Friday Morning
During one of my earlier quiet phases – one of those one- or two-week unintentional hiatuses from writing when I wasn’t sure what the point was or just felt tired and confused, I redesigned the blog and added the heading/category “Dear Diary.” I was trying to make fun of myself and address one of my bigger internal debates, one of my bigger insecurities: why write? Why make it public? Why? Lacking substantive answers, I decided to address it through form. There is no why when it comes to a diary, it just is. “Wanda June is so pretty, I think I’m going to ask her out.” “Bobby and I had our first kiss outside the 7-11 under a maple near the fence by my apartment building. He’s sooo cute (red pen hearts and bubble letters)” “None of my friends really like me, they all just pretend to and then do things without me. They’re just a bunch of phonies. The whole world is a bunch of phonies.” I suspect there’s a reason that adults call it journaling… to give it a little more heft, make it seem less childlike, less inconsequential – a prescribed therapeutic. Navel gazing but with your pinky out.
I still struggle with those questions of why…. a lot. Something about posting here in this space keeps me honest (mostly) and keeps me on track (sometimes). Something about making it public feels authentic, but also that maybe someone else is thinking or feeling the same thing and is a little less alone because I’ve shared. When I write outside of this medium, it’s usually a poem, or notes and lines and phrases, or occasionally a draft of something that I intend to post. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that by approaching writing in this way, I’ve developed the mindset that unless it’s for eventual public consumption, it’s not worth pursuing. You see, for me, the real diary… the lock and key notebook hidden in a drawer, seldom gets written. The real diary, stays inside my head… and sometimes, I wonder if I’ve been doing myself a disservice in not cultivating an alternative outlet. I also think, as I heard on a podcast recently, that a purpose of writing is to transform what we think and feel into something more. This too makes me feel inadequate or phony – a better writer would be able to take these internal/external thoughts, feelings, debates, and memories and really create something larger than the self, larger than the diary entry (see the poetry of Stephen Dobyns – often about a generic man stuck in the middle of life, aware of everything around him, not sure where to turn, what to say, or much less how to like it).
For most of my life, I’ve had this bias against writing in private. I can’t explain it other than to say I’ve had a sense of disdain for the hobbyist. I’ve always thought, “if you’re going to write, why keep it hidden.” This, of course, is preposterous. We wouldn’t tell the person who likes to strum the guitar and can play a bunch of songs that unless they’re in a rock band their interest is worthless. Unfortunately, in my head, however wrong this thinking may be, I’ve viewed that type of writing (the diary) as selfish, self-centered, and self-absorbed – maybe frivolous and probably not good enough to withstand the light of day. Don’t get me wrong, I often think I’m the king of selfish and self-absorbed and I level that criticism against myself almost every day (especially when I write on this blog) – and yet, I wonder if I did more of that secret type of writing – a real “dear diary” type of writing, would I improve? Might I bore you less? Or maybe I should hold back fewer of the private thoughts – share more. To make things extra complicated, I also have a disdain for the performative. Anything that hints of seeking approval or applause feels inauthentic. In this respect, I’m kinda screwed.
So… three rambling paragraphs in (now four), what is this all about? It’s partially about you, the reader, and what I may or may not want to tell you. It’s partially about feeling like I’ve broken a promise to myself to live more authentically and openly. It’s partially about a few refrains playing in my head on heavy rotation day-in and day-out. It’s partially about shame and mindsets and challenging my own thinking about things like duty, obligation, and self. It’s partially about identifying my needs and what feels scarce in my life. Bear with me, I’m getting there…
For the past two days, it’s been sunny when I left work, sunny when I got home, and turned cloudy within a few minutes of getting home. It’s raining today (Friday) and will rain for most of the day tomorrow. I don’t think we’ve gone more than three days without rain. Central Pennsylvania is one of the grayest places I’ve lived. It is, on average, five to ten degrees colder than the Philadelphia area, and gets more rain per year (and a lot more snow) than Seattle. I have days when I tell myself, I really can’t take any more of this. I curse the sky and bitch about the weather as a way to diffuse or justify or blunt a larger sense of dissatisfaction and injustice. It’s never just the weather.
Fortunately, for my own sanity, I manage to find pockets of joy here and there. My Friday nights at Otto’s with strangers who have become friends are a welcome (needed) oasis. On my walks with the dog, I look for things that make me happy (all the different colors of tulips in the neighborhood). When I go to the grocery store, I remind myself to smile while cutting carrots, and I think of a woman who showed me the joy of slowing down in the most mundane of circumstances. At home at night and on the weekends, I try to spend time doing things that make me happy (reading, writing, listening to music). However, doing this day-in and day-out has been difficult and feels like it’s getting harder. Constantly trying to be my own source of inspiration, amusement, and entertainment can be draining. I remember a date once telling me that she finds herself boring and couldn’t understand what I saw in her. Now, a little bored with myself, I think I understand.
This all sounds like the whiniest, most privileged complaint a person could have: feeling uninspired, unmotivated, and distant from a lot of things I enjoy. Pinky out ennui. I won’t deny that when stacked up against most troubles, these things are trivial. Nevertheless, this is my every day. And when it really gets to me, I blame the job, the commute, the weather, the stress, the politics, the isolation, the soulessness of a college town… pretty much everything for why I’m not doing some of the things I’d really like to do – for why I’m not living the life I’d like to live, for why I’m not getting back to being the person I was a few years ago or the person I set out to be when I moved to Memphis. And as much blame as I put on all of those external forces, I put a fair amount on myself. I tell myself, if you don’t like it, change it. I tell myself that I, alone, have the power to change my perception of things or that I can choose to find joy in things that may not seem joyful – gray days and all.
The truth is, I have time to write. I have time to exercise. Yet, I don’t do either of those things to the level I would like. It never feels like enough time or like it’s the right type of time. I don’t think my job is any more taxing than lots of other jobs, but at the end of the day, I’m mentally spent – and I don’t know how to change that. I can’t seem to bring myself to read or write or exercise and so I make up lots of excuses and then lightly chastise myself. As an example, I have a treadmill, but on these gray, cool mornings when it’s 55 degrees downstairs, I blame the weather for sapping any motivation I might have. I have books to read and time to write and then I begin to think of everything else in the world that is missing or needs to get done and I lose all focus. No…. It’s much easier to scroll social media, or bitch about the weather than it is to put in the work of writing or exercising or making significant changes.
And here’s where one of the refrains comes in…. I sometimes feel that I’ve been unhappy nearly every day since moving here. If you know me personally, or if you’ve read most of this ridiculously self-absorbed mess of a blog, you’ll know that when my fiancee left, she said she was unhappy everyday of our relationship. I had no idea where that statement came from nor what she was describing felt like. I’ve never felt that type of trapped. In many of our conversations and in notes and cards she gave me, she would say she had never been happier in her life. And from my vantage point, we had far more happy days than bad. Because I couldn’t understand it and because she wasn’t around to explain it (she simply needed to get out), I worked hard to sit with it and accept it on face value. We are all walking contradictions. Now… to hear myself say it (several times a week) is an ironic jab in the noggin’. It’s as if I’m hearing her say it on a daily basis. But now, it doesn’t hit like the gut punch it did then. Instead, it’s more of a genuine sympathy or understanding for how she might have felt and why she needed to leave – usually followed by the question of why she took it so far or stayed as long as she did. Why get engaged, why move in… We often do those things out of duty or optimism or because we don’t want to hurt other people. We tell ourselves, maybe things will get better. We tell ourselves to notice the positives. And just as we’re doing those things, resentment tends to build. The ledger of bad marks fills up. The negative tends to overshadow the positive. Confirmation bias sets in and we see more examples of our unhappiness than we see examples of our happiness (or contentment). We had developed wildly different views of how things were going. And in the intervening years, I’ve given her every excuse (her job, her commute, her baggage, her struggle to find balance, her adjustment to a new city or relationship) because those things are more palatable than thinking it was me and because feeling trapped is seldom the result of just one thing.
None of this is necessarily true or real, but we convince ourselves that it is or might be. The mind is a terrible master and the amygdala (our fight or flight response) is easily hijacked. Every gray and rainy day is proof of how and why I’m discontent in my current surroundings. Every student who runs a red light becomes representative of all students who are self-absorbed and reckless. Every setback at work becomes evidence that my efforts aren’t working. Every scrap of dissatisfaction becomes a triggering reminder of when she said she hates the way we live together (because now, sometimes, I have days when I hate living with me).
However, this post isn’t really about her and those things – though they’re often strangely intertwined. Triggers work that way. It is mostly about that sometimes quiet, sometimes loud, and almost always constant voice that says this isn’t working or this isn’t what I want… or I’m not getting what I need. Scarcity, whether real or perceived, does funny things to the brain. Often, it forces us to obsess over what’s missing. Often, it leads us to behaviors or decisions that may prevent us from getting the very things we seek. Hidden Brain had done an episode on the scarcity trap. In it, they referenced the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which, among other things, found that many of the participants, all of whom were voluntarily on a starvation diet, became obsessed with food – to the point that it was all they could think about. They would dream of opening restaurants and they would obsess over recipes. They couldn’t eat yet spent all of their time thinking about food. The technique that most people would assume to be helpful in such a situation (not thinking about food) became nearly impossible for them. Common distractions failed to take their minds off of food. Similar research has found similar results in poverty and other forms of scarcity such as time and loneliness. I know when I think about my lack of financial capital, I dream up ways to get rich and retire. I know when I lament my lack of time, I get exhausted and waste more time. None of these things move me closer towards what I seek.
Saturday (still raining and cold)
A few years ago, just before moving to Memphis in search of a new start, I began this blog in an attempt to discover and be the person I was looking for in a partner, the person I thought I had just lost in a partner. I started writing as a way to understand and to be understood. Many many many of my early posts were attempts at the reconciliation she and I never had, by which I mean, I needed to make peace with how things played out. Closure would be a one-sided conversation, and I needed or wanted it to be one without animosity in my heart. I intentionally didn’t date for a long time and instead sought to cultivate the self through music and a new city and a new job and reading and writing. Solitude was my new practice, and for a while, that solitude only seemed to highlight the person who was missing. The connections I was avoiding were being satisfied in my mind through memories, almost obsessively so. I was convinced, at the time, that the best approach to moving on and dealing with what I had lost was to sit with it, write about it, honor it. Psychology suggests, yes, but only to a point. Sit with it, but don’t ruminate. I ruminated more than I sat.
Things didn’t work out in Memphis. The job turned out to be one of the most toxic environments I had experienced. And then the pandemic hit and the world went to crap. Oddly enough, being unemployed and in a new city with the world shutting down didn’t bother me. I took long walks along the Mississippi River, I listened to live music when I could, I wrote and read a lot. I felt strangely at peace. For the first time in a really long time, I felt like I had some control over where I placed my attention. I felt like I was getting some of my swagger back. I didn’t mind that I was alone and even felt like I might be ready to test the waters again. Wanting a sense of companionship, I selfishly entered into a casual relationship and then I moved.
My first few months here in central PA were a struggle professionally and personally. I wasn’t fitting in and wasn’t exactly welcomed. I nearly resigned a few times. The casual relationship became less casual as it grew into a long-distance relationship. To be honest, her friendship helped me keep it together and on many days gave me something to look forward to. But outside of that, and especially after that ended, all I really had was work…. I was no longer seeking solitude but there were few other choices. Now, feeling a new level of scarcity in a few areas: time, space, connections, (and nice weather), I’m becoming acutely aware of what’s missing. I find myself wanting (and maybe ready) for a relationship again, but at a loss for options. In such a state, I find myself revisiting some of those worn-out memories from when I was engaged – not so much wishing for a second chance but sensing that type of connection might be possible with someone else. It was a time when things felt right, and in place, and more hopeful than most other times, and that seems to be the thing I’d like to pursue.
It’s hard to see a future here. Try as I might to fill the various gaps, there are too many things missing. I read the news on twitter from Memphis and I miss the city. I miss the cafes and restaurants of Philadelphia. I miss Tuesday night blues nights in Doylestown. I miss urban exploring (Little Rock, Nashville, Memphis, St. Louis, Philly, Baltimore, DC, New York, Savannah). I miss being able to travel. I miss meeting new people. I miss a lot of my old people. These are the things I learned to do when I was by myself, and things I loved to do when I was in a relationship. None of these things are readily available to me in the here and now, and I’ve been at a loss on how to make up for them.
Ever the practicing Buddhist, I’ve also tried to sit with all of this – focus on the present moment… count my blessings. I’ve avoided making rash decisions – though I have days when I’m tempted to toss my things in the car and just drive. In the fall, after concluding there’s nobody to date here, I began trying a reverse approach by placing my dating profile in other cities (Austin, Asheville, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Tampa, Phoenix) to see what options might be out there. My thinking was that I’ve moved twice for jobs and jobs are almost always temporary… so why not move for something more substantial. I’ve always been clear and up front – I don’t live here, just checking things out. Despite a lot of contacts, nothing has come of it – mostly because I don’t write to anyone or answer any of the people who write to me.
This, these many paragraphs… the question of private vs. public, the diary and getting over the fear of who might read it, the ironically haunting refrains of my ex never being happy, the scarcity trap… it’s all been the slow walk up to the cliff’s edge of admitting, publicly and personally, that I’m leaving – or at least ready to strike out again. I don’t have a when or where – and certainly not a for what, for whom, or how. I’ve known it for a while. I’ve been afraid to say it. In a strange way, the memories of the ex and the life I had envisioned have taken on a more hopeful hue and pushed me in this direction. They make me want aspects of that life again, but in a new and rediscovered sort of way. Perhaps someone else, somewhere else – I know better than to think I have any control over that. The best I can do is put myself in a position of opportunity – which was how she and I got started. The dating profile in other cities, and the interest it sometimes generates, reminds me I have something to offer – which isn’t all that different than what I had to offer way back then (I just turned it off for a while). The memories of Memphis remind me that I sometimes enjoyed my solitude at the coffee shop on Main St. All of it reminds me that I’d like to get back to sharing and learning and being attentive to others. That’s when I was at my best, and now I feel like I have a few new tools and perspectives to bring to the table.