“All of humanity’s problems stem from one’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal
There’s always something else. Something else to check, something else to see, something else to do. Lately, I’ve been more conscious of my ticks and subconscious desires to do that something else instead of the thing I need or want to do in that moment. What I’m talking about here is, for lack of a better and more meaningful word, mindfulness. It’s an ugly word, in my opinion. It’s been used ad nauseam for the past few years to the point of becoming meaningless. However, it is not meaningless. No word is, no matter how co-opted, overused, or forced upon.
I’ve been meaning to send you an update on my March experiment with sobriety. For a variety of reasons, I have not yet done so but here we are now. Let’s start at the beginning, a very good place to start.
The first two weeks of March were really quite enjoyable. I found myself able to avoid alcohol and marijuana with relative ease, although the latter was much harder than I’d like to admit. The former was, in a way, easy. However, things took a turn around the third week of March and I began to sink into a depression. When one is bipolar, there can be no rhyme or reason to the shifts in mood one experiences. This seemed to be the case. Looking back, it was like the pendulum swinging from one end to the other as I had been hypomanic in the early days of the month.
With the depression came the usual suspects of sadness. Sleeping more, inability to focus or produce at work, desire to do anything to get out of the funk. By March 25th, I’d had enough and started drinking and smoking again. While I’m loth to admit it, deep down I was hoping that a sobriety kick would be a silver bullet of sorts. Mental health and my experience with it has been fraught in recent months. Searching for consistency yet finding none, I hoped that kicking the bottle and bowl would lead to a place of steadiness. At first, this felt achieved. However, I realized after the fact that my enamored view of abstinence in March’s first two weeks was colored by the more hypomanic phase. What goes up must come down and come down I did. Like Sisyphus and his boulder, I seem to make it up the mountain only so far before things fall apart.
Now, I don’t want to make this edition of the newsletter all doom and gloom. While April into May were tough times for me, it was not all for nothing. There is always something to learn and learn I did. In the last few weeks, I’ve stopped caring. What do I mean by that? Well, if you’re a long time reader of this here newsletter, you’ll know that I have a thing for tracking certain habits and behaviors. There’s a world of data at one’s fingertips and there’s a world of data within one’s self. I tried for years to extract that personal data through spreadsheets and reminders and indicators of a job done or not. This became more pronounced in the last few months while working with a new therapist. I reworked a spreadsheet I’d been using to track certain habits and was getting into the nitty gritty of the data of my life:
The above image is a snapshot of said spreadsheet where I tracked, on a binary 0 or 1 scale, the completion of certain habits and activities. You’ll notice that some are redacted. I can’t give everything away.
Anyway, what I mean by my earlier words of no longer caring is that I’ve stopped. Stopped tracking if I made my bed or not. Stopped tracking if I’d read or not. I don’t want you to think that I no longer try to do these things. I do, every day. However, I don’t mark down a 0 or 1 anymore and I feel free. Free of the anxiety that comes with not doing something. Free of the need to obsess over the numbers and their meaning or lack there of.
While I’m not a Buddhist scholar by any means, I do know that attachment, upādāna, is the main culprit of suffering. I was attached to these numbers, this process of tracking, and it manifested itself in negative ways. During the depths of my depression in April and May, I found my negative self-talk internally to be almost unbearable. I didn’t wash the dishes immediately after making dinner? Fuck, you’re awful Rob. I didn’t get out of the apartment for a walk today? Rob, why are you so shitty.
Letting go of these habit tracking tendencies has freed my mind in a way. I no longer beat myself up for not making the bed. It’s ok. I no longer wrack my brain for hours about the task unfinished in the kitchen. It’s ok. No matter the issue at hand, I’ve come to the realization that it’s ok. I am all for growth and becoming the best person one can be. But I’ve realized that I will never get to that point. I will never be perfect. No one or thing could ever be. And that’s ok with me.
I have more drafts of newsletter editions in the works that aren’t as personal. I hope to send them soon. If I don’t, hit me up. I always enjoy talking with you and your encouragement.
Best,
Rob
P.S. Let’s go Mets.
Oh damn, that's some next level spreadsheet tracking! I thought I was the only one...