Finding my next steps

Epiphanies about feeling good, feeling bad and leaving Meta.

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time this month - mentally, emotionally, way down deep in my soul trouble. I’m trying not to shut down and wall myself away from reality, at least not to the extent that I did in 2016 and the years following. I’m not talking about taking a break from the flamethrower that is reality, I’m talking about shutting everything out and simply carrying on unless I am directly affected (spoiler alert: I have a trans child. I am intensely directly affected). My wrestling with the current events included equating the resulting emotions to my mental health. Meaning that if I experience uncomfortable emotions, it must mean my mental health is plummeting.

Lucky for me, I listen to wise voices like Adam Grant. On a recent podcast, he and his guest had a discussion about feeling good and feeling bad that seems so simple on the surface, but which nearly knocked me down it shifted my perception so drastically. Essentially what it boils down to is this: just because we experience uncomfortable and even disturbing emotions in response to a person or event, doesn’t mean we are not ok. Why had I never thought about feelings and mental health this way before?

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I realized I have been equating my resilience and mental stamina on whether my feelings (emotions) are pleasant or unpleasant. But no, this perspective says, there are things which I am correct to feel uncomfortable emotional responses about because they are wrong/evil/inhumane/atrocious/ dangerous/ deadly. In fact, a rational emotional response, even when it feels bad in my body, is the healthy response. I don’t need to deflect and avoid those feelings. I can sit with them and allow them to be my reality. My job is not to change paths when my emotions are uncomfortable, but to determine if those emotions are obscuring any other feeling.

For instance, the nation is a shitshow and the state department has frozen my child’s passport and may not return it, BUT ALSO today at work I helped six of the most excited, enthusiastic and endearing college students sign up for their first adult library cards and came home to the back deck where it was not too cold to sit outside for the first time in a week and watched a hawk observing me from the far side of my back yard. The two things are related and one doesn’t erase the other, but I can fully embrace both and still be ok.

Both/And

Maybe you already had that figured out, or maybe you aren’t impacted the way I am, but this paradigm shift is a game changer for me. I couldn’t write anything else without sharing it first.

This led me to a deep consideration of the phrase “Joy is resistance” in relation to that paradigm shift. Joy means we have good feelings about a thing, person or event, right? But what if it doesn’t? What if joy is about what we do even when our emotions want to nail us to the floor. What if joy is taking all my fear and sorrow and anger and using that as fuel to connect with all the gender queer people and family members I know to tell them I love them and am fighting with and for them? Is that not joy, even with all those raggedy, gut-clenching emotions tagging along? What if joy is showing up to my job every shift and helping every patron and my coworkers feel supported and helped even though my internal emotions might resemble something that cat yarked up on the carpet? Forget toxic positivity, I’m talking about joyful vulnerability where we show up as our honest selves and still notice the things which are good and don’t deny the truth of both aspects of reality.

I’m still working it all out in my head and my heart, but I think this is the thread that might just stitch my soul back together over and over in the years to come. In the meantime, I’m taking some concrete actions to align my life with my values. After a couple weeks honest evaluation I’ve decided to leave Meta social platforms. What this boils down to for me is leaving Instagram since I haven’t had Facebook account in years. I never really embraced Tik-Tok (which is not Meta, I know), but I have found a community on Insta. Deciding to leave Evilzon was easy, this decision is harder, but it’s the one that doesn’t make me feel like a hypocrite. Maybe it doesn’t make a different to the billionaires running the show, but it sure makes a difference to me.

As in all things, I know there will be a learning curve to this change. I am so happy to see some familiar faces from “over there” already established or joining substack, and I appreciate your patience as I work out exactly how this transition will look. I’m attempting committing to weekly posts on Sundays formatted like this one- longform exploration about whatever is on my mind. Wednesdays will be for bookish content, and those posts may vary in format until I establish a rhythm. Throughout this phase, I’m taking a page from my own notebook - this transition may not always have joyful emotions attached to it, but doing the work is an act of joyful resistance all the same.

Earlier this week, after my Adam Grant inspired epiphany, I really enjoyed an article from The Mindful Librarian, one of my favorite writers on substack about creative resistance - please read it here. Despite my plan to combat malaise and despair with trustworthy information, current events won’t be the focus of much of my writing. For me, writing is a form of exploration and evaluation, and I’d like to hang on to that vibe. I still believe that life is worth living and enjoying and that joy is possible even when my emotions don’t align with that truth.

Both/And.
It’s the only way to keep going without crumbling, at least, it is for me.

What ways are you finding to find joy, or even just to stay somewhat sane? I’d love to hear more about your ideas in the comments.