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Hello everyone,
Today is my birthday and I am in the middle of submitting comics to publishers and queries to agents, but I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on how quickly my mood can change.
Yesterday I was thoroughly down in the dumps. Summer’s over, my kid is going back to their mom in New York, I start a new UX contract on Monday, and the instrument lights on my ancient BMW motorcycle don’t work. Delta is ravaging the land in a way that threatens the vaccinated, long covid makes people stupider, and the poor continue to give what little money they still have to lying grifters.
In short, I spent yesterday looking for bad shit to worry about. I ate potato chips for lunch and dinner, didn’t exercise, didn’t go to an AA meeting, didn’t really do anything.
No wonder I felt bad.
When I work with guys in AA and they tell me they are having a bad day, I always ask them what they’ve been doing the past 24 hours. If that doesn’t ring any bells, I tell them to look at the calendar. Usually it’s the first one, but sometimes the second.
In my past decade of sobriety I spend most of my time in a mood of sanguine contentment. My general state of mind is placid and relatively drama-free, a state I have grown to appreciate despite its seeming banality. The chief advantage of this is that when I start to feel balled up, it’s enough of a deviation from the norm that I am forced to take a look at myself and assess what I’ve been doing.
This is a remarkable change from how I was for most of my life: a fellow who assiduously avoided accountability to the extent that I would lie and gaslight those around me to deflect blame and responsibility. If something was wrong, somebody else did it. This allowed me to be both victim and perpetrator. It was a wretched way to live, and was really more the cause of my drinking than the result of it.
Lately, I’ve made a study of how I get mad. I look at what happens in real life, how I see it, how I react and overreact. How I tend to take a bad situation and exaggerate it, fan the flames, make it personal.
It’s been really helpful to see how I do this. In AA you sometimes hear people say “Living life on life’s terms,” but in my experience life doesn’t make terms. It’s indifferent and so becomes what we make of it. Luck, love, success, failure–– for me, all these things are a matter of perception.
And on that note, here’s a poem that maybe expresses these sentiments better than the prose can. I hope you enjoy it.
A measure of knot complexity
is the number of minimum
crossings that must occur
when a knot is viewed
as a two-dimensional
projection
According to calculation
(yours, or anyone’s)
there are more tangled states than untangled
states. Thousands at least, when you shove
your headphones into your pocket
ready at last to listen
It took nothing for your cord
which is just another string
to achieve a tangled state
though you do not know it yet.
Entropy unnoticed
until, five seconds later
A string can be knotted
in many possible ways,
and a primary concern
of knot theory is to formally distinguish
and classify
all possible knots.
Oh how you swore, pulling
as you picked the twisted wires
with your fingertips
from the pocket
of your too-tight pants
designed for a person half your age
you act like
it’s a personal affront
this tangled inconvenience
how can something so simple
so quickly turn
into such a fucking mess
96% of all knots formed as known prime knots
having minimum crossing numbers
ranging from 3 to 11.
The prevalence of prime knots
is rather surprising,
because they are not
the only possible type of knot.
You succeed, finally
cram your fingers
deep in your ears
the tiny speakers
full of all that music
the soundtrack only you hear
I watch you leave
watch the floor
where your shadow was
I know you absolutely
are right or wrong.
Everything is personal
or nothing is.
Agree: "In my experience life doesn’t make terms. It’s indifferent and so becomes what we make of it. Luck, love, success, failure–– for me, all these things are a matter of perception."
You may enjoy this essay: Change Your Perspective, And Change Your Life?
—12 Movies To Help See Things Differently For A Healthier And Happier You
https://moviewise.substack.com/p/change-your-perspective-and-change
Great essay, Josh. And Happy Birthday!