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Emotional Work Internet Culture

Day 293 and A Good Cry

I’m a cryer. I hear the swell of trumpet from the Star Trek theme song and I’ll start welling up. I’ll read a poignant passage in a cheesy airplane novel and my chest will tighten with emotion. My eyes will tear up when I tell a friend that I’m proud of them. I’ve found myself sniffling over a set of emotional text messages. I love a good cry.

I think I’m a cryer because I bottle up my emotions otherwise. I’ll share feelings in public but the real deep down core emotions are harder for me to express openly. The fear and hurt and sadness that make up the core of my emotional unconscious take some coaxing and a lot of psychological safety to get out into the open.

One of the reasons I find social media so much fun is it is a cesspool of emotions. Much of shitposting is just rage and anger expressed with a joke. And the shitposts that are sad are often told with a kind of vulnerability that I more commonly associate with 12 step meetings or group therapy. Internet culture has become an escape valve for emotions we didn’t know we even had.

The more I see the negatives that comes with keeping emotions bottled up the more I appreciate ways to let them out. If it is a good cry then I’ll take whatever brings it on. If you need something stronger than I highly recommend a light dose of Internet emotions. Just don’t let it overwhelm. Ease into the shallow end with an anonymous shitposting account first.

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Emotional Work

Day 291 and Self Control

Self control is a form of self abuse for me. Early in life I learned that I could control others by controlling my emotions. Instead of showing my feelings, I’d distort my emotions into whatever got me attention from adults. That’s pretty clever for a child, but is the road to misery once you’ve grown up.

Alas I’ve kept up the habit of self control. It might not look like it from social media or press narratives, but I self censor a lot. I’m often conscious of what others will like or dislike and I will edit my feelings if I feel it isn’t to my benefit. What can I say, I am still hurting from feeling like I wasn’t loved as a child by my father. Same old story that everyone has in their lives (well maybe for you it was your mother but same idea).

But it hurts to keep your emotions inside. Eventually it will turn into pain or sickness. Not that I’m saying all pain or illness is caused by emotions (that’s some bullshit) but the mind body connection is real. The point is it’s only hurting myself to exert so much control over my emotions.

I need to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable with other people and how they feel about me. The control I have is largely a fantasy. It’s not that it’s not possible to change how others perceive you. Hell I’ve picked professions where that’s practically the main skill set. I love the perception game. Public relations, fashion, even venture capital are all games you win by building a good reputation.

Having a good reputation doesn’t mean turning off honesty. If anything reputations are built on being trustworthy. And that generally means saying what you mean and meaning what you say. So I’ve got to stop abusing myself by choking off emotions I don’t think others will like. Maybe it’s a gender thing. I learned pretty quickly no one likes an angry woman. But sometimes I get angry. Whatever excuse I’m using for hiding unpleasant emotions has got to go.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

290 and Self Care

I’ve feel like I should have an entire category on the blog dedicated to “maintenance” as I’ve got loads of posts on my struggles to balance the activities of staying alive with well, the rest of my life.

All of the activities that go into keeping a human alive and functional are so damn time consuming. How does anyone ever get anything done when so much of life is dedicated to keeping our meat sacks from spiraling out? I’m pretty sure these are the things that actually make up life and I’m supposed to treasure this time in my body. But until I become as enlightened as the Buddha, I feel like this whole embodiment thing is just getting in the way of what I should be doing. My therapist likes to call this “human doing” instead of “human being” and I don’t love the joke.

I had a terrific day of doing things this Sunday. I woke up at 7am and didn’t finish all of the various routines and self care activities till 1pm. I went for an hour long walk (which is pleasurable since sunshine and mountain air but also low impact cardiovascular activity) I lifted weights (alright fine, I love squats). I meditated (mindfulness doesn’t count when you quantify it). I showered, shaved & washed my hair. I did the grocery shopping and meal planning for the week. I did three loads of laundry. I made lunch. I cleaned up. I juggled supplements (I’ve got a spreadsheet to track them all with 8am, 10am & 11am slots) which are completely separate from my medications (I have 7am and noon spots for those). And only then at 1pm did I finally get a chance to settle into work. There was so much work just to get to work.

And while I know all of those things that keep me balanced and healthy are the stuff of life, I also resent their necessity. I have elaborate fantasies about what other people get done with their time. Other people don’t need to exercise, meditate, take vitamins, or watch their nutrition right? Well alright I said it was a fantasy. If you also spent your Sunday doing chores and self care it would make me feel better to know that.

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Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 284 and My Birthday

I’ve not enjoyed celebrating my birthday the past few years. There hasn’t felt like a lot of joy to go around which hinders my appetite for celebrating. I was struggling with my health and then the planet was struggling with a pandemic, and frankly I was just too sad to see my way into being happy about a birthday.

Not that I’ve traditionally been a big believer in birthdays. Some people love them and I find that lovely. I think it’s nice to celebrate another turn around the sun but it’s not generally been the mile marker for my own life. I’ve looked to other markers like the new year or the start of a new project. This post is title day 284 because on New Years Day I committed to write on essay every single day. But I don’t entirely write off birthdays. I do have little rituals that I enjoy for my birthday, and I was relieved that they felt joyful again this year.

I like to call my mother at precisely 7:14am California time as that was when I was born. I have always felt like my birthday was as much about her as it was about me. She brought me into this world, so taking a beat for the exact moment of my birth with my mother has felt like the most important ritual.

We were texting before the clock turned as we are on mountain time now. But at 8:14 MTN, I turned the text into a call and we got to enjoy the moment together.

It’s been hard to find the right ways to spend time with people as the various worries of the pandemic added rules and concerns to interactions. But today we just celebrated. I had lunch with my mother and my husband. We got an enormous sushi lunch. And then a surprise chocolate cake. And while this was all decadent it was also normal. It was normal to have a fancy meal and cake on your birthday with your family. I’d like to have more normal because that means more joy. And that’s my wish on my birthday. That we all have more normal joys.

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Emotional Work

Day 278 and Overshooting

I have been feeling terrific. That means I’ve been able to do a lot more. But it’s also one of my tendencies to overshoot my capacity. Workaholism, like any addiction, is something I’ll have for the rest of my life. Being in recovery for it means recognizing I could relapse.

I feel a bit of that overextended twitchy feeling at the moment. That jittery adrenaline fueled vibe that proceeds a crash isn’t something I’ve allowed myself to feel for several years as frankly I was worried I’d go on a bender. A bender for me is perceived as societally approved. Look at that work ethic!

So this is me recognizing that I feel like I could go over the edge and I’m not going to do it. The temptation I had to find something to prolong the adrenaline of my winning work streak is heavy. I have a number of topics I’d like to write about today. I’ve got to do lists with tempting targets. But I’m not going to overshoot. I’ve written my paragraphs. I’ll tag it. I’ll send it out into social media and then I’m going to watch some trashy tv. Hold

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Emotional Work

Day 242 and Feelings Come First

Someone told me today that “feelings always come first” even if you’ve convinced yourself otherwise. This struck me as a very painful truth as I’ve come to rely on the very adult concept of rationalizing the capacity of intellect. Mind over matter might be possible but mind over feelings is folly. Of course it’s just ego to suppose your great mind is capable of overcoming your feelings.

Even if you don’t realize what you are feeling, your feelings indeed do come first. That’s in some sense even worse. Your life careering from one action to the next while you’ve numbed yourself to why you take the actions that you do. That’s a waking nightmare. Whether you like it or not, your feelings dictate everything even if you are convinced of your own rationality. Better to let your feelings emerge and understand them.

I get the temptation to rely on intellect and reason. Feelings are messy. But humans are feeling machines with the capacity for reasons not rational machines with the capacity for feelings (that would be Data from Star Trek and he sadly isn’t real). It’s a nice bonus that we can reason but our feelings come first.

The caveat to this is that feelings are not facts. Just because you feel a certain way doesn’t make it objective reality. That’s why forcing your feelings onto someone else isn’t helpful. It might not be true in consensus reality. But if you can share why you are having the feeling you might be able to come to a common understanding.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 240 and Working for The Weekend

I forgot how great it feels to be so enthusiastic about work that it absorbs every viable hour of your weekend. I used to feel this way about work all the time, but as I’ve struggled to adapt to working with a chronic illness some of the joy got stripped away. It became all about juggling self care, rest and moderation. And I hadn’t found my balance yet.

It isn’t so much that work didn’t hold my attention, on the contrary, rather I became afraid of letting myself get too absorbed. If I overdid it and missed a medication or a meal or even a sign that I needed a break I’d find myself in pain. I’d crash if I wasn’t careful to watch my time and energy.

I would get into awful start stop cycles that gave me the worst of both worlds. I struggled to sustain a flow state because I was constantly vigilant for needing to take care of myself. And I’d beat myself up when I needed the rest which made it even more challenging to sustain the health I felt guilty for not having.

“ I feel bad. I’m going to take today off. Ok but make sure you feel so guilty about it you don’t get any real rest.” Dino Comics

But something has shifted for me recently. The fear and doubt that has hung over my attention is lifting. I am beginning to trust that I can work and break without hurting myself. I can accept breaks more readily than I used to. I don’t feel as if I need to be as vigilant to watch for signs of hurting my body.

Today I was able to enjoy multiple flow states. I worked with a founder on their fundraise. I worked on some writing for my fund Chaotic. I briefly felt overwhelmed, and while I did panic for a moment I stopped and rested. I asked for some help. The problem got solved. And now I feel satisfaction at a good work say. No pain. No crash. No exhaustion. No guilt for taking breaks. Just the quiet joy of having achieved my goals for the day.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 215 and Leisure

I’ve got a bad relationship with work. Since I was a teenager I’ve been compulsive about the idea of hard work. I don’t know how I got to have a problem with the Protestant Work Ethic but it seems likely I developed it long before I read Max Weber and found it’s comforting rationalizations about work’s inherent morality.

I’m fascinated by things like commodity aesthetics, the history of consumption, and theories of leisure & status. Partially because I got a kick out of supposing I was a better person than those wretched lazy types. I wasn’t so sophisticated to sneer “rentier” class as kid but I was well on my way to veneration of hard work and productive capital. An economics degree finished the job.

This was compounded by growing up in a family that worshipped the culture of Silicon Valley. The innovation of computers and the people that worked all hours to bring their creativity to the world were the most important people on the planet. They hadn’t quite crossed the cultural rubicon of power that the tech industry has now, but the power of making the future was hard work and heady stuff even before it captured the mainstream. I wanted to change the world like the people my father admired

There was a time when computing and automation raised questions of a new era of leisure. If we could move all of the work we’d previously done manually to automated systems perhaps humans could ascend to The Culture of Ian M Bank’s novels. In a distant future of abundance, sentient AIs run industry and production, so humanity can do, well, whatever it likes.

But we haven’t achieved a post scarcity world. If anything accumulating resources and showing you’ve done it by the rules of the meritocracy makes hard work even more crucial. You’ve got to play and win two games. You’ve got to make the money and show you’ve demonstrated the proper status while doing it. It seems like leisure is losing the battle quite soundly.

I’ve been pushing all year to get back to hard work. I’ve worked hard at my health. I’ve committed myself to biohacking. But really what if the obsession with working myself to the bone is killing me? I’ve been completely relaxed as I prepared for a medical procedure this week. I’ve never felt better. Which forced me to ask myself if maybe I better come to live leisure like the way I have loved work. It might be a much better life for me. The future sentient AIs might approve as well.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 211 and Laughter

I miss being able to enjoy time out in the world. You know that feeling when you’ve spent the last two hours at your favorite bar with your friends just talking about nothing? The ease that you feel being with your community and enjoying being together? The casual camaraderie and easy laughter that comes from no expectations time together has been lost to many of us. I miss it.

It doesn’t seem like those days are coming back for some of us in the near future. If I give too much thought to the impact of things like the pandemic I think I just spike my cortisol. That’s a stress hormone. The stress of reactivity is killing all of us. Constant panic over floods, heatwaves, outbreaks and all their downstream effects is overwhelming our capacity to live. And yes, granted a more globalized war with a changing climate is capable of killing us. But we don’t have to let futility do us in early. We can find our way into solutions. But only if we stay alive to do it.

I’ve been coping with apocalyptic nihilism by shitposting on Twitter. Yes I realize this is a popular upper class pundit class past time. I’ve got some self awareness. But it’s also the only thing that mimics being out socializing with your friends. And I think that’s worth a lot. Shitposting is good for the soul.

You don’t have to shitpost, but if you cannot find a way to lower your stress response, as we say in crypto, ngmi. Everything may be going to hell but you aren’t there yet. You’ve got a life to live, people to love and who love you, and a chance to be happy.

Fuck cortisol. It’s not good for you. That’s some metabolic poisoning eating away at you and you chose to let it kill you. There is no reason to give yourself unnecessary stress. Some stress is good. It makes you resilient. But stuff you opt into? Fuck that noise it’s only going to make you sick.

And despite whatever family trauma circuit you may be playing out in your head, YOU DO NOT DESERVE THAT SHIT. No I’m seriously disease and suffering aren’t a moral good. Everything might be rough but you need to find a laugh. It might just save your life.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 205 and Saying It Outloud

No one would accuse me of being keeping my opinions to myself. I generally say what I mean and mean what I say. I find filtering my thoughts to be exhausting. It’s not that I think manners are not important. I think it can often be a great kindness not to blurt out every thought. Being considerate and not imposing your every thought onto others is part of living in society. But I’m learning that you have to be clear about who you are. Keeping your truth inside will kill your soul.

So it has come as a surprise to me that I am keeping a lot to myself. Mostly emotional and personal things. I still generally go straight to taking a public stand on politics, professional topics and cultural issues. But there are areas where I just don’t have that bravery. Where I haven’t uttered how I really feel to anyone.

I’m working through how to discuss some of these truths out loud. How does it feel to tell friends and family that I just don’t have the same desires, preferences, or mores as they do? Generally I’ve found acceptance. Even some of the more “out there” stuff has been ok. No one has rejected me. If anything people loved me because of it and not in spite of it.

Obviously I’m not in a place where I want to broadcast most of it in public. But I’m slowly realizing that saying things out loud makes me happier. To know my own truth and have it be clear is a great relief. Especially for areas where I feared it might implode my life. Or where it might hurt someone I love.

If you’ve got a truth you are keeping close to your heart consider sharing it with those you’ve already trusted with your heart. If they genuinely love you for you they don’t want you changing yourself to fit some idea of what they want. You may be causing suffering to yourself for nothing. The editing of desires, goals or preferences only limits your life.