Fussy Rhetoric

Reframing has to be one of the most powerful tools our little rat brains possess these days.

In a world where information is shoved down our throats from people on the internet who don’t really know their north from south, talk out of their ass about why men do things,

why women respond they way they do,

how to have a glow,

how to"not care",

they tease psychology facts with no accredited degree,

they preach about who you ought to become this year,

they launch their subscription based newsletter “fast track to being successful in X …..”

Jesus H Christ.

I’m trying so hard to exist happily online. There are good people on there. There are ARTISTS on there. There are people worth hearing a shout from. 

But there are so many more people who just. love. shouting.

I think in a world where information is muddied, diluted, over saturated, and our weak little rat minds still slither to devour as much as we can of it in a finite period of time such as our waking days… we have to practice discernment.

I think much of that discernment is realizing that you don’t know these people that you listen to from Adam. Maybe you’d be friends, maybe they’d order matcha and you, a chai, and you’d sit with your legs tangled up in front of the another and gab and disagree respectfully and maybe by golly, you’d make a real connection.

But so many people online don’t even know what. the. fuck. they’re saying. And they don’t want to connect with you. Well maybe they do, like I said, some people on the internet are good. But many revel in their own performances, they fawn over the "identity" they create for themselves, mirrored by the affirmations and feedback that other faceless people give them.

I mean I don’t know what the fuck I'm saying saying either most of the time. But I totally WOULD have a matcha (or chai) with you if you’re reading this.

I think that if we heard these people talk out of their asses in real life, we wouldn't give them the same attention as we do watching a hyper condensed video on a timeline. Or maybe I can only speak for myself.

Once I was on a big boat in Greece, sailing seven hours from Athens to Santorini. My two friends and I boarded the vessel via crowd flow in a shuffle-like fashion, much like emperor penguins. We nestled up in the boat's lobby, propped up our belabored legs up on our overstuffed RyanAir-approved-sized backpacks and prepared for the long sea journey ahead. A girl roughly our age, perhaps a bit more lived, notably and raggedly hipster, asked to come sit with us. Delightfully, we prepared room for her.

Listen, I am not going to recount all of the hodge podge hoo ha she pitched to us about her life. But in short she blustered about her affairs with men in their sixties and those marvelous house parties she hosted in their penthouses when they were on vacation, and so on. But I really drew the line when she told us that she was an artist.

Brynn, huh? Why are you hating on artists? Don't be cynical.

Oh sorry, I should have added that she was the kind of artist that painted only with her period blood.

She even showed us her portfolio of her work. I honest to God just stood up and found a new corner of the lobby.

I actually laugh about the absurdity of my response even as I write this now. I think it's hilarious. A true conversation exit. I was not built for the capacity to listen to crazy people talk for too long, and certainly not seven hour commute long.

Eva, CC, if you're reading this, please forgive me that I left you guys alone with Lucy the Loon.

So what am I feeling? Rage? Perplexity? Intrinsic kerfuffle? What shall we name it?

I’m just being fussy, really.

All this fuss struck me as I went for a run this afternoon. A run. I’m certainly athletic but I also wouldn’t consider myself a “runner” by any means. But today in particular I felt restless, pent up, and I was desperate to tire myself out. So I decided to go on a run that I hoped would bide about an hour of my time. I threw on a stopwatch for kicks, exceeded my headphone limitations listening to Mexican rap music (Plan B and Control Machete, respectively) and then sort of gassed out around thirty minutes. 

I don’t know why I was so disappointed in myself when I saw that I had been running for  “only” thirty minutes. A run is a run. Run = good. Why am I dissatisfied with a my good input into life’s happiness machine?

Maybe I shouldn’t blame the internet influencers for this one… maybe I shouldn’t pretend like “running influencers” are the reason that I feel shitty about the run that I wanted to be longer. 

After all, it’s ME doing the consuming. It’s me choosing to be “influenced” by some behavior or action. They’re just creating, projecting, performing, and I'm consuming slop.

That’s like blaming the inanimate gun for killing someone, when it’s really the very animate and murderous shooter. 

Wow, that is a dark analogy, right?

Or blaming the spoon for making someone overindulge on ice cream, when it’s really the cold dessert lover’s personal will.

Was that one better?

I think the overarching theme here is that consuming way more slop than our rat brains can handle does indeed shape the way we view our own lives. We’re not meant to know what everyone is doing, nor how they do it. I certainly didn't want to press on for answers about Lucy's Loons period blood painting creative process, and that’s real life. So imagine the ways we harm ourselves consuming other peoples lives like drones.

Maybe, ohhhhh just maybe, we have way more capacity for depth and knowledge and "self-betterment" solely by experiencing our OWN lives than we give ourselves credit for sometimes, or even allow ourselves the space to do so.

Groundbreaking, isn’t it?

When I went to Colombia with my harmonious perfect traveling partner and pal, Ally, we shared some really memorable moments. Some really, very funny and others a little perilous, but those are stories for another time. 

As we enter some of the flirtiest years of our little adolescent lives, we turned on extra charm whilst traveling hostel style (because that’s just what you do when you’re at the end of your socially acceptable years hostel traveling). We connected with these two guys (brothers, even!) and sat inside a groovy “listening lounge” that warranted my Shazam to be whipped out and utilized in ten minute intervals to capture all the underground beats that Medellín had to offer. They were cute. Man, WE were cute. As our conversations progressed, beats became heavier and the melodies flowed even more melodically. I think all four of our cheesy smiles would’ve measured over a foot long. It was one of those giggly evenings. 

One of the brothers went to the bar for another round, meanwhile the friends that we arrived with were waiting on us to join them at the club (yuck, the club). Ally and I complied, our new eye candy did not, and they lamented they would turn in early for the night. Alas, we went our separate ways leaving the groovy listening lounge.

“So lame,” we thought. “That was an anticlimactic tease really. A good moment cut short”.

We wallowed and grabbed at straws really trying to make sense of how we upset the flirty formula, perplexed at why our input did not yield a better output.

We wanted to talk longer.

But they didn’t tease, Ally reminded. We were the ones that decided to leave sooner. They were in motion to get another beer and stay. We took action too but it just wasn’t the right one at the time, it didn’t align with theirs. Oh well! The output doesn't reflect an absolute truth of the matter. That my friend, is a reframe.

I’ll admit, this is all kind of a silly analogy too. Boooysssss! But it's a recent one and a relevant one. We’re 24 years old, single, and we went to South America where everyone is beautiful and dances really well so tell me,

what really did you expect from me?

Sometimes Ally and I would commiserate together and talk about how something kind of sucked. Maybe we’d relish in the self-pity; humans are funny that way. Maybe the commiseration was an attempt at problem solving, an effort to dissect our behavior and then fix it for said desirable outcome. 

Then we quickly realized how important it was that we reframe our mindset. Vital even. Perspective is subjective and it’s the only thing that will really save you when you’re all down and out of sorts about your circumstances.

Sometimes I feel insecure that my rates I set are wicked low for my marketing business and that I am "selling myself short".

But then I remember … holy shit, I am a business owner. I make my own hours and I'm in charge of my own time. I have money to buy a stupid iced latte when I feel like it. Nice!

Sometimes I feel like a lazy piece of shit when I don’t make a solid meal for myself. One that is balanced with the proper carbs to protein to veggies to grain to blah to blah ratio. Then I think about how at least I’m conscious about these things. Giving a rip about how you feed yourself is the foundation of caring for yourself. Cool! I care!

Sometimes I’m insecure about how little I read. I really do wish I read more, I used to read a lot. But (incoming reframe), I’m a pretty darn good communicator and have managed to nurture a lot of international friendships either digitally or through snail mail. To heck with those books!

(That’s a joke, I do feel a insatiable moral obligation to read).

I’m most insecure about the time I spend online. I fear that when I’m on it, my time is misused and misplaced, and I am denying myself looking inward when I enter into full consumption mode. 

But at least I acknowledge it. And like I said before, there are some good people on there too.

A guy who trains jiu jitsu with me here in Raleigh asked me how I would describe my blog. I couldn’t say, and my lack of an answer to that very simple question had this esoteric vibe that I also despised.

I think I retorted, “something along the likes of 'word vomit'. Not that it matters anyway, nobody even READS anymore. Basically I say whatever I want on there because nobody. even. reads. it.” 

He said he’d read it. 

The next day he described to me my publications as “musings". 

That’s like soooooooo Virginia Woolf. :D

I’ll never reach Woolf echelon, nor her degree of prefrontal cortex development. BUT I find it to be the most flattering choice of vocabulary to describe my clutterbucket shitpit of ideas and feelings that I riddle this blog url with.

So thanks, Carlos. You rock.

Bogotá, Colombia