My Life on the Road: Losing it

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When the pandemic happened, and everyone started freaking out, after just a couple months of being socially isolated, I thought to myself, rather smugly, “Ha, this is nothing, I’ve been social isolating myself for years!” A month or two ago it finally began to dawn on me that maybe my mental health wasn’t that great to begin with, thanks to all that isolation. Funny how everyone else being in the same situation can clarify things.

I’m finding that solutions to the issue are… not so easy to come up with.

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Petty and Dylan penned a ditty about the noise once…

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Thanks for sharing so vulnerably and openly about your mental health struggles. It is a small, but significant way to push back against the stigma that so many of us have to deal with in this area.

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Pardon me if this is obvious, but listening to music helps me, especially if you can find a whole new genre you didn’t know existed. For me that was electro swing. Who knew?

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Hope things get easier.

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Hang in there dude. Thanks for using technology to tell us what you are feeling, and I hope that technology can somehow make it up to you, but I’m not counting on it.

Anti tech tip: if you are walking to clear your mind, take out your ear phones and let the birdsong in.

Good luck.

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I am grateful for what you bring us, Seamus, which is a lot.
I hear you.

Every human is different, and every human has limits.
I’m hearing those here now.
I hope there are allies and helpers around you.
My thanks your family for helping in all the ways they can.

Thank you again for mentioning Blindboy on some bOING post a few years back. I was only listening to a few podcasts of his yesterday (these, namely; posted here for the benefit of all and not meant to be some glib problem-solve-y thing). I have found Blindboy’s insights helpful.

(Weirdly, I almost never hear mention of Carl Rogers, and then at a gathering a few days ago, the host mentioned Rogers at length… and ding: next day, this pod was the next in line on my playlist; Jung would doubtless call it synchronicity.)

Please keep breathing.

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Gratitude from Austin, Texas

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all beings rejoice in the well-being of others.
May all beings live in peace, free from greed and hatred.

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Seamus, I’ve always enjoyed your dispatches from the road.

It’s tough, that feeling over being overwhelmed by all the shit hitting at once. It’s like we saved everything up during the pandemic and that internal pressure is finally reaching critical. Maybe it feels more like that proverbial pot is reaching the boiling point, and we’re the frogs. I can’t help but feel in a deep pit when I’m watching the news, browsing Twitter, or out in crowds. No amount of therapy, scripts, or any other substances are helping. Hell, watching a movie last week triggered me to tears, and it was about an event that happened a year before I was even born. The only things that helps are unplugging, spending time outside, and finding comfort in just being with my SO. I hope you can find something that gives you that similar sort of calm feeling.

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For mental health, read Tintin books and books by Roger Zelazny and keep up with a favorite teevee series, like Penn and Teller, in slow, waiting, real time, not binged. For a rash or a tick bite, or both, put dollar-store Colgate baking-soda-and-peroxide toothpaste on it; it’s mild, dry, non-greasy-nor-smelly, won’t show through or stain your clothes, lasts all day against prickling and itching. While you’re at the dollar store: dark chocolate covered raisins for fiber and chocolate (and try not to eat them all at once, but don’t beat yourself up about it if you do; just get more). Also take a shower and get dressed to go out every day even on days when you don’t have to go anywhere. All my favorite comfort food from when I was little is cheap to make, and while I’m cooking I’m increasingly pleasantly impatient to get back to whatever else I was doing. Write down your dreams. I don’t know if these things will help you but they have helped me. If they don’t help, you’re no worse off, and you’re fed and clean and you’ve always got plenty of toothpaste.

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Thanks for the great essay… I feel for your angst… sometimes ignorance does promote bliss … but too late for that now…

I must confess to being a bit jealous … Vancouver is paradise … Elmhurst NY is not … TG wife & I survived the bug this time last year …

You are blessed … find joy in the small things … & stay off the media …

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Keep that potassium level steady? Cheer and solubility abide ye.

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When I emigrated to Australia, my sister picked me up at the airport. “Look at this!” I grinned and showed her a keyring with no keys on it. Liberating.

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And the dance videos! Thanks for reminding me.

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What’s frustrating now is getting your vaccine and being hopeful that your new restart can begin (maybe something you’ve dreamed about, since living the life you love suddenly became important). Or travel; holy shit!

But then you look around at people being their fool-ass selves and wonder if any of this will actually be possible. If we’d had all actually stayed home a year ago, 90% of the ensuing crap would have gone away. Now it’s all just people stew swirling around, building variants and keeping certain businesses down. It feels bleakly like stupidity really will kill us all. And right now, it feels like the stupid are winning the marketing wars.

Thank you for writing; your perspective on things is amazing to read, and your musical taste is excellent.

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Take care man.

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I’ve had several breakdowns over the last year, all but one short, thankfully. Sitting in a flat in the middle of Berlin, I’m used to do 12 hrs and more in front of the Mac every day, and there’s no coast or big forest to be seen from the windows.

What keeps me up:

  • never been on Facebook. That’s one source of evil less.
  • no smartphone or any other gadget.
  • my bike.
  • my twitter timeline is quite well groomed.
  • 4 other platforms full of well-meaning people, if not friends. Encouraging each other, every day.

And my Mac is still a source of joy for me, I do animation and music, being productive helps a lot.

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Changing your point of view is a useful thing.

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Seamus, I think we all can feel what you are going through. Stress takes many forms, and by sitting in front of a screen all day and now all night, we all are feeling like we have boxed ourselves in. Given away our livelihoods for glass beads*. Lost what was wondrous and fulfilling, and now only face grey monotony of more of the same. The den we once would gladly retreat to becomes a cramped cage.

Like @slowtiger , I also spend most of my waking hours in an apartment in a German city (Munich in my case), sitting in front of either the company MacBook or my personal MacBook or an iPad**, and leave the house mainly to get groceries, but mostly to walk the dog. Sometimes I still play Ingress, though here I also miss being able to meet in a beer garden or a pub afterwards. And I miss other little things like office gossip—well, not so much gossip, but simply seeing my colleagues and talking about little inane things.

I haven’t ragequitted Facebook yet, but my consumption is a metered 15 minutes on the iPad, in case my parents or my cousins back in the USA post anything. Instagram is the same, highly scaled back on checking what my daughter posts and no longer using it like I did before Facebook bought it.

What keeps me from losing it now is that I had that white-hot burning flash of midlife “what the fuck am I doing with my life?” a few times already, but before I was forced into Covid hermitage. I still plan on visiting my family back in the States this autumn, so that keeps me going. And actually planning to walk from Munich to Santiago de Compostela in 2022, even though I no longer consider myself catholic. Little things like that keep me going.

You are not alone, Seamus. Many of us feel the same, but we just don’t have the good habit of writing. Thank you for expressing what so many feel and think they are alone and inadequate. You have started a healthy discussion.

*I know it’s apocryphal and not really all that true, but the idiom is still relatable

**Yes, I belong to the Cult of Mac. I was a Mac user when Apple was doomed.

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This. These are wise words. I too have recently realised that I consume nothing but ‘snacks’. The internet, yes. Reading online news (and not following up on the longer story behind the headlines). Also, having become a parent, my time is often fractured into little pieces that are hard to use well. Snacking has become such a habit that if I am presented with a decent chunk of time to myself, I don’t know how to use it.

With hindsight, I’ve been coasting for more than a few years now, surviving on what I used to do, learn, read. But I haven’t nourished myself, the tank is running out, and I’m not left with very much. I have made a resolution to try to spend longer doing things that make me happy, with less interruption. I try to see it as a target - something to aim for, whatever I actually achieve. I made this resolution to myself a couple of days ago. This post rings very close to home.

Good luck Seamus. Go easy on yourself. Do whatever makes your life better. I hope that includes writing here on BB, because I enjoy reading what you write. But if you need to stop for a while, or even for ever, do that. I hope you find your way.

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you are not alone. the apartment i live in with my wife (and where i’ve worked for the past 13 months) has never seemed smaller. holding it all together is almost a full time job in itself. hope you can get through this and come out happy on the other side, no matter what you decide to do.

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