My best friend’s birthday completely escapes my notice, but that isn’t what tells me the first week of October has ended up feeling a lot like most of September; rather it is the late Sunday evening button where we both laugh about, before we agree that, Life, sometimes, is defined by its relentlessness, which is in turn less a matter of good or bad, so much as one of constancy.
Earlier that day I had chatted with two of my neighbors in the laundry room about the phenomena of having lost two items in my apartment during the past week. The first was the remote control for my Roku player, the second was the set of mailbox keys for a friend’s home which I had been tending to while they were out of town. The remote was ultimately easy enough to replace, and while the keys haven’t turned up, I (luckily?) lost them at the end of the assignment, as it were, and since her actual house keys weren’t attached, the safety of her home was never in jeopardy, and the duties for which I had been hired, were more or less executed as desired. “It could have been so much worse,” as they say, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about having lost her mailbox keys. Nor any less mystified as to how I could have lost them (and the remote) in a studio apartment I keep notoriously tidy.
“Maybe it’s the second moon,” I offer up as explanation. The second moon has been my explanation for a lot lately.
“Maybe it’s just that you’re getting old,” says one of my neighbors, who is much younger than me.
“Maybe it’s elves who live in the walls,” offers the other neighbor. “Or like… a derelict who creeps into your apartment at night when you’re asleep.”
So anyway, things have been… honestly, not that bad it just feels like it’s all taking a lot of energy, and I hate to say it but that’s partly because I know, and remind myself constantly, that it could be worse. I could be living in a flood zone that’s been devastated by Hurricane Helene for instance, or I could be any of the tech employees at the dinner party I attended Saturday who were facing industry wide layoffs that never seem to be ending. Yes, I have postponed a loan payment for two months in a row now, and yes I am just completely ignoring another one, but I have employment and it keeps a roof over my head, food on my table, and recently it covered some luxury items too as I sort of went on a ticket purchasing sweep last week, trying to ensure my October would feel “full.” Yes, I have no savings in my savings account, but I have a retirement fund and that’s apparently more than most of the folks my age can say. Yes, several places in the world are engulfed in violent conflict but so far, at least, my own country remains peaceful. More or less. You know, by American standards. And if we have now entered the final 30 day count down for an election many people feel will basically define what happens next for the vast majority of us, well… we all knew it would happen eventually, right? I mean, “this too shall pass” applies to everything. Not just the stuff we want to pass.
Trying to find things in the present to help ensure that passage of stressful or anxious time doesn’t ultimately feel like a total loss has been one of the ongoing challenges of my forties. Now, with a month until my official “you are now in your late 40s birthday” I have been trying to really focus on those things I do have control over, including the ability to “fill the jar” as my current therapist refers to substantiating one’s life with as many positive or additive experiences as possible, rather than trying to just avoid the negative ones.
“Think of the bad stuff- your trauma, the world’s, various challenges, imbalances, etc.- as pennies in a jar,” he tells me. “And think of everything else that happens, or you do or experience, as dimes, nickels, silver dollars, etc. Assuming you can never get rid of the pennies in the jar, you can still balance them out, or even obscure them, with the other coins. Once you accept the pennies are part of the whole mix, it can be helpful to think of how we make our lives better as more about what we add to our lives, rather than trying to “fix” or remove the parts of it that might not be fixable or removable in the conventional sense.”
“So, like, the pennies aren’t going anywhere,” I feedback to him, “but you don’t have to sit and stare at them, or only collect pennies.”
“Right, and the more coins you collect, not only does your life as a whole get richer in sum, but the pennies find their appropriate level of space in the bigger picture. You gain perspective, which is the only way we really can “fix” the past.”
“What happens when the jar gets full of coins?”
“We get a bigger jar.”
“But we still have to transfer over the pennies along with everything else.”
“Yeah, but who cares about a few pennies when you got all these dimes,” he assures me, wiggling his eyebrows like a Marx brother. “Well,” he amends, “and actually you will care about the pennies every time you come across them, every time you count up what’s in the jar. But you won’t obsess about them the same way. You don’t care less, but ideally you do start to care… proportionately.”
As an excessive person in a vast and colorful variety of ways, the idea that I might care about things in proportion to their actual significance in my life sounds impossible to me, incredibly desirable, and also sort of frightening. The part where I care passionately about pretty much everything is part of what has always defined me. “But does it serve you?” says the voice of three therapists ago, the major piece of wisdom that he offered during our time together. “And if it doesn’t serve you… then who is it serving? And is that who you want your life to serve?” Yeah, yeah, yeah… stick that in your jar and count it.
On my one free evening this past week I sat at home, drank a bottle of wine, ate an entire Trader Joe’s lasagna in one sitting, and did my online training to be a poll worker for The Election. Entirely remote (for I be but a lowly clerk), the training industrial was, like most industrials, frequently unintentionally funny. But since the only kind of humor surrounding this incoming Turning Point is basically gallows humor, I found myself reacting to the rough charm of the hastily scripted, cast, shot, and edited masterpiece that is “Poll Worker Training” with a kind of bittersweet longing for the simpler days it captured. Scored with music so jolly it’s like dwarves are going to the mine for the day, the industrial not only made voting seem fun, but innocent. Like in the way Republicans think the 50s were innocent, and Democrats talk about the Clintons. This is partly because in the example election at the heart of the film, the contest is between competing landscapes (mountains vs. oceans), but it’s also because in even the most dire de-escalation exercises, the antagonists depicted (hardcore mountain advocates) seem relatively nice and reasonable compared to… you know… actual real life voters. Every conceivable conflict we got to examine in the training is ultimately solved with a short, pleasant conversation and it’s so removed from the reality of contemporary American politics that it transcends to a kind of Truest True. “Like when a painting of something is so real looking, that it basically becomes more real than real, and a hyper stylization of its own, that makes you realize just how beautiful the subject could actually be, even though it probably actually isn’t” I tell my sister on the phone this past Friday.
My sister who lives and votes in a state where people in pickup trucks drive by polling stations waving guns and confederate flags.
“I have to go, I have work to do before tomorrow and it’s already past midnight,” my best friend tells me as we prepare to end the “Happy Birthday!” call that turned into me complaining about stuff while eating a waffle. “It’s so damn hot here, I can’t even think of cooking anything,” and he assents that he’s heard California is sizzling while the South is drowning. “And how is New England?” I ask him, thinking of my friend in Maine, who had a total break down on the phone during our last call. One I’d made hoping she could cheer me up.
“I don’t know,” says the Birthday Boy, “Could be better. Could be worse.”
This morning, which is my Sunday so I usually get to sleep in (by my standards) the garbage men are either being exceptionally noisy or, because there is no wind and all my windows are open, I’m just actually hearing how noisy they’ve always been, and so I wake up at 4:45 AM. In the hot, noisy darkness. Sweating. After realizing I won’t be getting back to sleep, I try to start my day, but at 4:45 AM the only other people up are the garbage man and a random friend of mine who texts me that they are at Bob’s Doughnuts trying to stifle an anxiety attack with a bear claw, so the only things I can get done are… well, make coffee, comfort said friend, and write this Substack entry. Which actually does sort of help, and does sort of make me feel like I’m at least trying to fill the jar with something besides bad pennies. Recently I hit 50 paid subscriptions, and while I never have a critical mass of them substantial enough to turn any kind of financial corner, I did manage to get my phone bill paid (early) yesterday using just Substack money: the price of one subscription, the one which came in during said first week of October. It's something to be proud of, to be sure, and grateful for. And as the sun rises I try to focus on that, and not how tired I feel, or the list of things I need to get done today (that is just as long as the list of things I needed to get done yesterday), and all around me, as the birds sing, I feel the glass walls of the jar vibrate.
It’s going to be a long month.
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Hello!
Thank you for reading!
So, in a moment of just, fuck it, I'll give it a try, I am finally doing that thing people keep saying I should do and giving you the chance to support my writing.If you liked what you read today and would like to show that gratitude in cash money, you can help keep this middle-aged single writer turned food equity coordinator/usher/online content creator/social media manager in the black. I accept Zelle (it's my phone number), PayPal (@stuartbousel), or CashAp ($Bousel) and I leave it up to you to decide what to give. You can also get a paid subscription to my Substack. I offer multiple options- two year, one year, and month to month subscriptions. All of them help.
Obviously, I'm not going to put anything behind a paywall and I'm honored you read anything I write at all. I'm going to try to write something here every Sunday/Monday, around this time, and if you have thoughts or feelings you'd like to share with me to write about I'd love that.
Be well. Reach out. You are a light.
Stuart
It's this part for me: 'Once you accept the pennies are part of the whole mix, it can be helpful to think of how we make our lives better as more about what we add to our lives, rather than trying to “fix” or remove the parts of it that might not be fixable or removable in the conventional sense.'
This was, and continues to be, a revelation to me. That it's not just about fixing what's wrong, because so much of what's wrong is out of my control, but also there will always be something wrong, somewhere, somehow. It's about building a personal infrastructure that can withstand things going wrong, which includes adding things that are right - and NOT JUST MENTAL HEALTH TOOLS. But just... joy. Meaning. Enrichment. Creative expression.
I always kind of thought that I wouldn't be able to, or be allowed to, access those things UNTIL I fixed what was wrong with me. Turns out that engaging those things IS the work (or at least part of it).
Also, gorgeous writing, as always.
This line especially: " I feel the glass walls of the jar vibrate." * does the chef's kiss, except it's a creative writer's kiss, whatever that is *
Thanks for the quarter! Happy Monday