Conk’s Brain Podcast

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Is it selfish to want? Palms upturned to the sky, cover my eyes in exhaustion and despair. I clamber and claw, just trying to scale this impossible wall - is there even anyone on the other side? To create is lonely - beautiful, cathartic, revelatory, cavernous, dark, and futile. How many artists sit alone, churning out the passion and madness of their souls, only to be met with silence? Always more questions than answers, always an endless pursuit - chasing vapor trails through the darkness, clutching that one very tiny spark of hope in our chests. To create is lonely, but perhaps loneliness is necessary - maybe it’s in the void that we find ourselves.

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I recently found the most comfortable underpants in the universe: excessively high waisted, super soft, very stretchy. I honestly forget I’m wearing them and would definitely not even bother with pants if I thought I wouldn’t be arrested for indecent exposure (or my butt wouldn’t freeze off in winter). So why am I telling you this? Trust that it’s not a last minute ploy for Christmas gifts. Instead, this is a “the new year is also most upon us” reminder to embrace the things that make you happy. Life is too short to tolerate shitty underpants (no pun intended).

January is so very close and, while I don’t subscribe to the new year-new me nonsense, there is usually a very blank canvas feeling in the air. This year is different. I’d be a liar if I said that I’m not filled with fear and foreboding, but I’m also outright determined not to let that sink me. Yes, slightly more than half of the voting public chose an unhinged felon and narcissistic sociopath who tweets about annexing Canada at 3 am to lead the country. And yes, there is a chance that he makes good on every single threat to burn our democracy to the ground and resurrect a dictatorial monarchy in his own image. But even if this comes to pass, we still have to live in this new reality. Might as well be a reality with comfy underpants, right?

I’m walking into the new year fully aware that control is an illusion and reminding myself to live in the present moment as much as humanly possible. Yes, my porches are rotting off and I can’t afford to repair them, but I can put out my rabbit statues and some potted plants. Yes, my bedroom ceiling has cracked plaster and the windows need replaced (also can’t afford to fix that), but I can put up a fresh coat of paint, some peel and stick wallpaper, and new curtains. My focus going into 2025 is re-wiring my brain to find the joy and embrace genuine gratitude wherever possible. I mean, I might as well start practicing now.

I highly encourage you to join me in this exercise of letting go and leaning in. Take for example this story my mother told me as a child when I asked her what “optimism” and “pessimism” meant.

Once upon a time there were two little boys, one was a pessimist and the other an optimist. The first boy, a pessimist, was put in a room full of brand new toys, positively packed from floor to ceiling, and then left alone to play. The second boy, an optimist, was put in an empty horse stable with horse poop as far as the eye could see and then left alone. After a few hours, the grown ups went back to see how things were going. The first boy was sitting in his room full of toys crying. “What on earth is the matter?” asked the grown ups. “Well,” said the boy, “some of the toys aren’t ones that I like and others will probably just break if I play with them, either way it’s just awful.”

Naturally, the grown ups went to check on the second boy thinking that surely he would be even more upset than the first. Imagine their surprise when they discovered him gleefully shoveling horse poo from one side of the stable to the other. “What on earth are you doing?” the adults asked. The boy just smiled and said, “Well, with all this horse poop, I figure there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

Clearly this is a story I’ve never forgotten. Happiness isn’t about actually feeling happy all the time, or even about trying to control or predict everything that is coming. Instead it is about being determined to find the joy. It’s the decision to remind yourself a thousand times a day, if that’s what it takes, that we’re not going to let the bastards keep us down. Go out there and find your own comfortable underpants, or whatever is their equivalent. You don’t have to justify your choices to anyone. Be weird, be passionate, be loud - march to the beat of your own drum. It’s time to let go of what we think should be and simply embrace what is. 

I believe in you, I believe in us. We can do hard things. No go out there and seize the underpants, I mean the day, seize the day my friends. 

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I dream of the life I could be living, riding the ebb and flow of mountains - breathing deeply of the air and sky and sea. I dream of daffodils and tall green forests, tiny cottages in a mystical wood. I dream of having less but gaining more, of clean rooms with comfortable well worn furniture, rows of books and the flicker of candle light. I dream of silence not broken by ticking clocks, but the songs of birds drifting faintly on the wind - the tinkle of chimes on a covered porch as I rock in a wooden Adirondack chair sipping hot tea beneath the stars.

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This morning, I find myself ruminating once again on the words of Charles Bukowski “We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that death will tremble to take us”. I have decided that I’m going into 2025 laughing like a madman. The world is chaos and the only thing we can control is ourselves. I am recklessly determined to find the good.

Social media has been an epic clusterfuck of hopelessness, abject ignorance, and plain old meanness for far too long now. We get stuck in this endless cycle of doom scrolling (or dopamine scrolling) and forget to come up for air. It’s rare when we take a moment to actually reflect on the culture that has been curated in our online spaces.

I get it. A lot of us rely on platforms like TikTok or Instagram to provide us with actual news that hasn’t been bought and paid for by the corporate dollar. It’s also the first point of contact for family, old friends, and community groups. While some have managed to swear off social media all together (and others never boarded ship to begin with), we must acknowledge that it can be an incredibly useful tool. Unfortunately, it’s also as lawless as an old western in many regards.

The government has fallen woefully short of even understanding online spaces, let alone regulating them. They’re about to throw TikTok under the bus with a ban in January, but disregard the same unethical practices when applied to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. People just get away with being shitty to each other online: scamming, threats, name calling, stalking, harassment. Too many people just throw up their hands in defeat, what am I supposed to do about it? This is just the price of participating online. You knew the risks before you became a content creator. The list goes on.

But, go with me here, what if we actually do have some control? I’m not here to advocate for completely sanitizing social media or to imply that could even be done. I am here to chuckle maniacally at the odds. There is undeniable correlation between the chaotic state of affairs in our nation and our attitudes toward social media. You remember the old song 🎶 don’t rock the boat baby🎶 In our everyday lives, we adhere to that principal as gospel truth. We have been taught to zip our lips and look the other way when it comes to racism, sexism, heterosexism - basically all the isms.

I have worked for employers that simply wouldn’t hire a woman for certain jobs, paid men more for their work, and allowed employees to make subtly (and overtly) racist comments. I listened to my own dad crack tasteless jokes about gay people, fat people, and people of color. Too many of us have been taught to turn the other cheek, and let it slide. Good girls don’t speak up. They stay quiet - know their place. Well, I’m calling bullshit.

We teach other people how to treat us by what we are willing to tolerate. It’s not easy or comfortable to stand up, but nothing changes if nothing changes. This is equally true for online spaces. I am choosing to move away from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok because I’m not ok with the constant barrage of inflammatory rhetoric and absolute lack of platform accountability and moderation (just Google Zuckerberg lawsuit it’s eye opening). There will never be a “perfect” platform, but we can choose where we reside and how we exist in those spaces. We can set boundaries and defend them fiercely.

Here are just a few suggestions for protecting your own peace and creating the change you want to see in collective online spaces:

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT feed the trolls. Yes, we can constructively disagree like civilized human beings, but trolls are not civilized and often, not even human (bots anyone?). Do not engage and if you must, call them out in as few words as possible while being clear about your boundaries: Not cool. I don’t tolerate this kind of behavior, keep it up and you will be blocked and reported.

Use the block button liberally. You have a block button for a reason, don’t be afraid to use it. Don’t give those assholes any of your headspace.

Use the report button liberally. If someone is just being a do-do head and arguing for the sake of being a blow hard, by all means just block them. If they are threatening you, bullying you, disseminating blatantly false or harmful information, or you are positive they are a bot, REPORT THEM. If you see them engaging in any of this behavior to others, REPORT THEM.

Do not let bad behavior stand. Apply numbers 1-3 in all applicable situations. No, you aren’t obligated to become a keyboard warrior policing every one’s comment sections. You should flex your boat rocking muscles when necessary though. The more we hold people to account for their actions, the less shitty behavior will be tolerated in general.

I hope you use these newfound permissions to defiantly kick down the door of 2025 determined to find the joy. This doesn’t require perpetual feelings of happiness, toxic positivity (or copious amounts of drugs). It does require the understanding and acceptance that we can’t control the chaos. The universe will universe and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. We can choose to not let this chaos define us. We can protect our boundaries, take less shit from the people around us, and seize every opportunity to live. Wear the unicorn horn headband, eat off of the good plates, commune with nature as often as possible, look up at the moon with childlike wonder, sing loudly in church even if it’s off key. Live so well, in every moment that you can, that death will tremble to take you.

Thanks for reading! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you to pass it on.

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Fifteen is tempestuous, hurtling through time and space at break-neck speeds - desperately searching for anything you can cling on to. In the back of the library, Spring of 1997 to be precise, I crashed full stop into a solid anchor. Nikki Giovanni - the first poet I ever loved. She metered me to Jones beach, lyric-ed me in lilacs, taught me that poetry did not have to rhyme. It was savage, and primal, and beautiful… a way to put your insides on the outside. I held onto my copy of Those Who Ride the Night Winds so long that I had to pay fines - but I didn’t care. The sky had ripped open and birthed a thousand stars - a beautiful, ethereal fire that burns in my chest even still. for Nikki Giovanni ( June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024)

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Lately, I have been singularly obsessed with Haikus. I’m not particularly adept at writing them and high school me would rather have showed up naked to class than embrace that level of constraint. Maybe it’s because turning 43 did something to my brain, or maybe it’s the impending political apocalypse - whatever the case I am mired in obsession. 

No matter how much reckless abandon might soothe our weary souls, there’s just something comforting about a solid boundary. The winds of the universe may howl and blow, but the sun always rises, the moon guides the tides, and a Haiku will always be 7-5-7. Sometimes, this fact alone helps me sleep at night.

I have made and broken many promises to myself over the years, fallen short of my own expectations, and found myself screaming into the void - exasperated. When it comes to planning and basic executive function, ADHD is a bitch. I’ve got so many ideas chasing one another through my head like coked up squirrels (as I write this, I’ve just Googled “coked up squirrels”). As the infamous tangerine tyrant once said, “I have concepts of a plan”. 

Leaning into the example set by the restraint of the tenacious little Haiku, I’ve taken a deep breath and managed to form at least a rough outline of what I hope to accomplish professionally. First, you dear reader, deserve a little god damn consistency. I’m going to set a schedule with a time and date deadline for publishing one essay and one poem each week. Then, I’m going to work on upping my paid content game by providing you with a monthly “special edition” newsletter full of bright shiny new things. Lastly, I’m creating a monthly video series called Conk’s Room where I set up my classroom and engage your frontal cortex with a little educational theater. Ambitious, but completely necessary for my sanity and self-respect.

Outside of Substack, I’m going to stick to my commitment to get the hell off of TikTok and Facebook and Instagram. I’m instead focusing my attention on Pinterest, BlueSky, and Discord (sites that feel significantly less shitty for my psyche). For my next acrobatic feat, I will build a simple website using Canva primarily for the purpose of marketing this very Substack and my editing and design services. Gasp and egads! But Deedre, I didn’t even know you did these things! Ah yes my friends, I have skills and it’s about damn time I put them to good use. 

Now for the pièce de résistance: I’m going to stop neurotically checking my notifications and catatonically scrolling feeds. Life is for the living, and online engagement should be for supplemental enrichment and entertainment, not the main event. Speaking of which, have you been outside today? Go smell some nature, or talk to some woodland creatures. It’s good for you. Who knows, maybe you’ll even be inspired to write a Haiku.

The little Haiku that could

inspired a spark

this life is good after all.

Thanks for reading! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you to pass it on.

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Chaos is truth, control is an illusion. We hold on tightly with both hands to all the things we believe we can control - fretting, worrying, twisting our insides in knots, waking up in pools of our own cold sweat certain that we can conceive every possible future, if we never sleep. But outside of us, the universe is vast unknowable in its infinite expanse. Every contingency is merely speculation, casting bets on a race not yet run. We can wallow in the muck of maybe, maybe, maybe - And lose the beautiful glisten of perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. The future will be. The present is now. Drop the weight of uncertainty, protect your joy fiercely. We cannot control the chaos, and that is ok.

Thanks for listening! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you would pass it on.

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Lately I have been obsessed with death. Not so much the inevitability, but what comes after. I am afraid of not existing, of existing eternally some place terrible, or drifting endlessly through a deep black nothing - concious of the emptiness of it all. But we all die, don’t we. It’s the one certain thing in life. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Maybe our disconnection from nature is what’s truly absurd. When my naked toes curl deep into the soil, when my lungs breath deeply of the air, and stars, and sky - I feel the call of my ancestors reverberate in my bones. Every molecule that exists within us, was born in the beginning - part of everything that has come before, returning in the end to everything that will become. The divine unknowable force of the universe, that which we call God, waits patiently for our acceptance, our understanding- that life and death, death and rebirth, is written in our atoms. We are never alone.

Thanks for listening! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you would pass it on.

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Does the thought of Thanksgiving fill you with warm fuzzies and joy or existential dread? I have a feeling that this holiday season is going to be an adjustment for a great many people (and by adjustment, I mean slamming full force into a brick wall without a crash helmet). After the wounds inflicted by this deeply disconcerting election, there’s a hell of a lot of door slamming and name calling making the rounds. 

I will be hunkering down with my spouse and our fur children gorging myself on pumpkin pie and trying to fill the void with new traditions. Thanksgiving hasn’t felt the same since the last of my grandparents passed away. I don’t have any human children and my husband works both the day before and the day after the holiday, so he’s not really up for driving hours and hours for a plate of stuffing and coma napping jammed in the passenger seat of my Toyota Prius C (the smallest Prius ever made). 

I am no stranger to the art of trauma boxing - putting people and relationships in a box on a deep dark shelf in the furthest recesses of my brain. It’s taken years of therapy to learn how to establish healthy boundaries and feel ok with standing up for myself and guarding my mental health. These skills are being challenged to the utmost degree and I can say with certainty that in this moment, I am not alone. Millions of Americans are facing down the prospect of making incredibly hard choices.

This election cycle has finally ripped the table cloth off the table and we’ve been forced to reckon with what lies beneath - greed, racism, homophobia, sexism, and ignorance. This country was built on the back of slavery and genocide, forged on the false premise that all men are created equal when in fact it has been straight, white men of a certain social standing that are “equal”. Women didn’t earn the right to vote until 1920, nearly 144 years after our country was founded and black people were forced to wait until 1965.

According to the NAACP, “The 15th Amendment to the Constitution removed racial barriers to voting in 1870, but states continued to practice voter discrimination and continued to deny Black voters a chance to participate in elections…It wasn't until 1965, after years of intimidation, murders, and advocacy that the path to the voting booth was cleared for Black people with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

Spanish predates English in the United States, and there were once over 300 indigenous languages spoken throughout the US yet the Average American has no grasp of history outside of the white narrative of the founding fathers. Hell, I still have a lot to learn and I’m actively trying to educate myself. We desperately want to believe that everything we learned in school is the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us God - what do we have if not this certainty to cling to?

In this election we have seen blatant lies and misrepresentation of immigrants, literal Nazis marching in the streets, and men shouting “your body, my choice”. We’ve been divided by hate, anger, and fear. Women are being systematically stripped of their reproductive rights while other women wave Bibles in their faces and declare them to be whores. The rage and indignation are palpable. 

Given the choice between an optimistic, hopeful version of America and a dark, vengeful one, nearly 77 million chose hate. To be fair and transparent, more than 2.5 million people chose neither candidate and voted third party and while votes are still being counted, preliminary estimates show that nearly 36% or 89 million people couldn’t be fucked to cast a vote at all. 

So what’s up America? According to the Pew Research Center, “For the first time, the 2020 census showed the U.S. had a shrinking non-Hispanic White population that identifies with a single race, down 3% – or about 5.1 million people – from 2010 to 2020. The decline was widespread geographically, with 35 states seeing drops in their non-Hispanic White populations.” I don’t really think it’s a coincidence that a government historically dominated by white men in a country whose corporations and institutions are also disproportionately operated by white men might feel a bit threatened by this statistic. 

On top of everything else, our schools fall woefully short in history and civics education (as well as general life skills) and our mainstream media puts profits and clickbait above actual journalism. Despite cries of woke liberals taking over everything, the right wing media machine is alive and well. Right and far right leaning sources such as podcasts, social media influencers, and YouTube channels dominate our digital landscape and our airwaves. We are being spoon fed propaganda from all directions. Americans choose what is easy and loud over what is complex and true. It’s exasperating.

All of these things bring us to Thanksgiving 2024 and the prospect of sitting across the table from friends and family we once loved and respected who gleefully rejoice in their chosen candidate, who as we speak, plans the mass deportation of millions of human beings. Spreading lies about Haitian immigrants that led to violence and bomb threats was not a deal breaker. Hosting a rally filled with white nationalists calling Puerto Ricans garbage and stating that America is for Americans only was not a deal breaker. Dehumanizing trans people and other members of the LGBTQIA+ community was not a deal breaker. Being convicted on 34 felony counts, held civilly liable for sexual assault, and inciting an insurrection were not deal breakers. 

For far too long in this country we have looked the other way, brushed it off, or stayed silent when people around us make racist, sexist, homophobic comments. We feared rocking the boat at the expense of losing relationships or even jobs. This election has changed everything. We are looking down the barrel of a gun, faced with the very real prospect of ignorance and hate collapsing our economy and stripping away hard won rights and freedoms. Our president elect is currently choosing an administration filled with television personalities, sex offenders, and sycophants whose only qualifications are undying loyalty to a raging narcissist. It’s a fucking dystopian nightmare. 

I do not judge those who chose not to show up to the table at all this holiday season. Those who close doors and sever ties and draw hard lines in the sand. When Uncle Bob insists that it’s just politics and we have to agree to disagree after being presented with hard facts and you shove your chair back and yell, “We can agree to disagree about cranberry sauce not human rights and your politics are in fact a reflection of your morals - get out of my house” - I will not hold it against you.

We have to come together for the sake of humanity and the future, but coming together does not mean compromising on who is afforded rights. It’s not pie. Equal rights for others does not mean less rights you. Timothy Snyder’s first rule in his book On Tyranny is “Do Not Obey in Advance”. Do not give up and lie down in the face of authoritarianism, even when it feels like the whole world has already complied. 

In the midst of this unfathomably dark shit storm, I choose to lean into the words of Jewel, “We’ll fight, not out of spite but someone must stand up for what’s right. Cause where there is a man who has no voice, there ours shall go singing”. 

Wherever you find yourself this Thanksgiving, know that you are not alone. I believe our country and our humanity are worth fighting for and there are 75 million plus people who feel the same way. Your voice matters, your heart matters, your hope matters. 

Today I leave you with this nugget of light - a new organization fighting the good fight. 

Chorus

“CHORUS is a collective of impactful voices coming together to end the far-right’s domination of online conversation. CHORUS will organize, support, and grow strong online media by building the infrastructure necessary to retake power for everyday Americans and marginalized communities. With expanded reach and new programming, CHORUS is scaling to meet people where they are and to normalize progressive values and ideas in the mainstream.

Supporting CHORUS means supporting independent online voices and building the next era for online news and conversation.”

To donate or find more information including where to follow them on social media click here.

Thanks for reading! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you to pass it on.

Conk’s Brain is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You can also share the love and buy me a cup of coffee on Ko-fi.