My hamstring’s a little tight and I think I have a slight abdominal muscle pull. A pulled hamstring started this litany of detours; I don’t want to start over. So this morning was yoga, concentrating on my hips and back. Though I prefer racking up the miles and burning a ton of calories, that wasn’t in the cards today.
The attention to my hips and back was necessary attention to a couple problem areas. Though it wasn’t the opportunity I wanted, it was the opportunity I needed. Yesterday’s post covered that, Rolling Stones lyrics and all.
Today’s post starts there, goes beyond just finding plan B.
I spent concentrated time on a physical activity that will ultimately help my body. That’s a solid win. It’s not a “well it’s not much, but I guess that’s all you could do” win. That approach is an exercise in turning wins into losses. If there are moral victories, this would be a moral defeat.
Overcoming a challenge is a win. Take the win. Feel good about it. Don’t weigh it down with conditions that diminish it. Well, I couldn’t run today, so I made do with yoga.
No! You found a creative way to help yourself in spite of an obstacle. That’s the very definition of a win.
Do that on a regular basis, and your life will change, even if you weren’t the top bad ass every day.
It’s possible that some of the 42% of Generation Z (born 1997-2012) diagnosed with mental health issues are snowflakes. It’s possible a few went into a tailspin after someone used the wrong pronoun for them (after being told by adults and each other that such a thing is an existential threat). It’s possible they aren’t nearly as tough as the generation that lived through a Depression, then fought and won World War II.
Then again, we’ve been through a couple things recently. Maybe they’re tougher than they look. And a little smarter, too.
Three-quarters of Americans under the age of 25 say their mental health was affected by the pandemic. The adults that should be providing structure and leadership all proclaim a litany of doom and gloom. One side is speaking of a certain environmental apocalypse and bemoaning all aspects of American culture as irredeemably racist, sexist, and everything-else-phobic. They’re saying the system is rigged and there’s no way you can do as well as your parents.
The other side is no better, creating threats behind every dark spot, saying that they are out to get this country and take everything you have. They treat every loss as an injustice and every slight as a call to metaphorical or real war.
In short, the adults are acting like four-year-olds and the world is going to crap.
I’d be depressed, too.
One in five of Gen Zers are seeing a mental health specialist. Twice that many have a diagnosed condition. While this makes their formative years difficult, formative years are always difficult. The money issues and generalized anxiety about the future they’re experiencing are nothing new. But the context of the world seeming to come apart is absolutely new.
This generation has mountains we can’t imagine, though. They were walled off from their friends–vital for development in younger years–for the better part of two years. They’ve seen the economy grind to a halt, take off like a rocket ship, then fall back to earth. They’ve seen the bedrock of our nation rocked like no one’s seen for a century and a half. They’ve seen the fabric of this country and our society fray almost to the breaking point. All of this has happened in two years.
After all that, maybe we should be worried by the people who don’t think they need help.
There’s something to be said about toughness and resilience. I could certainly use more of both of those things. But there’s also something to be said with knowing you need help and asking for it.
If nothing else, the fact that this generation is seeking that help can be seen as a sign of hope and regeneration.
I recognize that I have no standing to bitch about things.
The hurricane missed us. My job was okay with the little bit of work I missed during the prep and the aftermath. Other than a bit of a fibro hangover and achiness, I’m fine. My wife is fine. The cat’s fine. Both our kids are out of state, so they’re fine.
Just down the coast, a lot of people aren’t fine. Their lives have come apart. Some have lost their material belongings. Some have lost loved ones. And even if that hadn’t happened, within ten miles of me, there’s someone who will die a painful death today. That’s how life works.
In spite of all of that, I’m in a bit of a funk. I’m tired. My brain feels fried. Stuff hurts. My attitude is probably two-thirds of the way to sucking.
That’s also the way life works. If there were no valleys, there would be no mountains.
It would be easy to look at my relatively cushy existence right now, compare it to others, and say I’m self-absorbed and narcissistic. Maybe I am.
But that’s reality for the moment.
If you start the day chest-deep in a swamp, you can condemn yourself for getting there, but you’re still chest-deep in a swamp. Other people may be locked in a freezer, but you’re still chest-deep in a swamp, regardless of how you got there.
The only way to get out of the swamp is to realize you’re there in first place. Then you can do what it takes to work yourself out of the swamp. You might be sore and dirty when you’re done, but you won’t be in the swamp any more. Then maybe you can turn your attention to the person locked in the freezer.
No matter what condition you’re in, there’s always someone who has it worse. That doesn’t mean your situation is trivial or fake. It just means other people might be stuck deeper in the swamp.
The best thing is to recognize it, accommodate it in your approach to things, and start digging yourself out.
To do your best to go forward and, if you can’t get out of the swamp, to find someone with a map who can help you.
May is mental health month and not just for Jets fans. We all need a little pick-me-up every now and again.
The world has been a bitch lately. Every time we think it can’t get worse, fate, Satan, or general random chance want to cosplay as Barney Stinson.
It’s been a long few years, and we’re not out of it yet. The war in Ukraine drags on, and with it, prices continue to rise and stock prices continue to fall. Inflation is causing people to buy less, which will eventually result in companies needing fewer workers, which will eventually result in the red-hot job market cooling down.
And that’s before you get to the political unrest, the Covid, and whatever else is happening. And that’s before you get to anything going on in your personal life. For me, it’s been nagging health issues and dumb crap that keeps cropping up (like the three and a half hours trying to get the monitor on a new laptop to work before sending it back).
We all have patterns of thinking the emerge when we’re plunging into the dark spaces. Usually, they crop up without a lot of notice, gradually taking up more space until they assert themselves.
They’re stealthy little bastards. Your attention is focused elsewhere, dominated by wading through a hip-deep river of crap. By then, the crap is all over your hands and face and its a bitch to get out.
I don’t remember the numbers, but our pastor recently said that along with the stupid Covid, we’re suffering a loneliness pandemic, in which a significant plurality of people don’t have close friends.
The first step in confronting a problem is acknowledging it. And those are two big-ass problems, right there.
There’s no shame in needing to talk to someone–even a licensed professional. I’ve done it from time to time and it usually helps. There’s also no shame in needing help from the pharmaceutical arts. Personally, that’s not a long-term solution for me, but it can clear the air enough so you can figure things out.
As for the loneliness part, I don’t have that quite figured out, but it starts with getting out where people are. It’s been a couple of solitary years. Most days at work, outside the calls with rotating people, the ones I spend most time with are Gary Hoffman and Shannon Farren, and they work in a radio studio 3000 miles away and couldn’t pick me out of a police lineup.
There’s no shame in admitting that, either.
Then asking for help working on it.
I’m considering church groups and an online writing critique group I spurned a few months ago because I just couldn’t handle another Zoom call each week.
You have to start somewhere. The good news is that you control the response, which means you have the ability to get help, if necessary, and fix it.
To get to my running goal of five miles this morning, I had to walk a little. Last week at this time, I ran almost six miles, albeit at a slower pace.
My default thought process right now is to dismiss my effort because I walked–particularly because I walked past the running group leader’s house (like she was up looking out the window and judging).
For me, perfectionism is a sign of a mental-health valley–a time when anything less than perfectly achieving the goal is a failure. When style points trump actual accomplishment. It starts internally, then extends out to other people, expecting the worst and interpreting their actions that way.
Ironically, it reduces my performance, too. I mean, I already know that I fall short on everything, it’s just a foregone conclusion that this will follow the pattern (whatever this happens to be). If everything sucks and I’m gonna fall short anyway, I might as well eat the damn m&ms.
Then the cycle deepens. You fall short. You condemn yourself. You’re sure the rest of everyone sees it the way you do. You assume their condemnation as fact. You go into a situation assuming failure of some sort. Wash, rinse, repeat.
So what’s a sad sack to do? You could try old Bob Newhart skit. STOP IT. S-T-O-P, NEW WORD, I-T. That’s just the same perfectionism wrapped up in a skit from a defunct TV show.
Or you could reframe your thought process. Like with the run. I still made five miles–I ran extra at the end to cover the part I walked. At the beginning of last week, I had to skip exercise because it was a fibro day. Five miles is better than that. It was relatively warm and muggy out this morning–a decent morning in July, but a tough morning in March. (Lightning flashed in the distance, giving a real summer-like ambiance.) So it wasn’t the most comfortable day.
And, I pushed my pace by twenty to thirty second. That ain’t nothing. In fact, it’s damn good. It’s five miles more than all the sleeping people did this morning.
It’s important to take everything into context. To paraphrase the great Tony Horton (P90X), if you do your best, that’s always enough.
Did you hear that? He did his best and that’s always enough.
Mental health crap is hard. It’s hard to try to reprogram your thinking when you’re tired and the world seems allied against you (seriously, if I hit three green lights in a row, I think I’ll die of shock).
That’s when you have to do it most. You hauled your ass out of bed before five and went for a run. You pushed your pace. You came home and did Wordle and put in a load of laundry, showered, did a little work, wrote a blog post–all before 7 am.
That ain’t nothing. In fact, it’s quite a lot.
It’s hard to do the reframing work. But it’s vital. If you’re feeling like you’re at the bottom off a big black hole and you got out of bed this morning to face the day, that’s something. Most people don’t have to face that.
And if you didn’t, turn the page. Tomorrow’s another day. (Also, please see someone. It doesn’t have to be like this.)
I gotta be honest. God feels very distant and uncaring this Christmas.
We’re supposed to be all joyful because God chose to come down and be with us when he didn’t have to. Emmanuel, God is with us (celebrated in a song that, quite honestly, sounds like funeral dirge.).
I feel immune to joy right now, having gotten my ass kicked (unjustly) by anyone who didn’t get exactly what they wanted when the wanted it in the manner they wanted it without having to expend effort to get it. Might makes right.
I have a big stick. If you weren’t supposed to get smacked by it, you wouldn’t be there within stick-swinging distance.I demand recompense for the fact that I felt the need to hit you with my stick.
On a seemingly unrelated note, a few weeks ago, a guy said he couldn’t go to a Gary and Shannon live event because he had Bible study–they were doing the book of Habakkuk. In most instances, a mention of Habakkuk on a highly rated radio show a continent away from me wouldn’t cause a hiccup in the grand scheme of things.
Gary and Shannon
But they went into the book a little–it’s a guy bitching to God about how bad things are. He a lot of people have sticks and everyone else might as well be a pinata. And they get to do that because that’s the way of things. And no one really gives a damn, as long as they get what they want, don’t have to wait more than five seconds to take a right at a stop sign, or their third-party technology issue is fixed less than the completely unacceptable sixteen hours.
God never really answers these complaints, except to say that everyone’s gonna get an ass-kicking. It’s just that the new ass-kickers will beat up the people with the sticks along with everyone else.
Seems like the perfect book for 2021, so I read it. Then I read it again. Then I did a couple of devotionals on it. Because depression and being a Jets fan would seem to demand a book in which God just decides that everyone sucks and needs a good thrashing.
Wait til your Father gets home
Merry Christmas, by the way.
If a book were to accurately reflect my view off the world right now, this would be it. Until the very end. The last few verses are amazing.
Even though the fig trees have no blossoms and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; even though the flocks die in the fields and the cattle barns are empty; even though my football team is decades away from relevance, let alone the playoffs, yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
As my pastor points out, we aren’t to rejoice because of all of this stuff. The and yet indicates that we should rejoice in spite of all this stuff.
Christmas is hard for a lot of people. A friend of mine lost her father yesterday. Others face the first Christmas with an empty chair at the table. Some are shut in again this Christmas. Some are just trying to squeeze one more holiday out of a dying relationship.
And some can’t help but seeing an endless void of gray.
Kinda hard to rejoice when this is your outlook
There’s nothing I can say about that, except that I understand waking up Christmas morning feeling empty and worn out. I understand what it’s like to try really hard to capture a taste of the joy only to watch it from behind a thick glass plate.
I know what it’s like to feel raw inside when it’s time to feel joy.
It sucks. There’s no way to sugar coat it.
I can’t quite manage rejoicing in the Lord. I’m still wandering through the thick heavy fog, assuming that somewhere it’ll break. That passage helps.
If you need help, get it. Please. You’re not a curse on the world (the Jets are).
But if you’re trudging along doing your best, you’re carrying a burden a lot of others aren’t. If they saw inside you, if they understood the weight you carry, they’d be impressed that you’re carrying it.
God didn’t come to live in a climate-controlled mansion in Beverly Hills. He didn’t part the traffic like in Bruce Almighty. He came to a primitive rural area, at a primitive time. He eschewed comforts he could’ve created for himself.
If he sought out discomfort, he’s not unfeeling toward yours. Or mine.
I don’t know why he doesn’t fix it. But I feel like even if I can’t rejoice, the effort’s still valuable. The fact that hosts on a secular radio show in Los Angeles led me to that could be a coincidence.
But maybe it’s God throwing a bone.
If you can’t have a Merry Christmas, I hope you get at least a moment of joy.
Nothing works in a vacuum. Whatever happens how has tentacles that reach back before the known catalyst became evident.
The catalyst to my bout of depression happened on a Friday afternoon. I know I’m not wrong in my view of it, but I also know it’s not as big as I’m making it. I know this, but it doesn’t register.
Unfortunately, rational knowledge doesn’t always drive emotion and outlook in me the way it does in normal, non-stupid non-weaklings.
But I have depression, so sometimes I think of everyone who isn’t me as “normal, non-stupid non-weaklings.” I wouldn’t put up with someone calling my wife, kids, or friends a freakish weak idiot, but when things are tough, it’s a cute little nickname for myself.
This works, too.
The other day, I got into it with a manager at Publix. As I was shopping for chocolate chips and about to make a purchase, he stepped in front of me, straightened the display a little, then spent about three minutes (no exaggeration) talking to another customer–a better, more important customer–about the difference in the various chips. His back was to me and there was no way to get to the stupid freaking chips without disrupting the other customer.
So I waited. And wondered how the hell he could spend THREE FREAKING MINUTES going over CHOCOLATE CHIPS. I bought my last car in less time than this (excluding the paperwork). Women spend less time looking at SHOES!
Fourteen pairs of shoes and still less time than chocolate chip guy.
Afterwards, I didn’t raise my voice or curse, but I did let him know in a non-jovial tone that I didn’t appreciate his doing that. His “apology” was weak stream.
Then I got to the car and in a former friend’s voice, mentally chapped my ass for being a worthless asshole to a valued and overburdened frontline worker. He gets to do that. I just need to suck it up and be a man.
The fact that I hit nine red lights in a row (I counted) and got behind a guy doing 34 in a 55 while fiddling with his phone were proof that God and karma agreed.
Then the Jets lost, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t cause that.
Rationally, I realize my thought process was misguided. Crap happens and though it wasn’t my best moment, I wasn’t wrong, either. Jesus would probably ask me to do better but I suspect this won’t come up as a major item on my heavenly performance appraisal.
Over time, I’ve gotten better at modulating my depression so it doesn’t result in a firehose of redirected angst. I just back into my cave until the wave passes. Someone I once knew said that wasn’t a change; it was a lie. I just paved over what I really am. The ugly person below still existed.
Maybe that’s true, but results count. I can reach around the depression and be kind and compassionate to people. I can count about a dozen things yesterday alone–and no leakage of the bad stuff on others.
The fibro doesn’t help. I’m tired a lot, in pain sometimes. If you add the five-day Moderna hangover, a bout of bursitis, and a couple flares, the last month hasn’t been fun. It’s made me crochety.
Well, actually, it’s Magnum, not Matlock, but…
But I’ve also done a lot of good things. Eventually, the storm will pass and I’ll be able to see those things in balance. But for now, it’s just part of life to go through.
We all have dark parts inside that we keep away from others. Decent people do that. It’s not a lie to lead with something better than your worst self. It’s kindness, the mark of a decent person. Something a smart, valuable, strong person does.
It’s also work. It’s like climbing a hill after you’ve run as far as you can. People–fit people–better people–are flying by you as you slow down and walk.
Sometimes there’s more guts and effort in that walk than in other peoples’ sprints.
That’s the takeaway. For whoever is joined to all the living, there is hope.
The hope can be light the size of a pinprick, but it’s a precious thing to keep walking toward. Because as you walk unsteadily up the hill, most of those other people aren’t really sprinting. For the moment, you’re just carrying a weight they aren’t. (Or they think you’re sprinting while they walk.)
Keep walking. Realize that if you can understand the weight on you, you can maybe help others who with that weight when you get so you can manage a light jog.
On the heels of yesterday’s post, a friend of mine had a suicide in the family.
I’m not a licensed anything. I don’t have to tools to help you if you’re feeling like the world would be better without you.
I’ve been there, at the bottom of that narrow, stinking dark hole that’s so deep you can’t see the top. I know what it’s like when just take the next breath is more effort than you think you can bear. Where mere existence is like sandpaper against your soul.
When you feel so isolated that you can’t imagine anyone giving a damn if you stopped existing.
I know what it’s like to feel like ending things is the most rational thing you could possibly do.
All of those feelings are real. Your pain is real. You’re not a baby or an idiot or loser. You just need some help to get your footing back.
There are people who will cry if you die. They’ll feel their chest tighten as they hear what happened. They’ll hear the words, but they won’t make sense because how could you be gone?
And then reality will crush them.
If you’re reading this and you feel like you’re at the bottom of that hole, please ask for help.
If you’re in the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline has voice and chat options. If you’re outside the US, here’s a page with options where you live. Please take advantage of them.
Forty-five percent of the cases referred to my church’s children’s grief ministry lately have been because their father committed suicide.
Put another way, almost as many children were referred because of their father’s suicide than all other reasons combined.
It’s been customary to talk about the pandemic–to talk about anything, really–in terms of its impact on women and people of color. And that’s a good thing. We have a lot of groups we overlook.
In some cases, the pandemic has shut those groups off from the services they need because of domestic abuse at the hands of men, and racism at the hands of white people (predominantly men).
We’ve also talked a lot about mental health lately, primarily because of Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles. In Simone Biles case, that need for mental health distancing came, in part, because of sexual abuse committed and covered up by men.
And yet, if that 45% figure is anything other than an anomaly, we’re not doing a good job taking care of men–the ones who aren’t abusing others.
I suffer from mental health issues. Most of the time, they’re minimal. But right now, I’m struggling. In yesterday’s post, I compared myself to a plaid couch. I also have a plethora of resources to reach out to. I realize that, and I probably won’t.
Emotionally, I feel like the best thing for me to do is to shrink. Rationally, I know that’s the wrong approach. But emotionally, it’s been a bit bumpy. I seem to irritate the crap out of people without really trying very much. I’ve lost a long-term friend and my political stances have frayed important family relationships. When you’re struggling not to see yourself as toxic, it’s hard to think someone wants to help you.
Also, I’ve been down this road before. I know the tide will go back out, that the sun will come up tomorrow, that I’ll find another cliche to refer to the time when my mental health returns to normal.
It’s been a bitch of a year and half. We’ve all felt overwhelmed. No one is immune to that and it’s not weakness to need to talk it though.
Google has a page that lists resources for practically everyplace in the world. If you’re that guy, if you feel like that crappy old couch in the basement and you’ve decided it’s time for the couch to go, then please give yourself another day. And call one of the numbers.
I understand what it’s like when mental pain is like air and you can’t do anything but breath it in and out every day. I understand sitting in the car for ten minutes when you get to work because it takes that long to muster the energy just to get out of the car.
I also understand that it’s not forever.
If you have a man in your life who seems a little distant lately, who doesn’t seem to derive joy from anything, whose eating and sleep habits are off, ask him about it. When he minimizes it–and he probably will–ask again. Gently. Don’t demand.
Forty-five percent is too much. It’s way too much. While we’re paying attention to other groups that need that attention, it’s not white or male privilege to pay attention to men, too. Especially where mental health is concerned.
I struggle with the pace at which change is occurring. Over the weekend, I was on a call for an organization I work with in which three different people said, “I don’t want to agree with Chris, but…” This was because my views aren’t in synch with everyone else’s. This is an organization I’ve been associated with for more than a decade. Stuff like that leaves a mark, though I have to consider the fact that I earned the mark.
You can write it up as my whining about losing my privilege, but it’s still a hard adjustment. If you read this blog regularly, you’ll see I’m hardly an enraged men’s rights activist demanding we return to the fifties.
We’re leaving men behind. And if we don’t stop, that 45% number won’t go away.
In Florida this year, May was unusually cool and every pleasant morning run was hailed as the unexpected gift it was. Sweating buckets will tell you seductive lies when you weigh yourself after a run, but peeling your clothes off and throwing them in the dryer because they’re sodden isn’t any kind of fun.
Airplane! really captured the essence of a summer run in Florida.
This morning it was 55 degrees when I started my run. I was still a sweaty, disgusting mess by the time I got done, But my sneakers aren’t soaked.
I ran seven miles, up some farm roads, taking a route I once had to take on the school bus (cough cough) years ago. Back then the world was bigger and it seemed like the bus went halfway to Vermont before doubling back and (finally) dropping us home.
I ran to farthest portion of that neverending bus route, then turned around and ran back.
It was, for lack of a better word, fun. I enjoyed it.
Most runs this time of year are torture. From the time you step outside into the sauna until you finally stop sweating half an hour after you’re done, they’re miserable. It’s a payment you make on bigger, better runs to come when it stops being Satan’s armpit outside. They’re deferred joy, along with a feeling of accomplishment for doing what no sane person would do at a time of the morning when no sane person would be outside. (You have to. It’s far worse then the sun comes up.)
The sun was up this morning and the run was glorious. When I got to the far point and started back, it felt good to bludgeon that long-ago bus route to death.
But the real joy was in the run itself. There were no shorts fused to my hips and butt. There were no ropes of sweat running down my legs. There was no heat halo surround my head.
There was just me and a road–recently paved and smooth, which it wasn’t back in the day.
And there were hills–some slight enough in a vehicle that I never realized they existed before running up them. Some smaller than I remember. A couple were much, much bigger than I remembered and my legs drove home the discrepancy.
And then I was done. And for the first time in a long time, I was a little wistful at the run being over.
In a good life, joy comes in the mundane, in the standard things you do every day.
After a hardcore July, my legs and body begged for a break. And so it came. Four days of no running following by a hot, stinky run that was almost fun. Then another day off yesterday as I drove from Pittsburgh to the Capitol District area in upstate New York.
And then a seven-mile joy run this morning.
Every day I seek out things to be grateful for. I’ve been thankful a number of times for being able to run. Today I’m thankful for the run itself. It was incredible.
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