you can change your personality, and how to cope with existence
I hate doing my therapy exercises because they mostly consist of having to list positive qualities about myself, which strikes me as so … unironic? The way I process any kind of trauma or grief is to make caustic jokes about myself or the situation.
One of my fondest memories is of having the worst week ever at work—I mean, a series of truly batshit, this-never-happens-so-why-is-it-happening unfortunate events—and getting drunk and laughing it off afterward with a friend. As we drank, I spun out the situation into an ever more obscure Kafkaesque nightmare—like what if we woke up tomorrow and THIS happened, too—and she egged me on because that’s the kind of friend she is. Eventually the hellworld we made up became so bad and hilarious that the actual hellworld we were living in seemed not so bad. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for! A relatively acceptable hellworld.
But lately, I have been going through some stuff that this strategy hasn’t worked very well for, namely death, which is as unironic as it gets. (For the record, I’m fine. Everyone in question who died is old.)
Nevertheless, last week I asked people what their favorite coping mechanisms are that aren’t alcohol or mean jokes about yourself and others.
Exercise came up yet again. I guess if you haven’t heard of it, give it a shot. Cheese and chocolate are two other heavy hitters. (I guess that’s what you need the exercise for.) Also frequently mentioned were praying and meditation, which people tend to lump together even though the people who do them tend to be very different. Reading (yay), knitting, and working in gardens.
If I may mention two that have worked especially well for me: Listening to music and watching TV. Call me a basic betch if you will, but I sometimes feel like I have to flood my senses with stimuli in order to forget about all the bullshit. Reading is great, but TV is amazing! Sound and pictures and storylines! Alone has been a big one for us recently, and it seems, well, apt. ;(
I wrote about the digital divide! Yes, it’s annoying to have to supervise your kids’ Zoom kindergarten, but what if you don’t have internet with which to do Zoom kindergarten? From my piece:
The FCC estimates that 19 million Americans don’t have a fast internet connection, but as CityLab’s Linda Poon has written, the true number may be more than double the official figure because of poor data gathering. According to the Pew Research Center, about 15 percent of all households with school-age children lack a high-speed internet connection. Some of these families live in areas that broadband providers don’t service, but others simply can’t afford the broadband that runs right outside their doorstep.
This has happened because the U.S. government doesn’t force Internet companies to rent their fiber cables out to each other, which would drive down prices through competition. Instead, the FCC surrendered the little control it did have over internet companies in 2017, when it repealed net neutrality.
You can change your personality, if you want. This week I published another video from my series with the Next Big Idea Club, about how to change yo’self. You know, if you feel like it.
Think of it as the Clueless principle: You want to behave “as if” you already are the person you want to be. So if you want to be more extroverted, act like an extrovert. If you want to be nicer, be nicer. And so forth. Read more in WEIRD.
Anyways, I’m outty
