanting to hang out. So it perpetuates a little bit of neglect-ish negativity.
I simply don't have the craving to fill my free time with friends like extroverts do. I love my friends and I love hanging out! But it's not detrimental to be in solitude, and I'm never unable to find something fulfilling to do on my own. Even if I'm lazy and turn into a couch potato and watch stuff in a slurry haze all day, that's not leveed by some strong compulsion to be social. So I do need to actively remind myself to plan activities or shoot the shit with friends, not unlike how people need reminders to take medication, or to do certain tasks. The mindfulness tactics to account for the complacency of the introverted condition.
And in the internet age, most of my friends are at the end of my arm. So I buy into the Winklevoss illusion that I'm spending time with them nearly always.
(If you're my friend and you're reading this by the way, no matter how recently or long ago we last spoke, I do love ya. Message me some funny shit sometime, aight?)
All of this is still reiteration of stuff I already know. But it was reflected in the confrontation of my complete and total inability to "make the first move" in that social realm. The road a Dateless Wonder dares not to travel for dumb, self-absorbed reasons [let's be honest after a certain point.]
"I Just Can't Do It."
Excuse #1: I don't want to bother anyone, ever. So I am averse to making the first move or reaching out further. -- See how that active behavior relates to the passive patters found in my platonic friendships? It all stems from the same natural introversion; it's just more acutely distressing in this context because...you have to talk to people if you want to go out with them. And that's practically impossible for me. When the situation calls implicitly or explicitly for those kinds of intentions, I get anxious. I feel guilty about even having those intentions.
(I even get upset if a car slows down and stops for me when I'm standing near a crosswalk. Just fucking go! I'll take care of myself when there are no cars around!)
That is perhaps the one remaining reason why I miss school: students are forced to spend time with random people. So you inevitably get to know others naturally, and can develop friendships or romantic interests fairly organically, off of some level of familiarity. Shared interests would sporadically be revealed through simple probability. It's impossible to know nothing about them, nor they you, before trying to connect. I don't think it's so much that "adults don't know how to make friends" as headlines like to say, as much as it is "adults aren't forced to be in proximity to dozens or even hundreds of peers for six hours a day, five days a week." (I mean I suppose if you are lucky you can make friends that way at work. Lottery lucky.) Shit, dawg: ask parents whose kids stay home during the pandemic how many new friends they make.
Excuse #2: I think that all "openers," "pick up lines," and "hit on-orifics" have their efficient purposes that I can respect tolerate, but they all feel phony as fuck coming out of my mouth or text bubble. No matter how slick or smooth, original or apropos: if I uttered a single one I would feel profusely embarrassed, hackneyed, and stupid. Only a matter of how much. It's just so out of character. It feels like lying, which is not how you're supposed to interact with interesting strangers. The relevant autistic trait here is a discomfort with being inauthentic.
But it also ties into never wanting to assume what someone wants to hear. I try quite hard to never assume sometimes, because it's a great tool in general for people on the spectrum. I've gotten in a myriad of trouble or awkward situations in my life from assuming things; not any for inquiring for clarity about things.
...And, um, there is the general apprehension of "trying" that comes from the observation that straight men are bad and gross and creepy and cloying and I just happen to be one. Which isn't a problem if you know me, but is a factor if I'm a stranger. The only downside of being a male who is straight in our society is being included in the demographic. It means I internalize a conditioning that tells me I can't really be attractive because if I try to be outgoing about it, it will be received badly, undesired and unwanted.
I know that all it really means is that I appear with a set of prejudged assumptions about me, because the content of my character is yet unknown. Which might be the same thing I just said but phrased differently... So, vicious internal nagging aside, bucking those built-in assumptions is an important step. Bucking that conditioning is a whole other tin of worms, one I feel I have no right to so easily dismiss, because...y'ain't wrong t'assume, no?
But anyway, the point is, I know a fair bit about what my problems are, and what I can do about it. I have the map, I have the car, I have the keys...but I just can't/won't/don't put them in the ignition. The ultimate impasse.
And in a recent mood-swing of self-pitying depression, I expressed this frustration in an inarticulate, uncouth and passive-aggressive bitching manner that I shouldn't have. (The relevant autistic trait here is a higher difficulty to regulate behavioral responses to emotions.)
I was told to get over myself.
The consequence of saying something stupid and upsetting a friend. This, is the external motivator that has been compelling my to want to change for the last month. To actually change. But that requires a helluva lot more self-interrogation than I'd been giving myself before: I have to sit with it. What does it mean to truly get over yourself?
...Okay look yes, skipping ahead the answer is a fucking Nike slogan. "Just do it" has been the most obvious solution ever; I've had it typed in the pages of a screenplay on the subject, fully self-aware and jokingly, for the better part of 12 years.
But what does that entail? It's like taking the most repulsive medicine: I myself have to be the one to drink it, but it's so fucking uncomfortable.
 |
| I know that thousand-yard stare. |
How much do I underline the word uncomfortable to effectively get that across? And yes, I'm writing about this in a blog post primarily to help myself conquer it...but it's not lost on me that the more I get to think about it, the more I get to delay taking action. My initial instincts to seek self-improvement without external motivators is to disappear up my own ass. In other words: start by writing out my thoughts. So here you are. Welcome to my month.
My hesitation has dug me a rut that's cozy and comfortable. ...I've actually been comfortable decidedly not 'Just Doing It' or 'trying' or anything since I was 18. THAT'S A 12-YEAR-OLD EPIPHANY. IT'S OLD ENOUGH TO DRINK IN FRANCE!
And yet a rut...is still a fucking rut....
I'm 30 now. I'm trying to shout at my 20-year-old self until I'm blue in the face, and I can't. But I got a valuable nugget from this pit: When your self-esteem issues are in the rear-view mirror the self-pity they accrued becomes valueless. However, I am able to turn my mind to the prospect of "the future." If I can destroy my current self-esteem issues, that may pay dividends. What's a dividend? I dunno, I'm only 30.
This change will require a rewrite of the day-to-day soul of David Hoh. My therapist tasked me with the question "Can I live in the new discomfort?" So naturally, I've been watching movies and listening to music that echo or reflect this attempted projection, trying to tap into my "I wish I'd done ______" self and yell at me now for him. I have one decade of "youth" youth left, [apologies to everyone of every age, it's just a passing negative thought I don't really believe, alright? Get off my back.] So, let's get to it!
(...Despite the "fact" that "I can't," get to it "because of the pandemic." I can't even pretend I'm in a normal world like College Sophomore David was. What the fuck can I actually do???)
Totally incidentally, a few days before my therapy session the week I had to confront this, I happened to pull a technique out of the psychoanalyst's playbook called The Empty Chair. A therapist will have a titular spare seat and tell the patient to imagine they were sitting there and looking at themselves where they are. "What would you say to you if you saw someone else in the same position?" It's basically third- and/or second-person self-instruction.
While stewing in contemplation at work about how to get over myself, I ended up performing that exercise in my own way. Because I'm a slut for external motivators, and I can't seem to make myself do certain things without literally creating a secondary voice.
(I mean I literally created a video with a different person saying my own words to me about how I don't have to listen to someone else to perform self-care. SIX YEARS AGO.)
(...Granted that was pre-"2016" 2016, so whatever problems I was trying to pep-talk myself with sort of fell by the wayside as I was thrown off a fucking cliff straight into hell, but with some fine-tuning of interpretation, it's still relevant to this unforeseen clown show we live in now.*)
Anyway, when I had my session I was told that this self-caring improv game was actually like, officially good technique. I also went in-depth on...well, all the shit I'm scrawling on these walls right now. And that brings me full circle: I was able to come to a new level of acceptance of a fact that I've always felt, but has now been put into [more] words:
"Making the first move" and "flirting" and "all of that" is Masking. Masking is an autistic practice that takes many forms. The most relevant one here is perhaps primarily about scripting conversation. The practical way this manifests is in a sheer discomfort with, and aversion to the "phoniness of opening lines in conversations with attractive strangers."
But the Big Breakthrough part of this addended revelation is that I live a fairly maskless life. And whatever masking I already do isn't particularly exhausting. In fact I often question how much I actually do, since I'm not aware if I'm aware of it, and I'd like to be. (I guess making phone calls or asking employees for assistance are examples, but I usually avoid doing them as much as possible.) But now I understand the required masking for the "just doing it" part of "putting myself out there" is oppressively exhausting to me, because that's what it is.
 |
| It's about this daunting. |
It's so daunting that I don't even approach the prospect unless I'm in the exact right mood, which is a millimeter wide as far as states of mind go. Because that's how I'm wired. Look, based on the amount of media about how hard it is to ask people out, I concede that neurotypicals have it hard too. But not this hard? Gonna bet not this hard.
 |
| Closest representative gif I could find of a narrow window, I was hoping for something more clockwork. |
If I can loose an arrow [a fully-scripted conversational message] through that sliver of headspace... immediately afterwards the mood window closes and I'm cascaded by embarrassment and shame. Because that kind of thing is so out of character!!
I know, I know, we all have multitudes. People are full of contradictions. Everyone is capable of anything. You're not you when you're hungry, yeah, more commercial isms.
But I'm not me when I'm angry either. It doesn't mean being angry isn't true. Doesn't mean the modes we live in infrequently aren't authentic. Nor are they outside of our control. Doing things you don't usually do is still you doing them.
...See that's the voice of my cooler, more experienced self. Or whoever he is. We spoke a lot that Monday at work. I usually talk to myself in the mirror but I can't talk to him that way. That's not him: that's me. It brought a new dimension to talking to myself.
 |
| Inaccurate artist's conception: this photo is from the past. It merely illustrates alternate vibes. |
And now that I know it as Masking, there's a certain semblance of liberation. It's not an excuse anymore, it's a reason. That makes it more...scientific? Excuses are that which provide exemption from doing a thing, but this is something I would ostensibly like to do and can't without high difficulty. Reasons are the conditions for why a thing is a certain way. It's an obstacle in my way of doing a thing, I'm not trying to avoid the thing. ...except to avoid confronting the thing. I can use it as an excuse, but if I want to change then I can't. So this Masking trouble doesn't excuse my [lack of] behavior, it explains it. Excuses can be dismissed, but reasons can be navigated.
Remember those excuses from earlier? Here are Other, Cooler Me's would-be rebuttals, which I already knew when I wrote those excuses because time is an illusion, all of it's within you now:
Rebuttal #1: "Bothering" is not a negative action. It's neutral. Whether it's received well or not is dependent. And in contexts where you are expected to meet strangers -- like they actually express interest of some kind, don't fucking forget that -- it's expected that you bother them. Especially when they will not bother you first, either. A self-frustrating prophecy, that. What's an Ouroboros for a snake not eating its own tail? A starving snake? Look, it's not the bad sort of bothering at first, unless you're really really bad at first impressions. Which I somehow doubt.
Rebuttal #2: Openers. The Masking. That is how you're supposed to interact with attractive strangers. Yes, yes, you contain multitudes. But first impressions are only ever going to convey one side of you (maybe a couple if you're lucky or written by a brilliant screenwriter who understands story economy.) Invariably, in new situations you must create an Introductory Presentation version of yourself, no matter how phony you feel about it or not. Yes, it's a neurotypical structure from a neurotypical world. But guess what? That mask is one you get to choose. Your genuine self gets to design and author everything about it. So how phony can it really be?
This was reiterated in therapy. You see a person: you attempt to interact with them; you tailor a side of yourself to what you think might grab that person's attention. It's all a pitch. Then, if successful, more of you can be doled out in good time. To whatever degree this happens, it happens with nearly every single first impression regardless of scenario. So get used to it.
To which my intimidated, contentedly-lonesome side snaps back: Even in extremely uncomfortable scenarios??? My procrastination is comforting. My rut is all feng shui'd out.
My introverted tendencies are not necessarily amplified by the pandemic, but they are cushioned very well by the conditions. And if the pandemic isn't changing, why should I? I can wait it out pleasantly and patiently for as long as it fucking takes..........
To which we both refrain: and yet a rut is still a fucking rut. And the pandemic is a limitation. But in art, limitation is the catalyst for creativity. What if you're hiding yourself in a 100 square foot room and imagining it's only 10 square feet because it isn't the outdoors? If what you want -- this trying -- is underneath a mountain of discomfort then it's worth sticking your hands in it.
Good news: "Just Doing It" isn't the full scope of a solution. If it were just that easy, it would happen. It's about being able to Just Do It. Just knowing that you can just do it. A multifaceted thing: It's about not making a huge deal out of it. It's about having No Expectations. And it's about continuing to be at peace with the fact that it can exhaust all of my spoons (even to just think about!) That last one is vitally important: because the real real problem is that, while I am ostensibly comfortable Not Trying, I still get bitchy about it when I'm in a jealous or forlorn mood. So true acceptance, which writing a blog post about can actually help with, is a key practice regardless of whether I Just Do It or not, or how difficult it remains or how infrequently it may occur. True happiness comes from the self, and if you're unhappy with yourself, don't beat yourself up. Embrace yourself instead. (Because true acceptance is actually one step further: embracing.) That's the shit I've been flunking on this whole time.
Step back, take a deep breath, see yourself from the other chair and say "Hey, you're okay. Don't worry." That's actionable to me, and I'll try to develop a steady habit of reminding myself to do that.
I realize writing about it isn't going to change anything. I mean it might nudge my brain in a direction, if the mountain of my writing on this subject can teeter and fall on me like an overstuffed garbage can...
I do mean it when I say there's merit in this practice. I write about it so that my thoughts cohere, and are considered. And maybe, having written it out, it can function as an external motivator. Guilt-tripping the self, but in a good way! Maybe this blog will help keep me accountable.
Because you can write something that's more mature than you are. And then the real test of an artist is to live up to your own words. Can you practice what you preach? And that's where The Empty Chair belongs: mental feng shui.
(Though it's okay if you can't always, again don't beat yourself up about your multitudes not being aligned all the time...)
And no one piece of writing, blog or video, is going to be an end-all-be-all. That's not how it works. How it works is providing oneself ever more foundation to build off of. My 2016 Reverse-Valentine's Day video once felt like unexplored ground, and then I published it. Years later, I watched it again, thinking it might have grown stale, only to discover that it wasn't: I just had grown beyond some of the lessons I was learning while making it. Even if these texts can still inspire me later, they also serve as laid track in an ever-building railway.
The thing about being so interested in self-awareness, though, is fundamentally it makes you self-absorbed. Even if you try to self-analyze as a means of avoiding being self-absorbed. (Which is like being a narcissist who cares!) It's important to have that detachment from the self, then, and to ask something like "What can I be doing for other people? What can I give?" and to recall quotes from songs or movies that say basically "What matters is doing something to brighten someone else's day, no matter how small." I've even made another video to help tell myself to take my own advice and believe that sentiment. It helps.
So I listen to a lot of music to chase the feelings and mantras I want to hold at-hand. "I want to minimize the shade and give the light that I was chose to bring" to quote Kwudi's song Ask Too Much from the now-obscure Five EP. I have that and others written on Post-Its around my room. It's the closest I've gotten to getting a tattoo; I need all these words in my eye-line on a daily basis.
 |
| A sampling of sayings, all from other sources save for the "Dreams? Big. Comforts? Modest." one which I wrote |
Because those narrow windows of A Better Me only get widened in two ways: by doing, and by making the mundane homeostasis home-basis marinate in the ideals that I strive towards, to affect that doing. (It's not always easy to do the latter, either. Even if writing Post-It notes is easier than scripting texts.)
Locking yourself in a cave and meditating until you die might not be the best way to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Change occurs through action. Litter isn't going to pick itself up, for example, yet people are surprised when I walk around with a bucket and claw to collect it.
There is no simple solution to any of these problems. If there were, what I've already written in the past would have changed my behavior. Straightforward answers to life's great questions are inadequate. But asking what you can give to and do for others is a pretty simple action that I believe creates solutions regardless of whether there are problems to be fixed by doing so.
That's today's major takeaway theme to keep in mind, especially as self-analysis slides into self-centeredness: "Get the fuck out of your own way for a second; what can you do for someone else?" And that's the praxis. Maybe that's how you get over yourself. It's not a mental realization. It's an active activity. The mental part is only getting outside of your head and surrendering your perspective.
And to tie it back, that's also the necessary rebuttal for one of my other excuses-that-I-know-is-mostly-bullshit about why I don't "try" to "put myself out there" in the date-o-sphere. As I put it in that RV-Day video from 2016 that I keep citing:
"I plead nolo contendere to being afraid of coming off as one of the many assholes, that I don't even bother trying to be seen as one of the many good men. Because I, like many people, don't want people to hate me."
Which still feels true. But the very next line is:
"I'm pretty sure I fear rejection not because I don't want to be rejected, but because being rejected by someone who then puts a little note next to my name that says 'asshole,' and then closes the case on who I am as a person, and then never speaks to me again, sounds pretty unfair to me. Particularly because even I'm not so certain on who I am as a person. It also sounds like I'm way overthinking things."
And this is wrong, now. First off, it's narcissistic to really care that much about what some fuckin' stranger thinks of you. And it certainly is overthinking, so let me simplify it: it's true that I don't fear rejection per se, what I fear is bothering people I don't need to bother. Doing something that turns out is unwanted. Now we're back at Excuse #1. It's not the fear of being perceived as an asshole, it's the fear of being an asshole, whether you know it or not.
But of course, a significant portion of "being an asshole" in these situations is "not taking rejection well." At least as far as tweeted screenshots can attest. And I'm sure of myself that I will not come off like that. I certainly don't want to, and additionally, setting "no expectations" as a mantra erases stakes and reduces potential disappointment anyway. What's more important, it is argued, is that there are people who put themselves out there and can take rejection well. I can't claim that that's "more rare" but it's indisputably valuable. Far more valuable for me to give that than to withhold it by abstaining from anything entirely. (To use an autumnal metaphor, you can't negate a racist's vote by not voting.) And I know this. I've known this for years, it just doesn't provide me any launchpad over that anxiety obstacle.
...Because there is no going over this obstacle.
And I can't go around it.
And I can't go under it.
So I have to go through it.
It is a fear I have to face and permit to pass over me. And that requires a combination of killing expectations with killing ego. Because I'm me and I'm everything to me. But step back out of myself again and who the fuck am I? I'm just some stranger. An unknown guy. And first impressions dictate I can be at least one thing, or indeed at most. And if you can be one thing you should be efficient.
And, hot tip: kindness is the most efficient option, always.
 |
| Even if it stinks. |
I acutely relate to Llewyn Davis these days. The back-half of this summer. I'm stuck in a depression cycle of unfulfillment and discontent. One that is clearly of my own making. And it may not exactly take a punch in the face to break that cycle, but it's gonna hurt one way or the other.
There's comfort in the static. Keep the box closed forever and Schrödinger's cat is eternal...but that's not keeping a pet. It's missing the point. I've maintained these ruts of unchange for a long time. But time marches on. Why not pop the cap on some momentum and keep pace? It's what I want, isn't it?
It'll be uncomfortable, but I have to do to be.
Do be do be do.
––––––––––––– ✍ ✍ ✍ –––––––––––––
There are still limits to what I will permit myself to do, with the pandemic being the way it is, (existent,) and that keeps me believing that I'm extremely limited. In other words, it gives me an excuse to shrivel up and dig deeper into the rut.
But there are ceilings I could break through. There is more space for movement that I could bring myself to unlock, utilize, whatever. Half of this "system of control" is self-imposed. So, how much of that can I break?
The truth is I've already done a fair bit of Dope Shit I Wanna Do that I wouldn't have thought possible in March of 2020**. Because limitations only spark creativity, and I'm a motherfucking artist. And also, boundaries are good and healthy and respectable. This is true in relationships, this is true in pandemic. I've been able to hang out with people in different contexts on my terms. Vacations have been taken. Movies have been watched on patios instead of indoors. This is what I'm talking about: my boundaries and considerations for others is not an obstacle, it's a pillar to work around. And work arounds are fun and good.
 |
| Forrest's Backyard Patio Cinema |
So where do we go from here? Day 1,000 is coming up. The pandemic is not going away. Thus far it has given me an excellent excuse to not do jack shit. If anyone questions my slacking, my quick defense is the crutch of nihilism: "Look outside! Why should I be expected to [do work] in a time like this!? The world is trying to kill me and the people I love! Why shouldn't I follow my every whim until this is all over??"
And...man I thought this would be temporary. But now that's the default rationalization for avoidance. That whole little quote there is what my therapist would call rationalizing maladapted behavior -- what humans excel at. Now it is the baseline. It's a learned behavior that I thought had an expiration date, but society was all too quick to prove me wrong and call me a stupid piece of shit.
And yeah, it is demonstrably everyone else's fault. But it is my responsibility if I want to change.† It's my duty to react to it. To live through it. This long-term temporary laze has couched the tendencies of one of my biggest hurdles, which is not doing certain things when I Just Don't Feel Like It. I'm such a creature of mood and compulsion. External motivators and deadlines. (I just checked the other day: I still don't have to make student loan payments†† so the very concept is never in my mind.) And it's a massive crutch. It exacerbates my procrastinations. Comfort in the unchanging. Hell, the reason I am managing to write this blog post is because it serves as a means of avoiding doing other things pertinent to the contents of this blog post. I literally tell myself "Well I'll be better equipped if I finish putting all my thoughts down coherently."
It has been almost exactly a year since I broke my ankle, which laid me up for a few months (though I still had to go to work, I just couldn't unpack or reorganize my room after a coinciding move.) And as the quadruple digit days loom closer than I'd ever thought, I have to get out of the "Why should I do X or Y? I'm on a break!" mentality. It's my responsibility to build a new world for old possibilities.
When that comes to projects around the house, or artistically, or whatever, the practice I've found most helpful is sorting out the order of operations. Finding what the first or next step is towards a goal. Or even finding what will help ease the activation energy around the first or next step. If the pandemic is a big ole time sink, then there's nothing but time in which to chip away at big tasks.
One skill I've developed the most over this shit-fuckfest is patience. Sometimes to a fault, as described above. But I've come to accept doing a little at a time, which has been a problem for me in the past. I wasn't until college that I learned the value of outlining a paper before writing it: I always always always decided to sit down with the intention of typing a thing out from start to finish, in its final form. I didn't draw figures using penciled skeleton/frames until late high school. I always assumed I could start with a finished product. Now I'm settling into the process with regard to more things. Forgiving myself for not doing it all, appreciating the efforts I have made, and making the room for efforts to be easier, or taken at a comfortable pace.
But I want to do more. There is more I can do in these walls of limitation, the space that's larger than I was previously using. The ceiling higher than I pretended it to be. I have a HOH Magazine note in my to-do list app (it's called Remember The Milk; very useful, highly recommended) that says Shaving: "Reclaiming My Me-Self!" and I don't quite remember what that was supposed to be about, besides a cheeky faux-Oprah-esque headline. But I do have a use for it here, as one small, but symbolically significant way of flexing through the ceiling within these limitations.
As I've written before, New Years is always a useful external motivator for me to change habits, commit to new things, and shed old things I no longer need. Arbitrary milestones that aren't arbitrary because we make good use of them. And that's what Day 1,000 of the pandemic (as counted by myself on my own lockdown schedule, mind) has to serve as. "Has to" because why the fuck not? Throw all the lemons you got, I'll keep making lemonade bitch.
So, I've decided to shave on the 1,000th day of this shit. Because when this all began, I decided I wouldn't shave until it was over. And to my surprise, my facial hair's unsightliness, patchiness, looking-like-pubes-ness never once motivated the country to whip itself into shape.
...I mean, a million deaths couldn't, either.
 |
| June 20, 2020 |
Like yeah, obviously even if I'd vowed not to shower the effects would only have extended to my three housemates. But, I mean, the longer the beard lasted, the less bad it has looked. In fact it has almost never looked bad. Maybe you don't get it: I assumed it would look bad. It's supposed to represent irregularity! Represent disrepute! Represent the doldrums! Hold a mirror up to our modern society using a strikingly original canvas for contemporary art-commentary!!!
Nah instead it's incredibly working, especially with my signature shaggy doo. I'm too sexy for this dishevelment, woe is me...
But in continued seriousness: it is a facet of the pandemic that is completely within my control and yet I have decided to act as though it is outside of my control. Thus making it the perfect symbol for utilizing liberation-within-boundaries on the thousandth day.
The only serious facial hair care I've done with blades thus far is trimming my mustache when it gets too in-front-of my lip (and shaving the random hairs on my neck but honestly you can't see them and it's less scratchy to leave them.)
Like I did in 2017 when I let it grow out for the Swiss Army Man spoof, I'm not planning to shave it all in one go. I kept the 'stache so I could make this thing of beauty:
And while I don't have anything like that planned for this time around, I will be having fun with it. If it looks this good unkempt!? Who knows what could be unearthed. But the looks are really beside the point: It's time to admit that the pandemic won't be over [until everyone who isn't you and me fucking tries to act like grown-ups] and this is an easy way to make a marked, noticeable change. A fresh start for the next thousand days. My responsibility to change myself, that's what I will reclaim...by waiting another 76 [as of publishing] days. But, you know, I'm patient as FUCK. Just working to snip off the "...to my own detriment" part of that, haha!
 |
| (This outdoor brunch is an instance of playing within the limits back in post-vaccine times, like literally right before Delta swooped in and made our brand new vaccines moot again.) |
There's value in patience. When it comes to solving my anxiety hurdles in the date-o-sphere, I just don't have the spoons. So my 'responsibility to change' in this regard requires incredible tenderness to myself. I'd like the whole thing to no longer be mood dependent. I want to reach a new plateau, where that mood can ingratiate into the baseline homeostasis rather than remaining infrequently conditional. I want to take that version of me and make him part of the standard. So, I need to build neural pathways I don't yet, uh, have. Which theoretically will provide more spoons, like how exercise makes muscles more durable.
So even if this post won't kick my ass into gear, it doesn't have to. What's important is not a fire under the ass but the warmth of a hug. Sensitivity to the sensitive self. Patience, trust the flow of the process. I'll publish this, listen to more music, watch more movies, come back after a few days to read this to myself. And keep plugging away at getting over myself; but crucial to that is not beating myself up. Less self-deprecation. Less self-pity. More acceptance. More embrace. That's empowering. Even if it doesn't whip me into the shape I want overnight.
And that's fine, because everyone blooms in their own time.
— David "The Pants" Hoh
––––––––––––– ✿ ❁ ❀ –––––––––––––
P.S. As I am doing the final revision of this piece, on September 22, I found myself stricken by the effects of sleep deprivation; I woke up at 7:30am, assuming that I would be okay until evening since I fell asleep around 1am. But then 3:40pm rolled around....and I feel tired, but not physically -- just mentally. I feel loopy, but also uninhibited. Not a fog, but a looser state of mind. And as I reflected on the myriad anxieties surrounding this edition of HOH Magazine on a walk, I realized that all of them seemed faint. I felt in the right mood to do the things I'm fretting over. Multiple cars stopping for me to cross a busy street didn't even freak me out! And I realized that this is exactly the state I need to make the baseline. This could be the bridge between the intellectual willingness and the physiological unwillingness. The key to putting the key in the ignition. But this solution cannot be built of sleep-deprivation, naturally. And then I posited: "...Is this what being medicated feels like??"
So maybe the real answer this whole time was drugs.
*No, I will never stop interjecting snide bitching about 2016 and its fallout. It became my life against my will, you better acknowledge its persistence.
**Which, with vaccinations not preventing illness or contagiousness, is effectively where we're still at as far as I'm concerned. Yes, that's extreme, and it's a chosen extremism because of the lackadaisical laxness of all governments and businesses that aren't dentists, basically. ...And there's an example of a great excuse. But it's an excuse I'm okay with. ...and it means there's still possible creativity within those limitations. (Also this is published as the BA-strains vaccines are being rolled out so we'll see about them, fingers crossed!!)
†change anything except the pandemic, which I've always been doing my part on, for what it's worth.
††Big ups to Navient I guess, for believing the truth that the pandemic still exists and is still happening. Congratulations on being the only institution to be able to freeze payments. What you want, a cookie?
No comments:
Post a Comment