How to Break the Anxiety-Worry Habit; Handling Uncertainty, another Musing on Impermanence in the Form of Uncertainty.

Readers, how do you feel about dental work?

As I write, I sit here with a modern poultice of clove in my tooth. Yes, I said poultice, as in the old-fashioned plaster poultice that is so often applied to injuries and wounds in nineteenth-century English literature. In Jane Austen, for example. Mustard plasters and poultices were the go-to’s for first aid back then. Well, Readers, I have endured some dental work involving medicated cement in place of an old filling. This is known technically as a temporary filling, but I prefer poultice. Having dental work always strikes me as a close cousin of the barbaric practices of yore. In other words, it is something to be avoided. 

However, I was unable to avoid a particular jaw & tooth situation, which may have been (definitely WAS) created by the pandemic: jaw clenching. Clenching led, apparently, to some difficulty with a filling. You don’t need details, and really, I apologize for this much detail. Who needs it? It’s not even the point of my blog post.

As I prepared for this feat of bravery—sitting in the dentist’s chair and allowing him to perform his barbaric art upon my mouth—I thought about a recent article in Psychology Today magazine by Judson Brewer, M.D., Ph.D., professor at Brown University and clinician. His basic idea is that anxiety and worry are a habit created by a continuous feedback loop. A habit is a conditioned response, as we all know from Psych 101 or just hearing about Pavlov’s dog hearing a bell, getting a treat and salivating at the expected pleasure, over and over until just hearing the bell would stimulate the dog to salivate. 

These are not Pavlov's dogs

A habit of anxiety and worry is also a conditioned response. You feel anxious, so you worry—worry and anxiety are two different things. Brewer built his research on that of Borkovec in the 1980s, who discovered and posited that there is an element of habit in anxiety. Anxiety is a physical sensation; the sensation triggers worrying (stimulus and response), and that responding over and over to the anxiety sensation creates the habit of the anxiety-worry cycle. 

trigger-behavior-reward

The apparent glitch in this theory is that worrying is rewarding. Do you find worrying rewarding? Well, Brewer says, in a certain way, worrying IS rewarding. Because anxiety is about uncertainty; we feel anxious when things are uncertain. Worrying is the response and it is reinforced because when we’re worrying we kind of feel like we’re doing something to address the uncertainty. 

Anyone who’s been in therapy—and there should be more of us, if you ask me, but then that’s the business I’m going into—has probably encountered a gentle admonition from their therapist that worrying about, say, the state of the world, makes you feel like you can control it. Or worrying, say, about your daughter driving a twelve-year-old car up and down the Eastern Seaboard, can keep her safe. We know, rationally, the worrying doesn’t do anything; but worrying becomes its own talisman. We’re afraid to let it go, because frankly, when it comes to daughters or the environment, there’s not much we can control. 

The good news is that this anxiety-worry habit can be broken. Judson Brewer, M.D., Ph.D, argues that we modern humans don’t need to feel much anxiety and worry. It’s not helpful. Contrary to popular belief it doesn’t keep us sharp and on our toes. It actually makes us feel scattered and creates difficulty concentrating and performing. So we should definitely not be proud of our intense stressed states. We should get out of the habit of having them. This is the stuff of CBT—cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT helps us identify our automatic, negative thoughts. Once we identify them, we can choose different thoughts. 

So, according to Brewer, the first step is to recognize that worrying is actually not rewarding. It is the opposite of rewarding. It is unrewarding. It makes you preoccupied. It makes you lose sight of your day and your time and your personal goals. It makes you wrinkled, grey, and old. Okay, no, that’s not true and Brewer didn’t say it. Life does that to you, if you’re lucky (a topic for a different day, perhaps). But anyway, worrying is a waste of time and energy and really doesn’t help hold up the world. This Atlas theory of world-holding by worry just exhausts us. The world will spin even if we don’t worry. Daughters will drive unreliable cars. Life seems predictable until it isn’t and then we feel uncertain. Even if we worry. And even if we don’t. 

What a concept. We don’t need to worry. It’s not helpful. In fact, it’s hurtful. This is news to me. I am happy to look at this in a new way. 

Now, anxiety is a different story. Anxiety is a natural, primitive brain response to uncertainty. (Again, paraphrasing Brewer). So the next step in breaking the anxiety-worry habit is to respond to anxiety with something that actually is rewarding. Brewer suggests that getting mindfully curious about the sensation of anxiety is one option. I am sure there are others, but that’s what I have for you for now.

Before making the dental appointment, I was full of anxiety about this tooth and this ache and what it was going to lead to. I was so anxious and worried about it that I had to really work my courage up before making the call. Once I had made the call, and Svetlana in Dr. L’s office called me back, I had much less anxiety. This was because, Readers, mindful that uncertainty triggers anxiety and worry, I did the strangely logical thing and asked Svetlana what the heck was going to happen when I got there for my appointment. Armed with as much info as I could tolerate, I headed to my appointment. Since I had spoken to Svetlana, I had much less uncertainty about what was going to happen. As I drove, I noticed that I didn’t feel terribly anxious. I noted that perhaps I felt a bit nervous, but I wasn’t worried. Because I knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t uncertain. 

Of course, a moment later, I did start to think that perhaps being neither anxious nor worried was the sign of impending doom, lamb to the slaughter type thing; the unsuspecting woman headed to disaster. My mind traveled to a scenario involving me in the dreaded chair, numbed up and hearing Dr.L say, “Oh dear, I didn’t expect this and now I must drill through your jawbone and attach a wire to keep your lower jaw on your head and by the way you have no more tooth in that spot at all, oopsie.” However, Readers, I have been around many blocks in my many years and I recognized this as a habitual anxiety loop starting up. Because I noticed it, I was able to stop it. Mostly. Remember, it takes time to form and reform a habit. I am not saying I felt completely happy about the coming procedure, but I didn’t feel anxious, just nervous. Nervous is an appropriate, alert state response. 

After that was a blur of Novocaine and trying to picture myself on a beach watching dogs frolic, and then the scent of clove wafted into my nose. Sure, my tongue now feels like a hot dog and my lips are like potato rolls. And I am sipping a chai latte through a (contraband, evil) straw trying not to let any liquid dribble out. But overall, things weren’t so bad, because I didn’t make them worse by my habit of anxiety and worry. 

Worrying is a kind of holding-on. Worrying is about desiring, usually desiring the prevention of a bad outcome. We all know desiring is the root of suffering. Desiring something over and over and over doesn’t make that thing more likely. It simply reinforces the sense of lack, the wanting in the old-fashioned definition of the word wanting. Wanting means desiring and also lacking. Letting go of thinking things should feel or be different than they are is key to just relaxing in life. Letting go of worry is a habit to establish now. 

Or so they say. It’s much easier said than done. However, practicing letting go of worry by becoming curious about how anxiety feels seems doable. 

We all want things to be certain, predictable, and permanent. Too bad, us. In fact, according to an article I read called "Decolonizing Social Work," permanence is a Western value. 

Do I believe anxiety doesn’t have to exist? That it’s evolutionary trash that should be incinerated? Uncertainty is a cousin of impermanence, and we know how we struggle with impermanence. Uncertainty can make you twitchy. You are always on edge. It creates fear of loss, according to Kahnemann and Tversky, and humans fear loss more than we enjoy winning, supposedly. So, yeah, we value permanence. And yeah, we are out of luck, because what we get is just the opposite. 

Lots of ocean and swimming metaphors surface around this topic. Plus ca change the plus they remain the same is that old French adage, isn’t it? Being certain amidst uncertainty, understanding in a visceral way that everything is always changing can be its own kind of certainty, can’t it? This is the goal of the enlightened, I suppose. We befriend our anxiety in a non-clinging sort of way and maybe it’ll fade away. But we never lose our edge, we’re always having to make some minor adjustments to stay afloat. That’s the metaphor. That’s the truth. However, we don’t have to worry about it. 

We can all feel as peaceful as this scene. With practice. Lots of practice. 

Annals of Pandemic Life--The Paterfamilias and a New Post on Psychology Today

 Hello, Readers. I have been behind on my blog. The reasons are various, including being busy, busy with school and overwhelmed with housebreaking two puppies—what was I thinking? I was thinking about how fun it will be when they’re trained, and not about how much work is involved in training them AND going to graduate school at the same time. 

Also, I have been avoiding writing because I have to put in words the sad truth that the Paterfamilias is no more. He died on December 29th, of old age and complications of COVID-19. I am grieving. Of course I am. The anger over how he died—alone in the hospital, very hard to reach by phone or Zoom, is with me. What can I say about a 95-year-old man who died other than he had a long life, a mostly good life, a life with some tragedy and much joy, and he was my father. I am now an orphan. 

It’s not a tragedy that he died. We all must die, and he did not die before his time. That would be a tragedy. But how he died was tragic. Alone, isolated, frustrated, and afraid, as so many people have had to die this year. Even when loved ones were nearby and prepared, they couldn’t reach their hospitalized ones. They were trying, like me and my sister the psychoanalyst, to reach their parent by phone, by Zoom, and finding themselves baffled at every turn by difficulty communicating, even if we did manage to get through. That was tragic, to not be with the paterfamilias in the hospital to hold his hand and keep him company. 

Nevertheless, there it is. He is not. Life is going on, and I have a new blog post up on Psychology Today that I am sharing with you here. It’s about finding my identity in a profession that is having an identity crisis. Ah, the irony. Please click the link below to finish reading it on the Psychology Today website. The more views the editors see my post get, the better for me. Please continue reading below and click on the highlighted text to finish to post. 

Social Work's Identity Crisis--And Mine

I began writing this blog to help me figure how to define myself as a successful person when I had experienced very little of what the world considers success for an individual. And by world I mean my own part of the world, the world of educated professionals. I was not a professional, despite my education, and this ate at me most fiercely. I washed up on the shores of Regret and Should’ve, questioning my focus on writing novels and on being a mother. Worthy endeavors, but I couldn’t see them that way, because they didn’t amount to resumé entries. They were not professional success. I became something of a psychologist-manque, reading up on success and flourishing and goals, steeping in the tea of Positive Psychology and serving it up to you, entertaining myself and others with my forays. 

Please click here to continue reading

Annals of Pandemic Life: Mere Days Before the Election

Where is everyone? And by Everyone I mean all the wonderful bloggers who used to have joyful or irreverent or informative-but-on-rather-privileged-subjects blogs.  Like fashion. Happiness. Shit like that. 

Oh, I know where they are. Under their beds. They're trying to figure out if they can write a post about something unserious during these serious days. 

And what serious days these are.

The state of things is this way. To wit, I wake up with a new toothache every day. I been clenching at night. M’jaw. Mostly on the left side, because it’s always m’left side with me. Traveling ache from top to bottom, way back to partially back. 

I always wonder the same things: have I cracked a tooth yet? Should I call the dentist and complete my transformation to middle age with a mouth guard? I wish I had more teeth. Why oh why did the orthodontists back in my childhood like to pull out s’many g’damn teeth? If Rump is re-elected, I am going to need a full set of implant chompers. 

Then I proceed through my day. 

But, listen, I have to be honest. Glennon Doyle, in her wonderful and inspiring latest memoir, Untamed, emphasizes the need to be honest with oneself and with others, so I am being honest. Here it is. Often I wake up and discover that not just m’jaw is clenched, m’whole body is rigid. Like absolutely rigid with tension. My hands are clenched in fists, my entire torso like it has rigor mortis. 

It is fortunate that I have over twenty years’ meditation and yoga experience to help me 

1. become mindful of this rigidity, and 
2. relax m’musculature so that I can get out of bed. 

I would love to get a massage, but—COVID. I would love to go out for a leisurely lunch with friends, but--COVID. 

As long as we’re being honest, let me add that waking up rigid with tension requires sleeping, and sleeping is something I do only every so often these days. 

Meanwhile, I am thankful for the distraction of GRADUATE SCHOOL. Readers, graduate school is a lot of work. For this I am (mostly) grateful. The workload does add to m'tension, though. 

*    *    *    *    *

I have tears drying on my cheeks. Why? Gloria Steinem. There she was, via video, on Live with Kelly and Ryan. It wasn’t just her presence. It was what she said. She said in her lifetime, she has seen that the issues that concerned her and a few social justice activists when she began are now supported by the majority of the country. One third of the country wants to hold on to the old order, she said, but two thirds are with her. With us. Tears just seeped out. Tears of sorrow, but also of gratitude and of relief. I think it’s also because I have felt so split off from everyone, and have seen so much awfulness out of the current administration, and so much isolation from the pandemic, that I have lost track of the unifying ideas so many of us share. It's a relief to remember that most people and I think along the same lines. 

The last Parkland, Florida, student survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will graduate this year. Only staff who were present will be there to remember. Think about it. Those kids who have become activists because of that disaster are now in college, or are about to be, and they are going to make things happen in our political system. 

To all the progressives and the young, cynical, disaffected voting-age people out there, I want to say something. Change will happen, because change is always happening. Unless you participate in the political process, it may not be the change you want. That’s the lesson I learned the hard way. So it’s okay to want AOC and the Green New Deal and to be annoyed with Old Man Biden. It is not okay to give up because change isn’t happening on your timetable or in your preferred way. Keep at it. Keep at it. 

Some dude took the time to criticize me for criticizing our current administration on a blog post I wrote three years ago. He said he really loved what I was writing and was finding it helpful, until, until, until I “dumped on” my president. Then he didn't want to read any further. This dude said he was Australian, and therefore not even a voter in the USA, by the way. He told me he thought, essentially, that I would catch more flies with honey if I had steered away from politics. I gave the matter a few seconds' consideration. 

Well, hell with that. I’m not trying to catch flies. I’m trying to stay sane and maybe help m’readers with that mission. 

Speaking of flies, I did not watch the Vice Presidential debate, but I certainly heard about the fly. What a perfect living metaphor for the putrid, rotting body of this administration. The husband commented that the fly is a symbol of Beelzebub, and everyone knows from the movie "Beetlejuice" who Beelzebub is, and so we have a double metaphor. Surely VP Pence and Mother had a hard time shaking that off when they settled in to pray. One hopes. 

https://tenor.com/bqJyL.gif

That’s the stuff that gets me out of bed in the morning. 

*    *    *    *

By the way, I recently read that shopping and materialism are manifestations of aggression. (This is the sort of stuff I get to read sometimes for school.) At first I was like, Whut? Whut are you talking about, PhD author of peer-reviewed journal article? I've been letting that idea settle. I ordered a couple of items online and monitored myself. Was I feeling aggressive? Combative? Was I slamming and jamming those keyboard keys as I typed my credit card information into the virtual checkout cart? Perhaps. I considered the multitude of items I have considered or have actually purchased over the last six months. I'm not saying I totally agree with this PhD author of peer-reviewed journal; I'm not disagreeing either. Am I containing a lot of aggression and hostility in my body? 

You betcha. I'm gonna proudly wear it on my feet when my new shoes arrive. Unless they don't fit, because, you know, I bought 'em online without trying them on. In which case, I may just hurl them through someone's window. Possibly my own, but I hope not. 

So, hey, this is the lightheartedest I can be at the moment. I imagine many of you can relate. It is what it is, to quote a (in)famous politician. I would dearly like him out of my psyche. Let's work on that, shall we?

Be well, Readers. I promise to be a much more measured, perspicacious therapist when I get my degree and my license than I am a blogger. 

Don't forget to VOTE!

Success in Stasis: Dealing with the Doldrums

I was working my way towards something inspirational and success-related for you, Readers, but then the doggo was sick all night, and I got no sleep. So it seems like a time to remind myself and you that sometimes success is simply hanging on. Progress is not always an option. Sometimes there’s stasis. Sometimes there’s downward plunging. Sometimes there’s circling the drain. What’s that word for when you’re sailing and the wind dies? I would probably remember it if I weren’t so tired. Oh yeah, the doldrums. Sometimes it’s the doldrums. Don’t have a lot of control over that. Sometimes the wind just dies. Meaning you’re sailing along and heading somewhere, the wind ruffling your hair, and you’re feeling all windblown and healthy and looking towards the horizon. Sometimes, though, there’s no breeze, just nothing and humidity and your hair is frizzy and stuck to your cheeks and you’re suddenly hyper aware of your damp bathing suit and how unpleasant it feels. Of course, you are also gripped by the anxiety that this state will never change, that you’ll be bobbing along in the current with no control over the sails ever again. This anxiety that the doldrums will last forever is called catastrophizing, and it comes with the territory. It is, by the way, never helpful. 



Why the sailing metaphor, you may well ask. Well, before the doldrums hit, aka, the dog having a terrible night, I was enjoying my weekend thoroughly, sitting on a warm rock and dangling my feet into a lake, watching a sailboat race of little sunfish sailboats. It was a truly lovely time, involving lovely sailboats moving in the breeze, despite many sad things going on in the world and within my circle of influence. Today, though, I am just trying to get through the day. It helps to remember that just a day ago, the mood was much better, because the next step is a plunge into catastrophizing, which I just told you is never helpful, despite being a regular occurrence. 

Eventually, the wind will shift because you’ve drifted along in the current just enough to get to a slightly different place. Then you’ll be able to fill your sails and start moving again. Until then, well, you are stuck with where and who you are, so you might as well accept that. Self-acceptance. Acknowledging what is right now, and acknowledging that what is right now is not what will be forever. Radical self-acceptance. That might just be the very thing that gets the wind moving again. 

Annals of Pandemic Life: What is Success When the World is Full of Suffering?

Readers, my eye has been twitching for days. Lower lid twitch. It’s a minor annoyance. I think my eyes are tired of everything they’re seeing. Plague, protests. Racism, authoritarianism, cynicism, pessimism. Climate change. The paterfamilias is suffering from frailty and isolation. The doggo needs surgery for a fast spreading cancer and yes, he is going to get it, but will it be in time? It was damn hard to get an appointment for him, because the surgeon veterinarians are all booked up, now that they’ve reopened. My circle of concern is on fire, and my circle of influence seems about the size of a pinprick.

What does success mean when the world is full of suffering? What does it mean to be successful in a world like ours? Can there be any success when so many people have no chance for it? There are moments when continuing to address the single-focused need to self-actualize seems too small.

“How do you want to be changed?” Gil Fronsdal asks in his dharma talk about the protests in response to the murder by police of George Floyd.

How do I want to be changed? Essentially. That’s how. I want to operate from that place, and I want to make things better for Black people. That will make things better for all people. So helping to eliminate racism is key.

How does that relate to success? Well, the scrabble after accumulating material goods and money that so often defines success seems to be accentuated by the recognition that the world is so much about about haves and have nots. In other words, the drive for material success is powered by fear of becoming a have-not. So helping eliminate the have-nots is one key. By “eliminate”, I do not mean genocide. People, do not quote me out of context! I mean eliminate the have-nots by eliminating their state of want. If the worst-off in society had basic needs met, had health care, had housing, had education, had food and clothing and community, then the fear would abate, and the scramble for accumulating maximum resources would abate, too. And the racism would abate, too. Or so it seems to me.


So what do I do when my circle of concern is ever-expanding and my circle of influence seems like a pinhead? Well, a pinhead can be just enough space. This reminds me of the cute townie boy I used to chat with in the second hand store in Oxford, my junior year abroad. I could tell he was half-annoyed by me, because I was a privileged gownie, but also half interested in me because I was, well, cute and American. Anyway, I digress. The point is that one time he told me that Oxford had many elements. “It’s the whole world on the head of a pin,” he said. He was really cute. Did I mention that? I don’t know how broadly he had traveled, but nevermind. He meant I should look beyond the spires of the university. There were layers and problems right there. So it may be small, a circle of influence the size of a pinhead, but it’s still a circle of influence.

So, what can I do? Well, turn to the teachers, of course, because teachers are focused on creating the next generation. And before we say what my graduates have been hearing, over and over, that they are the future and our hope, that they have to fix the mess they’re inheriting, let’s realize what the husband said the other night: We don’t have to hand it all over to them and wait for them to fix things. We can fix things right now.

Some of the teachers at the high school posted videos for the seniors with their two cents. Since I don’t have any cents to pass on these days, I am once again and always beholden to the amazing, dedicated educators who have taught my children. Teaching is a truly noble profession, and teachers have really stepped up during the pandemic.

From beloved math teacher, Mrs. Mahmood., came her famous, or infamous, acronym “RODH to success”. To succeed, she said, you need to focus on the following four values: Responsibility; Organization; Discipline; and Honesty. These are solid traits to develop, for sure. I think what she said by way of greeting, however, is equally important, and chosen with intent. “To the loving, caring, cute class of 2020” she began, and I couldn’t help notice those values either. She teaches  Calculus and Math 3/Linear Algebra, so focusing on achievement might be what you would assume is most important to her. However, she focuses on character, and on love and caring. I think that’s telling.

R Responsibility
O Organization
D Discipline
H Honesty

Bear witness.
Protest racism.
Make phone calls to the veterinarian.
Make phone calls to the paterfamilias and to my sister the psychoanalyst.
Bear witness. It’s a choice, bearing witness. The other option is to distract myself or turn away. So, yeah. Bear witness.
Argue for fairer policy and law. Educate myself (more bearing witness).
And of course, vote.
Thank you, Mrs. Mahmood.

Annals of Pandemic Life: Journaling Through

Dear Readers,

Lacking a coherent idea, I am sharing some thoughts from the last few days. Sure, I could wait and try to distill this into something more polished, but I think that might take too long. Perhaps the theme is see-saw: up and down, good and bad, plus and minus, happy and sad.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Time for a blog post.
What I am thinking about.

Okay, so we all know by now that unless we are essential workers, who have to show up at their workplaces as usual, or teachers, who are expected to teach all day via the interwebs, we have time now to think about Things. We have time to spend with our families, or perhaps with ourselves, with only our image in the mirror for company. I have been taking advantage of this opportunity, Readers, to really notice things.

For example, one of the things I have noticed is that one of my ears is lower than the other one.

Is this deep and important? Well, it is to me. I mean, what the heck? You know how they say if you have a very asymmetrical face, the asymmetry is indicative of some kind of twisted evil inside you? Well, does that apply to ear level?

I’m serious. After five-plus decades of life, is my inner evil, twisted landscape finally manifesting in some asymmetry that’s going to become more and more obvious as the next decades (God willing) go by?

Such are the thoughts of which isolation is made.

Friday, May 15, 2020

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.  Toni Morrison.

My friend, writer Catherine Goldhammer, posted that quotation on her Facebook page and it was the perfect thing to read. The words pierced through the haze, the scrim, the plaque on the teeth of daily life that I seem to be encountering. Of course, the next thought I had was a little slonk on my virtual kneecaps*: What you write, a blog? That ain’t art. That ain’t books. Not literature. That’s nothing. You’re not an artist. Not an artist-artist.

Setting aside the question of what makes an artist, I responded to that quotation because I did recognize myself in it. Artists examining the world and trying to make sense of it is an aspect of what I do, even in my lowly blog. One may recognize that one is engaged in Important Work, even if one is not engaged in the Most Important Work.

There is art to that, Readers.

That said, what can I tell you? It’s Friday, and every time Friday whips around, I can’t believe it means another week has gone by in Coronavirus isolation. It seems so fast, even though during the other seven days, time seems to stretch and stretch, the days jumbled and somewhat indistinguisable. The husband still goes to work at the hospital, so in fact, our schedule still has weekends. I am thankful for that.

When this shut down began, I was dismayed that my guilty pleasure, the weekday morning talk show “Live With Kelly and Ryan”, was running old episodes. I didn’t want reruns. Reruns seemed so hopelessly outdated when everyone was talking about the new world order. I didn’t want to see the studio audience, when now I knew there was none. So I was relieved when, a few days later, Kelly and Ryan appeared via Skype to do the show live once again. The quality of the broadcast was about as good as it could be via video feed, and that was okay. It was a comfort to see Kelly and Ryan, one holed up in her (probably vast triplex) appartment in New York, the other in his (probably vast) house in Los Angeles. We need to see how others are coping. How others are carrying on right now. We need to remember that the mundane and the frivolous continue, even amid chaos.

Entertainment is essential work, too. We are all depending on the entertainment industrial complex to divert us from the coronacrisis.

*    *     *    *   

I put on a 95th birthday party for the paterfamilias on Zoom this week. Well, when I say “the paterfamilias” I mean the paterfamilias of my family of origin. The husband might take exception to the term if not applied to him in the family we created. Anyway, I was almost as stressed out by this event as if it were an in-person party. Wrangling Zoom boxes full of people who want to talk is a nightmare waiting to happen. Well, it happened. Thanks to the mute button and the stealth and tech savvy of the college senior and the high school senior, the event passed rather well. I had invited everyone to share a memory of the paterfamilias, and to decorate their Zoom rooms if they wished. People had balloons and party hats and banners. We all sang “Happy Birthday” in our little boxes. It was fun. And, not to overdo the silver lining blather, I will say this. If we had met in person, it would have been a bigger party, but some of the people who Zoomed in might not have been able to attend in person. Furthermore, at an in-person party, people would be clustered in their little groups, and it would be very unlikely that everyone there would have the time or ability to listen carefully to what each guest had to say about the guest of honor. So, yes, that was nice.

Monday, May 18, 2020


President Obama gave a televised address to high school seniors. Don’t ask me when, because the days are melting together. All I know is that he spoke, and we in this household listened. Some of us needed Kleenex. One of us, to be exact. Obama was brief, coherent, and inspiring.

Brief, coherent, inspiring. Let that sink in, if you will. National addresses of late have been none of those.

Anyway, his message was simple: do not be afraid of the future; do what you know is the right thing to do, even if it is not the easy choice; and build community.

It was a lot to ask, but it came out simple. Do not be afraid of the future. The United States has gone through terrible times before and has come out stronger. Despite all the bad that’s evident in the country right now, there is no doubt we are better off than before. Well, is that true? I think so. It’s better that all that awful stuff is out in the open. It’s disheartening to realize how much hatred and anger is all around, but if we don’t see it, we can’t address it. Even if it's not true that we are better off now than we were before, now is where we are. The future can be better. So, really, what is the point of fearing the future? We have to meet it, afraid or not, so it’s better to accept that and move forward without fear. That way it will be easier to see the next right thing to do.

*

I am trying to write a blog post and it’s hard. It’s hard to think of something to write when the most exciting thing we did this weekend was go to Target and then to our lawyer’s house to sign wills, powers of attorney, and health care proxies on her back deck.

It is true. That was the most exciting thing. I put on hard pants** and a belt and a blazer. Yes, I said blazer. It wasn’t a tweed blazer, it was made of denim. I also put on my very cute slides with bows that I got last spring. Very impractical shoes. Perfect for a ride in the car and quick run to Target and to walk around to the back of the lawyer’s house. The eighteen year old and the twenty-one year old had the same impulse to dress for the occasion, I might add. I am adding. Their versions of dressing were different from each other’s and from mine, but the effort was there. This reminds me of a phase through which the twenty-one-year old passed in high school. She and her friends would discuss how many “efforts” they put into their outfits that day. Clothes, hair, makeup, shoes were all part of the count. So for me, I would say, for this excursion I put in about five efforts. Out of ten, shall we say? The eighteen-year-old put on a skirt and some platform jelly shoes, and mascara. She did her hair. Eight efforts?

My shoes

The high school senior's shoes

We went to Target first. The husband and I went in. The other two, despite their efforts, “efforts”, stayed in the car, listening to music. I am not lying. They were being respectful of the Coronavirus guidelines. After that, we drove to the lawyer’s house, conducted our signing business on her back deck, wearing masks while she spoke to us through her screen door. Then we went home. The masks went in the laundry and the cute shoes scattered across the mudroom floor. Cooking dinner seemed exhausting, so we ordered pizza.


Tuesday, May 19, 2020

The eighteen-year-old has baked the most delicious chocolate chip muffins. I think my muffin top would agree I don’t need to eat any of them. I should probably opt for enjoying their aroma, which is so wondrous it might just spirit the twenty-one-year-old out of her room. However, I have opted to also eat. Screw vicarious pleasure! So, here’s to muffins and to muffin-tops.

The part of me that meditates, the part that is propelling me towards becoming a therapist, is somewhat stymied by the part of me that is guarded, barbed, sarcastic, and self-conscious. There is a part of me that wants to get down to the truth in a mushy, serious, loving, helpful way, to be Glennon Doyle Meltonish in my sharing and encouraging of others. Or Brene Brownish. But there is this other part of me that just can’t let go. It’s because I feel embarrassed. Or maybe ashamed. Or unworthy. What would I say if I weren’t afraid or inhibited? I would say that this pandemic isolation period is a time to really connect and knit together down low, completely. Some of us are knitting together, stitching together over the top of a split. Knitting together is good, but knitting together from down low, where a split happened is much deeper and more thorough. This opportunity comes from a place of privilege, it’s a positive, it’s a golden opportunity, and it’s available to me and to mine because we are lucky not to have to risk our lives to earn a living. We are not, like one of my students, working full time at Trader Joe’s while trying to finish a full time semester of college because we’re the only person in our immediate family with a job. We are not like another of my students whose family situation has made attending virtual classes so challenging that now her grades are too low for her to receive her financial aid money for next semester. We are home, worrying about our muffin tops and our misaligned ears and enjoying, despite the anxiety and ennui and depression we sometimes feel, bonus time with our spouses and children.

Not gonna lie. There’s some bathos and some pathos to the situation. I felt it when I shut the door in the Target parking lot and left the kids in the car. All dressed up and nowhere to go. Zooming for a milestone like a 95th birthday instead of being there to share the same cake. However, there is some grace, too. It was wonderful to see my far-flung cousins and their partners on Zoom. It was heartening to remember that Barack Obama is out there in the world. It is heartening to remember the future will come, whether we fear it or no. It is heartening to know that my children and my friends’ children are graduating into that future, and they will remember how this time affected them, and they will shape things to make them better. It’s a lot to ask of them, but in my experience, it’s good to have things asked of you. We rise to expectations. All rise!

*      *      *        *

*”Slonk on the kneecaps” is a literary reference. That’s a lie. It’s a children’s literature reference. Twenty points to the person who knows what book I’m referencing.

** “Hard pants” are pants with a non-elastic waist. I just heard that term for the first time last week, but the college student already knew it.

Flattening the Pollyanna Curve--It's OKAY

Hello, Readers. What’s new? I know,  nothing much. Truly. Come to think of it, that’s a wonderful thing to be able to say. Nothing is new. We are still here. Still safe. Still healthy. Yes, it’s tedious, but also, isn’t it just a joy? Isn't it just wonderful? Isn't it just the silverest of silver lingings?

Too much? Too zesty? Too Pollyanna? Have you ever seen the movie about Pollyanna? I believe it is called “Pollyanna”and stars Hayley Mills. Boy, is she annoying in the film. I don’t recall all the details, but by golly if she doesn’t make the best of just about everything. Every shitty thing that happens to her. Her leg breaks? Bummer, but she’s got lots of time to read, now! And so on.

You know the type.

The other day, I was Zooming with some friends and we all agreed that whatever initiative and enthusiasm with which we had initially approached this stay home business had dissipated.

Dare I say has flattened? The curve of initiative?

You know, after the initial disbelief that this was really happening, then being floored, we all decided we were going to learn Spanish or clean out our closets or finish up our projects in a frenzy. We were going to empty those junk drawers and learn to subsist entirely on almost-expired foods in our pantries and be better for it. We were going to darn those socks and hem those pants and write those novels. We were going to work out like demons and emerge from quarantine as sleek as dolphins.

Well, it turns it, many of us are not. We are just existing. Sure, my friend A is working her way through her unfinished projects, but honestly, she was project-based all along. Another acquaintance is planning to finish all her unfinished quilts and is posting photos of them on Instagram. So we shall see. I believe they are the exceptions. A few days of over-filled trash and recycling bins followed by several exhortations from sanitation workers not to overwhelm the trash collectors, because they were just trying to stay safe themselves, were enough to convince me. I heeded such pleas. I put aside the idea of going through the closet with all the old pool noodles—no, I do not have a pool—and Ogosports sans balls and ten year old sidewalk chalk nubbins.  It was only my civic duty to leave the mess where it is for now.

This junk stays

Stay inefficient. Flatten the curve. The Pollyanna curve.

What I have done instead is I’ve been downloading TV apps with their free trials, knowing full well I’m never going to remember to cancel them when the free part ends. Since then, I have churned through season one of “Agatha Raisin” on Acorn TV. Life in a beautiful town in the Cotswolds with an amateur detective woman of a certain age with humorous sidekicks is just the thing, it turns out, to defray an anxiety attack.

Actually, what with all the fabulous free meditations and dharma talks the senior Buddhist teachers are giving every day, I am feeling pretty good, anxiety-wise.

In other news, I have responded to all of my students’ emails, but have not graded a single essay. I’m thinking of just giving everyone an A and flattening another curve. Partly, because I think they’re all shell-shocked and should be put on a pass/fail basis this semester, but their college disagrees, and partly because, as someone rough from the Cotswolds might say, I can’t be arsed.

Truly, I cannot be arsed.

Oh, and in other news, I scraped my thumb. (It happened two days after I cut the tip of my index finger with the chef’s knife. That was just a teensy cut, and we were having a tomato sauce that night anyway.) But then I scraped my thumb and it was just in the exact place to keep opening up and bleeding for the next thirty hours or so (But who’s counting?) and I have to say, this little injury, which was really minor, pretty much brought me to tears constantly. Tears of rage. Tears of self-pity. My water table is just that high. I mean, sure, those niggling minor injuries always cause a burst of fury, and they often prove so much more painful than they should be. However, this one caused such an extra response from me. I chalk it up to having a very low threshold for upset these days.Or an over-active trigger point. These things take energy, too, you know. Flatten the curve of upset.

Speaking of chalk, chalk was one of the the things in that spare closet that I was going to chuck. Decade-old sidewalk chalk stubs. Who needs ‘em? However, am I glad I have them still, because I can go out and chalk the driveway with a big ole S. O. S., so maybe a Scandinavian airliner flying overhead can send down a rescue basket and whisk us off to a better-run country than ours.

Too negative? Sorry, I should have said we can use the chalk to chalk a big ole rainbow on the driveway when the weather warms up. Solidarity and all that.

I am glad my kids are older now. They can take care of themselves. They can bake, I probably mentioned. And sometimes they can walk the dog or empty the dishwasher. As I told my beloved cousin L, I wish I could be the quirky fun mom and come up with great reasons to hang around me and stick together during this, but what I really want to do is flop on the couch and watch another episode of "Agatha Raisin". Sometimes they sit with me and scroll through their phones at the same time. That counts as togetherness and fun activities, don't you think?

Which reminds me, here’s another thing I’ve been doing.  I have been eating lots of delicious, homemade goodies. So there’s a curve I won’t be flattening, and it’s on me.

Sometimes success is about knowing how to let go.

Yup, that’s about it for me, Readers. How’s things with you?