Project 35

As I puff out my beard, I think about the decisions that Abraham Lincoln and many of the previous presidents of the United States had to make. I try to …

As I puff out my beard, I think about the decisions that Abraham Lincoln and many of the previous presidents of the United States had to make. I try to imagine what it must have felt like in making the decision to abolish slavery or to send soldiers into a civil war, one that pit brothers against each other. I wonder how he was able to sleep at night knowing that no matter which decision he made, thousands of people were going to die.

Fast forward to today. Our elected officials are making decisions that are going to save some lives and lose others. No matter which decision they make, people are going to die. If they choose to keep us in quarantine, then people may die from domestic abuse, suicide, drug overdose, alcohol overdose, and other causes. If they let us go back to work, then people are going to die from COVID-19, car accidents, and other causes. No matter which decision they make, people are going to die because of their decision.

I don’t know how politicians are able to do it. Maybe they aren’t able to do it, if doing it means keep an open heart. How do they make such decisions and not feel the heavy weight on their soul? How do they open up the newspapers or social media and withstand the barrage of attacks and blame they will face? Back in the day of Lincoln, if his decisions led to someone dying, he may never hear from the family who lost the loved one—today, our leaders may see a video personally addressed to them of the family bawling their eyes out.

I think a lot of times I believe that we just don’t have the right people in politics. That the “corrupt” ones are those who have the courage to enter, the rest of us “good” ones not participating. I’ve started to change my mind about this over the years. I asked a guy who ran for state senate in Alaska as an independent, “What kind of emotional support did you have?” He replied, “My wife, my kids…to be honest, I was totally unprepared for the emotional toll it would take.”

I have a friend who studies the impact of open voting in the legislature and he had a similar realization. He said that most of the people who focus on political reform think that we elect the wrong people and if we just elected the right people, then governance would be strong. He argues that it’s less about who gets into office and what happens to them when they’re there. The intimidation, bullying, brubery as he calls it (the sibling of bribery), and other emotional attacks that eat at their soul.

As we continue trying to overcome COVID-19, politicians all around the world are going to be making very difficult decisions, decisions most of us could never fathom making. While I will probably still feel very angry, annoyed, and confused by many of the decisions, I hope that I at least pause to recognize that these are human beings trying their best, with whatever tools and resources they’ve accumulated over the years. They may not be perfect, but they’re trying, and I’m grateful for that.

I don’t know how to feel when I watch videos about politics. I’m starting to notice that I absorb the emotions of the people speaking. For example, when I watch …

I don’t know how to feel when I watch videos about politics. I’m starting to notice that I absorb the emotions of the people speaking. For example, when I watch someone who seems to be angry, frustrated, and filled with vitriol, I find that my heart races, I start to pump up my chest, and mimic the emotional state. When I watch someone talk about the news in a calm, slow state, I often slow down, finding my body relax, sometimes to the point of getting bored or wanting to fall asleep (or more likely, change the channel).

I just watched a video that a friend sent to me and the speaker was talking about how people in the mainstream media will often use very loaded language, overplaying and drowning out the facts of what is happening. In this specific case, he was talking about a journalist who claimed that Trump were a fascist, a madman, and deranged. I as well don’t like language like that—I think it hides what one is feeling subjectively by judging someone “objectively.” Trump is not a madman, per say, but he makes the speaker most likely feel mad, feel confused, feel lots of things.

However, where I often get confused in these videos is that the one speaker will accuse the other speaker of doing almost the same thing. This guy’s videos use a lot of loaded language towards the mainstream media, one such example being “falling into their trap”—it implies that the mainstream media is hunting you as they would an animal and they have set up a trap to catch you, and presumably, kill you.

The challenge is that speaking with a different emotional state—whether calm, relaxed, full of joy—doesn’t seem to drive as much attention. To get attention on an internet full of people vying for attention, one almost has to pump up the seriousness of it, add to the drama. So everything is “breaking news” or “devastating” or something else that may evoke fear or anger, typically. And one of the best ways to do that is to say there is an enemy that has evil intentions against you.

But perhaps this is me saying that these people are evil. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend in Oakland, California a few years back. She said, “Jim, I’m tired of giving people evil genius credit.” Genius.

I don’t think these speakers are trying to instill this fear in us, I think they just feel it. I think being in the media or being in anything related to politics these days can bring a lot of pain and trauma. Back in the day, if I wrote something in the newspaper, I may have heard some feedback about how people didn’t like it, but it would take maybe 24 hours or more, because maybe it would come in letter form. Today, seconds after posting something, I can be attacked by millions of people and praised by other millions. Every part of an article I write could be dissected and picked apart for being good or bad and proving that I’m full of love or full of hate. It seems like it may cause so much misery.

So I want to pause to remember that being in the public eye can bring a lot of pain these days and to respect and honestly appreciate those who have the courage to put themselves out there. I may not agree with what you say but I appreciate that you’re willing to say it.

Now let’s see if I do it more.

I feel afraid that I’ll overwhelm people. Sometimes this means I feel worried that I’ll be too much. Sometimes it means I feel worried I’ll say too much. In this …

I feel afraid that I’ll overwhelm people. Sometimes this means I feel worried that I’ll be too much. Sometimes it means I feel worried I’ll say too much.

In this case, it’s the fear of saying too much, especially online—that I will speak or write too frequently that people will get fed up with seeing me post all the time or that I will speak or write about something really intense and people will get overwhelmed by the emotion.

I think, at the moment, I fear the former. I don’t want to be the person that floods someone’s feed with so many posts that they don’t want to receive. The challenge, really, is not knowing who wants to receive what. Each platform has a different vibe to it, where people connect for different reasons. On Facebook, it’s often because people are friends. On Twitter, it’s often to follow what the person says, typically about one or a few topics. On WhatsApp, it’s often friends again. On LinkedIn, it’s often business connections. So if I start posting multiple times per day about politics on a platform where people just added me to be their friend, it may push many people away. Likewise, if I start posting multiple times per day about emotions on a platform where people just added me to follow about politics, then they may be annoyed and leave as well.

Unfortunately, many of these platforms don’t provide ways to control how much we’re seeing of the other person’s posts. Email may be the best way. In email, I can forward all of someone’s emails to a specific folder so that I receive all of them and can open them whenever I want, and yet they don’t flood my main inbox. In Facebook, I can mute someone, but that means to read anything they post, I would have to visit their page, which feels farther away than a different folder in my inbox. On Twitter, I can mute, and again, have to visit their page. I imagine it’s similar for the other platforms.

There doesn’t seem to be a semi-mute, or a way to do it sometimes but not all the times—like muting them on Mondays, but not Fridays. In person, we can avoid people on certain days and see them on others. We can walk away from a conversation and walk back when we’re ready. We can do a variety of things to mitigate how much we’re hearing from someone without having to almost completely cutting them off.

Maybe this isn’t as big of a deal as I imagine. Maybe some people are craving for me to post me, hear more from me and more of me. Maybe those who aren’t will find out ways to mitigate how much they receive. Maybe I can give them tips on how to mitigate it if they want. Maybe I’m just making excuses so that I don’t put more of myself out there, the real fear being that people will know who I am on a much deeper level. That could definitely be it.

Well, I’ve written three times per day so far, so people will see a lot of me!

The other day I said that sometimes I’ll say to myself: “I don’t know…and I don’t need to know,” and then my body relaxes. While it’s true that I do …

The other day I said that sometimes I’ll say to myself: “I don’t know…and I don’t need to know,” and then my body relaxes. While it’s true that I do that sometimes, I think more often than not I get stuck in the “I don’t know…and I need to know.” In these cases, if I can’t figure it out, I want someone who can, or seems to be able to do so.

I just finished talking with a friend about an organization to which we belong. One of the things that frustrates me the most about the organization is that I feel uncertain on which direction it wants to go. I feel confident that some people one to go one way, others want to go another way, and I want to go yet a third way. I try to sit with the uncertainty and hope that the people leading the organization will choose a common path and go in one direction, and when I don’t see that happening, I try to jump into the leadership position.

It’s not that I love being the leader—actually, many times I would much prefer not to be—it’s just that I feel so frustrated when the leader doesn’t lead in a clear direction. I can remember when I worked at a co-working space helping to organize events. I didn’t want to lead at all—I just wanted the organizer to tell me where to put the chairs and tables. When certain organizers would come up to me and say, “Jim, put the chairs and tables wherever you think is good,” I would often get annoyed, because I didn’t want to have to make those decisions—I just wanted to be the muscles for someone else’s brain.

I can see this happening in quarantine right now and how frustrated I have been with political leadership in this country. I, like many others, have been feeling a lot of uncertainty over what will happen in terms of our health, jobs, economy, travel restrictions, and more. I keep trying my best to breathe into it, tell myself that I don’t need to know, and control what’s within my control. And yet I still want someone to have more clarity and show it to me, so that I don’t have to do so much internal processing.

So, again, when this happens, a part of me almost wants to jump up and take the wheel, steering the ship in a clear direction. It’s not that I want to lead so much, it’s that I want someone to lead and believe that no one is, or maybe that I don’t feel confident in their ability to lead.

I sometimes hesitate to talk about this because I think for much of my life people have said (or I’ve said to myself) that I’m too young or too inexperienced to be the leader of a group; that wanting to be the leader means that I’m just too entitled, that I need to work up the ranks and wait my turn.

I just happen to think that I can be good at the skills of telling the overall narrative, explaining confusing topics, and showing confidence in a clear path for a group to go. Sometimes. Not always, but when I do, and I see that lack, I believe I want to be in that position.

I like leading but I also like when others lead…when they do it well.

What happened to zoning out? Ya know, just staring off into space, there but not there? Perhaps you call it spacing out, or some other term for that blank stare …

What happened to zoning out? Ya know, just staring off into space, there but not there? Perhaps you call it spacing out, or some other term for that blank stare into nothing.

I just woke up from a nap, one in which I actually felt my body relax deeply, muscles and bones melting into the bed. Now, as I’ve been sitting here, I found myself staring out the window, looking at the leaves and branches of a little bush rattle in the wind, blue sky in the background. Even those words are hard to evoke, as really I was just staring at it, or even, through it.

I think that with my trusty phone by my side, I’ve often averted zoning out. At any moment, I can unlock it and travel to any part of the virtual world, seeing faces, engaging in conversations, or doing whatever I see fit. To look at the phone, however, requires focus. I must train my eyes on a small screen a few feet in front of my face. I must hold my hands in a certain position, activating my fingers to navigate what’s there. Most of the time, using the phone is a very active exercise.

I miss the days of seeing people space out. Being at the doctor’s office and seeing so many people just looking off into nowhere. Being on the bus and seeing people just in a peaceful zombie state. Being at the bar and seeing people just contemplating/processing their lives.

I wonder if we put too much pressure on ourselves to be always on, always focused. I know I sure do. I think that if I’m not focused then I must be not doing enough—not thinking enough, not planning enough, not researching enough. Yet, what if zoning out, unfocusing (defocusing?), helps me focus even more strongly when I need to? What if zoning out actually provides more creativity than trying to focus?

I believe there are many benefits to zoning out and that most of them seem unexplored because our culture may find it to be a “lazy” thing to do, and goodness, we Americans think lazy is a bad thing.

I’m not sure about all that but I’m sure that I miss it. I enjoy just staring blankly, it’s almost as if I’m sleeping while awake. Let’s me recover my strength to pay attention, when I need to, and soak up the world as is, without thinking about it.

Ahhhhhh.