Conk’s Brain Podcast

Pain is temporary.

On this sunny 4th of July morning in the year 2024, my dogs are nervously biting their toenails as fireworks intermittently explode all around us (this will only continue in fervor and intensity as the day wears on). I feel no joy or sense of celebratory enthusiasm, but am instead battling what feels like a weeks long panic attack. In the midst of all this, I stumbled upon a quote from the self-proclaimed illustrator with yellow hair Katie Abey:

“Shoutout to anyone who is currently using a great percentage of their energy on keeping a tiny flame of hope alight every single day while a shitstorm of uncertainty and heaviness swirls around them.”

I’ve bolded this in Heading style 4 as it seemed the only appropriate way to convey the magnitude of this message, because damn, it is a shitstorm out there right now. As a former high school English teacher who taught both The Diary of Anne Frank and Night by Elie Wiesel, I’m currently witnessing some deeply uncomfortable parallels. The word “unprecedented” has been bandied about so much in the last year that it sometimes feels like we jumped the track somewhere and are now living in an alternate time line.

As I type this, my chest is tight, my head hurts, and I’m feeling nauseous. Adding a chronic and persistent state of anxiety to my list of medical conditions has done me no favors. I can’t keep going like this, something has to give. How then, do I stay sane while the world around me seems to be falling apart? How do we as a collective prevent ourselves from losing hope and spiraling down the proverbial drain?

I’ve been finding little nuggets of wisdom in the stacks of books procured from my local library as of late (might as well read everything I can while these precious institutions still exist). A particularly poignant insight stuck out to me this morning and inspired this very post. It’s at the very end of the chapter Harbor Lights from A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence by Mary Pipher:

“I willed myself to remember everything and to cache it deep in my memory. I never wanted the slightest detail to disappear. That night I taught myself the skill of storing moments of revelation and joy. It is a useful skill in a world filled with at least as much shadow and sunlight.”

Strangely powerful isn’t it? The idea of deliberately holding onto the moments of joy and beauty in life, stowing them away in our brain like little parcels to be unwrapped in moments of bleak darkness. In times of uncertainty, fear, and grief taking care of ourselves can’t be put on a back burner. Tending to our mental, physical, and emotional health is imperative.

Even when our resources feel like they are precious few and we are barely clinging to the scraps of our own humanity as we struggle to balance our responsibilities and fears with our sense of self - even then we must persist. We must dig deep and conjure up those memories of joy and revelation. We must create those moments in the still small hours before the morning light, in the nooks and crannies of our hectic lives. Moments of joy and their memories are what will sustain us when the weight of the world feels to heavy to bear.

Read good books, wear the fancy dress on a random Tuesday, take a walk outside and inhale deeply, feel the sun on your face. Start a gratitude journal and record even the tiniest things that bring you joy. Write letters to your friends, call your mom, have an impromptu tea party in the park. Be wild and weird defiantly. Make no apologies for nurturing your spirt and letting the inconsequential things fall away. Your happiness is worth fighting for; making and preserving these beautiful memories is worth fighting for.

I have no doubt that I will be reminding myself of these truths over and over in the coming days. I will bookmark my own writing and come back to it in the moments I succumb to hopelessness. I will earmark the quotes and passages from other authors that stoke my headstrong spirit. I will cultivate the art of remembrance. I will encourage others to lean into their joy. Dear reader, it is up to us to keep the fire burning and stoke our neighbors embers when we see them losing light. Paraphrasing the words of Katie Abey, stand strong in that shitstorm and keep that flame of hope alight 🔥

It starts as a hum

Social media would have us believe that literally anyone can achieve anything they set their mind to and follow it up with a series of aspirational pictures about their now perfect lives and the explosion of delirious happiness that comes from living your dreams every single day for the rest of eternity. As much as I love the idea of cultivating positivity, this just isn’t an attainable reality for most of us (at least not in the way it’s being packaged on the internet).

I don’t think it’s fundamentally “bad” or “wrong” to curate your social media feed; we all do it to some degree for preservation of privacy, dignity, and self-worth. And if your aim is to grow a following, you have to offer your audience a sense of cohesiveness or purpose. These things aside, I do think it’s terribly unhealthy to use the scroll as a barometer of our own success (or failings). We are human and the human experience is too vastly complex and nuanced to encapsulate in a social media feed.

Does this mean that we should toss out our devices entirely and call this whole social experiment a wash? Maybe? Or maybe we can re-frame the way we utilize it and turn it to our advantage. Maybe it’s possible to be inspired by others without gaging our own happiness by their personal yardstick. Maybe we can challenge ourselves to think critically and realize that it’s a statistical improbability that everyone can achieve the exact same results in the exact same way. Maybe we cut our self some fucking slack and realize we’re doing the best we can with what we have.

I encourage you to place boundaries on your head space and your social media consumption with reckless abandon. Set a time limit for the scroll and then put your devices in a drawer (or download an app) to help you respect that limit. Write the following message on sticky notes and place them where they can’t be avoided: My worth is not measured by someone else’s social media feed. I am a beautiful and worthy human all on my own. Avoid the comments section if you’re in a vulnerable headspace, and if you’re feeling balanced, leave something kind or genuinely constructive or insightful. Be the light you wish to see in the world.

Social media, and the internet at large, has the potential to connect us, to create powerful bonds, to create a better world. It also has the power to show us the darkest parts of our nature. We can’t choose other people’s actions for them, but we can choose to be better versions of ourselves. I’ve been humming the lyrics to a song from Jewel’s 1998 album Spirit a lot as of late.

We've made houses for hatred

If you’ve never heard it before, I highly recommended giving it a listen. It’s a powerful reminder of the best and worst parts of our humanity and the responsibility we bare in creating a better world. For my own part, I’m going on an adventure of self re-discovery. Nurturing and healing the parts of myself that have been long neglected - figuring out what success and a good life actually looks like for me - hopefully spreading a little love and goodwill along the way.

I invite you to join the journey by subscribing to my substack, sharing with friends, and following me on Facebook and Instagram. I can’t promise that I’ll post every single day, but I can promise that I’ll be my fully weird, loud, unapologetic self. Life is too short not to get out there and carpe the damn diem. I’m going to do my very best to seize every opportunity I have to do just that. Big or small, joy is where we choose to find it.

I’m driving the struggle buss

My husband informed me this morning that my negativity has hit critical mass. It’s leaking out of me like toxic ooze and infecting everything in the house. I’m like GIR from Invader Zim eternally sitting in the passenger seat of my own life, enthusiastically singing the doom song on repeat. Despite my attempts to banish the scroll from my life, I keep crawling back to the blue light glow of my electronics getting sucked into the shit blender of The New York Times and endless episodes of Battlestar Galactica (neither of which highlights the more redeeming aspects of humanity).

Why? Why is it so damn hard to hold onto the voices of my better nature? Positivity, hope, enthusiasm. It’s probably two things: lack of executive function and a loathsome neglect of self-care. I know, “self-care” is quite the buzz word lately and people have been using and abusing it to sell everything from scented candles to butt firming patches (yes, it’s a thing - Google if you dare). But self-care is an incredibly simple and important concept that has somehow been buried in the shallow grave of capitalism and Puritanism. Most of us don’t have the foggiest idea what it actually means or where to start applying it to ourselves.

Look, it really is as straight forward as it sounds. Self-care means taking care of yourself, making sure that all of your needs are met so that you can live your own version of a happy and healthy life. So again, why is that so damn hard? Because people here in America (and I’m speaking for America because it’s where I’ve lived my entire life and I have no lived experience anywhere else) have been schooled since birth that we must earn the right to self-care. Our productivity determines our value, our worth.

Women especially must put the needs of every single person on the planet before their own. We march around touting mental exhaustion and physical breakdowns as a badge of honor. It’s like competing to see who can be the most selfless and the grand prize is collapsing in the hallway outside your classroom on lunch break (yes, I’m speaking from personal experience).

Add neurodiversity to the mix, and you’ve got a whole lot of people wandering around lost and confused, trying to figure out how to patch the holes of a sinking ship with duck tape. Someone please just tell us what were are doing wrong so we can do it right and fill up this vacuous black hole eating its way through our insides. But, and I emphasize the “but”, what if there isn’t actually anything wrong with us to begin with?

What if all of us, neurodivergent and neurotypical alike, are just navigating life with a handbook of arbitrary rules that weren’t even made to serve us? They were made to serve a system where the singular end goal is power and profit. That system doesn’t care if our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social needs are met. It doesn’t care about our individual hopes, dreams, and desires.

Do we really need subscriptions to five different streaming services? Do we need to buy all the things that show up in the constant barrage of ads on social media? Will these things ultimately make us happier or more fulfilled? Would we be better served taking an honest analysis of our actual needs, checking in on our own physical/emotional/mental/spiritual health? Maybe it’s time to start asking the harder questions and reflecting on how we can truly start practicing a little self-care.

I’m not even going to pretend that I have all the answers, but I do know that the blue light glow is no longer serving me. I believe that I’m worth fighting for, even if my body and brain aren’t up for the conventional corporate grind. My productivity does not determine my worth. I believe that there is no one right answer, and trying to find a cure all is a fools errand. But I also believe that despite the naysayers and the doom scroll, there is hope and beauty left in the world.

Today, I’m going to go sit on the back porch in the sunshine with my dogs for 15 minutes. I’m going to pick up some groceries for an evening meal that brings me joy, and hell or high water, I’m going to finish the introductory self-analysis section of Self Care: A Journal for Being Kind to Yourself.

I have faith that we can all find our way back to ourselves, that somewhere under the layers of time, cultural conditioning, and trauma there is a switch to turn off the doom song. Do something that makes you happy today. As the old Chinese proverb says, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.”

Don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat. My first memories - fingers over lips, Shhhhhhhhh. Tip toe tip toe in God’s house - Little girls are sugar and spice and silence. Smile, be friendly, don’t get in the way, Origami fold your dreams so tiny  they fit between the cracks. Bite your tongue until it bleeds, just remember to always hold it back. No one likes a girl who takes up too much space. But I never excelled at contortion. I was too tall, my feet too big. There was nothing tiny about me, all gangly limbs and too many words. Imagination bursting from the seams, Spilling out into the universe like an Arctic aurora across the night sky. I glittered, shimmered, burned with passion that colored all my dreams - Phosphorescent in my sleep. How could they hide a girl that glows? They always talked about burning bridges as if it were a bad thing, the worst thing. I guess they forgot that some of us can swim, or fly, or even take the road less traveled by. Oh, my darling, never let them tame your fire. Let the glow of all those burning bridges light the way.

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Joy is tricky, a complicated emotion tossed around like a hot potato from hand to hand. It's beautiful and full of promise, a bright birthday balloon swelling in your chest. But the thing about balloons is, they pop, Sometimes quite unexpectedly, and tattered pieces fall haphazardly to the ground. I suppose you could go your whole life, never trusting it, always questioning, waiting for the BANG. But where's the fun in that? Embrace the joy while it is swelling, growing forming a beautiful light air feeling, knowing that the let down is inevitable, but there will always be more balloons.

I’ve been digging through the archives of my old blog, which I laid to rest in June of 2023, and stumbled on this gem. At the time I was talking to an amazing art therapist through zoom. If you’ve never tried art therapy, I highly recommend it. There is something very primal and healing about digging to the very depths of your soul and letting everything you find there fall out as artistic expression. Sometimes the revelations are quite unexpected.

The following was originally published on 6/20/21 (my new annotations are in bold):

You ever have that moment where there are just too many decisions to make and you're suddenly paralyzed, stuck, unable to figure out what to do next so you just don't do anything? You play on your phone or binge watch Netflix wearing stretchy pants that still need washed because at least then you don't have to think about the looming pile of tasks that desperately need your attention, like now. You're not alone, you're not crazy, and we can totally get through this, trust me.     I'm sharing from inside an ADHD and anxiety brain, a body that has more bad days than good ones, and yet I still hold onto this unwavering optimism. [Even now on day 10 of an unexplained tension headache, that tinge of optimism is what keeps me crawling toward my 52 week writing goal]. I had a really interesting conversation with my therapist the other day about past trauma and daily struggles and the fact that I get worried a lot and am often looking for doom around every corner, and yet I still consider myself an optimist. And she said, "You absolutely are. It's the only way you have survived everything you've been through and are still able to love people."     It's so very true. I realized a very long time ago that people will always let you down, hurt you, disappoint you, because they are human and they screw up and learning to forgive and let go feels so much lighter than holding onto all that baggage. Don't get me wrong, some people and situations aren't right for you - they don't feed you, so you walk away, and it's hard and it hurts, but that doesn't mean that you don't keep looking for the next right person, right situation on the horizon. I just keep fumbling imperfectly through each day, doing the very best I can knowing that some days are going to be amazing and some are going to suck, but moment to moment we grow and evolve, and that's what makes us beautiful [and resilient as hell].     So yeah, I might get overwhelmed and let the dishes pile up while I eat take out nachos in front of the TV, because we all have those seasons, but the best thing I can do, the best we can do is to love ourselves anyway. To allow ourselves the moments of feeling overwhelmed or stuck, and then to sit with those emotions and realize that we're human and that's ok [I cannot emphasize this enough. There are plenty of people in the world who aren’t rooting for you, don’t let your self be one of them. Make the conscious decision that your self love is immovable and non-negotiable.] Today I'm writing my blog, I'm making a list of absolutely everything I need to get done and then circling only the things that need my immediate attention, like feeding the cats, and then I'm going swimming with my friends, because today, that's what I need to get unstuck.    It's way too easy to get caught up in what we think we want or should want or how everyone else seems to be succeeding where we are failing, but the truth is none of that really matters. What do you want for your life? What fuels you, drives you, makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning? That's what you should be chasing. And if you haven't found that yet, what are you waiting for? It sounds cliché, but it's so true, we have this one life, this one amazing life, and we get to choose every day how we spend it. So stop beating yourself up for getting stuck. Acknowledge it and then move forward. Wash a load of laundry, watch a video from the training course you just bought, call your best friend, go swimming [or let yourself have this moment of being stuck and know that it will pass]. Focus on living in this moment, because that's the only one we are guaranteed.

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On my last trip to Kansas City, I picked up a book called “Create a Poem: Writing Prompts for Poets”.

I was directed to create a poem about “family” and to use the following words: tree, roots, ancestors, mother, father, children, home, name, tribe, clan.

Here is the result of putting pen to paper:

These roots run deep in tainted soil.

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