No, I don’t mean just eat better foods. After all, disinformation aside, at this point I feel reasonably confident that “eat food. not too much. mostly plants” works just fine for my body type, metabolism, and tax bracket. Granted, I don’t always take that advice. But I mean eat in better ways. Don’t choke down breakfast; chew, savor, appreciate, think of the all the days I woke up sad and punished my system with a Bustelo-only diet.
And on the flip side of this, no more gorging - whether stoned, in a hurry, or having just come off cardio. No matter what basal command urges an ever-ramped chew/swallow/repeat, slow down. Create a reasonable portion. Dip over the boundary of that portion only when appropriate, not just when available. Quit eating with a scarcity mentality.
Binge good TV, use bad TV as emotional caulking
I was piercingly depressed this week and I watched the 2nd half of THE LEFTOVERS first season, which for all its shaky starts turns out to be the truly bleakest and most perfectly depressing show on the current roster. This is good TV. HOMELAND, for all its stupidity, can be binged in two days for an experience akin to classic 24 with better casting and half the episodes.
Bad TV is used to muffle the buzz of boredom when nothing more healthy will do. It is a way of sitting in one place, alone, dislocated. When you must exist in empty space. But it should seal narrow cracks, not shingle your roof.
Stop softpedaling language
Professional interactions in publishing (and I’m sure it’s not alone) so often subsists on a mat of insincerity and complicity in that insincerity. We say that sounds great but we mean that sounds like words. We say we’ll do it but we mean we’ll do it when you prompt us the 2nd time. We say it’ll be good when we mean we have no fucking clue how it’ll be. We say we’re excited when we mean we don’t want to say we feel nothing. We say she’s nice when we mean she’s boring. We say that’s unfortunate when what we mean is that we’re happy they’re failing. We say all good when we mean some good. We say we really enjoyed it when we mean that we burst into fractured sobs upon turning the final page because somewhere in this mound of edited text was a sharp edge that rent a hole in our heart’s exoskeleton and we don’t like that such a thing can happen because it hurts and pain is bad.
Stop being so negative to seem cool
Negativity and irony in media and publishing is easy and comforting. By saying something is terrible or the worst thing ever or the worst or pretentious or flawed or just awful or stupid or that it’s your most hated example of another thing you don’t like, you’re very quickly and efficiently saying I’m Not Like That. Compulsive othering is a human feature but it’s not a good thing. Especially when it’s used to silence benign positivity; “I was happy because of this thing, it made me feel good” “you must be naive and stupid and if you really think that you’re not one of the cool kids” it’s fucking sickening and it drives so many ad-revenue engines and while I recognize nobody can always exist in a perfectly warm bath of good vibes about any and all things unless that person is literally a god, it is tiresome and boring to read and listen to people who can never be expressly and messily vulnerable about the many things that make them feel comforted and beautiful and perfect in the moment and strip away every ounce of self-consciousness like a cleansing fire, because they are afraid of sounding happy. Criticism and lazy outrage are not easy unless that’s all you do. A heart that beats with emotional flab is not one I wish to sync with.
Defend Kid Rock
Kid Rock writes great songs, he’s very talented, he gives a lot to charity, he likes a lot of the same music as me, and I’ve been listening to him for years. He has a new album out. I’m gonna probably like it just fine and continue to argue that anyone who doesn’t listen to him because a mean kid in fifth grade used to yell the lyrics to Bawitaba during recess (or equivalent) is being needlessly self-limiting.
Be skeptical and call out when appropriate the people who use texts to validate their opinions poorly
Smart people have nuanced ideas of how “the world works” and “how humans think” and yet I see some cling to the idea that one book like sof (or similar) has unlocked the secret molecule of Truth about all humans and therefore they can make sweeping statements on how neuroscience works is gonna be getting a frowny face from yours truly. I’m drawn to these people, but I prefer smart people who remember they’re tiny and stupid and insignificant sometimes.
Visit every NYC bookstore new and used
Every Barnes and Noble, every tiny stack of used books on the streetcorner table or in the cramped floor-through apartment, every place that sells books in every corner of this ridiculous city. Staten Island, Gravesend, Bronx, I’m coming, I swear.
Panic better
Every time I panic now I set my phone timer for 45 minutes, to trick my brain (panic part) using another more powerful part of my brain (procrastinating part). I can panic in 45 minutes. It’s working.
Read white guy novels with healthy and skeptical abandon
I like Knausgaard, Richard Ford, John Updike, and DFW. Don’t need to defend that because nobody is threatening this. Nothing wrong with enjoying books by or about members of your tribe - just as long as you don’t get hung up on it. (This includes books only set in the last decade.) There’s a lot of good- and bad-natured criticism of white dudes who write books, and none of it should stop you from reading their books if you want to. Just read non-white non-guy books with abandon too. This is part of the “like what you like” thing.
Re-embrace uncertainty
I have a Career now, but I still don’t know how my 401k works, the difference between “then/than” every time, or when my parents will die. I have a new nephew but I don’t know what his life is gonna be like (though it’ll be filled with love and good food because my sister’s a bomb-ass cook and nurturer). But in order to not get riveted by the Now and spiral into a pit of depression, I must remember that I cannot understand the ramifications of every single action I do or do not take. Sometimes shit is just going to happen and no amount of control-freakiness can change that, so I might as well quit worrying so much.
Trust the right doctors
Before I switched jobs I got a physical where the doctor found a suspicious mole. I then visited a dermatologist (my first - I don’t have the world’s best skin but it’s always been a'ight) and got a biopsy that said nothing cancerous but the doctor still urged that I should get the whole thing removed.
Then I got a new job and switched insurance and suddenly I had to start the process again - find a new dermatologist and find a surgeon that wouldn’t ask for two week’s pay up front. Months went by. And every month, that first dermatologist emailed and called to check if I’d gotten the mole removed. Without any possibility of financial compensation, she urged me over and over to address the mole, get it cut off, do it quickly, wherever, whatever it took. I resented this. Not everyone is a rich doctor, right? Not everyone can afford to get surgery for a benign cluster of cells at any point in the pay month.
So I finally slipped in an appointment with a new doctor before Christmas, who biopsied the rest of the mole to be absolutely sure what the follow-up treatment would be. Turns out I have a stage zero melanoma. Which is exactly as unconcerning as skin cancer can possibly be - you basically just get it snipped off and that’s it - but I wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t for the first doctor, who gave so much of a shit that she hectored me like a good doctor should. When I emailed to thank her, she just said “I just wish we had national health care. I’m glad you did this.”
Find good doctors, stick by them, keep yourself alive.
Say I was wrong
Admitting you fucked up when you fucked up will make your life a lot easier. Just don’t admit it all the time and for no good reason.
Don’t smoke things you find on the street, it never ends well
Street weed gave me a headache and street Newports gave me the hangover equivalent of Ragnarok so, yeah.
Read more poetry
The more good and blood-drawing poetry I read the cleaner and stronger I get. It’s expensive to buy. It’s worth it.
And finally…
Read what scares you and makes you angry
Patricia Lockwood scares me. She’s so good and writes such terrifying things. Kiese Laymon scares me. He describes anger and paralysis and fear and systemic injustice so perfectly and so VITALLY. People who are either so talented or are so good at describing terrifying realities or fictions that they make you question the entire cocoon of ways you make yourself Feel Okay are the people you should read. People who disagree with you and who say things that offend you and frustrate you are always hard to read and you can burn yourself out but if you approach them out of a sincere desire to understand who they are, why they do and say what they do and say, and what big tectonic forces and filters have shaped their perceptions to make them so different from yours, are the people who will save a significant part of the intelligent person’s life, every time.
It’s no secret that when award season comes around many people feel as if loads of special films are left out of the opportunity to win a big award. Like everything, the awards are a political machine, but sometimes a few interesting and unexpected nominations slip through. I’d love to see the Academy Awards nominate any of the acting performances in the film Wildlife.
