Hello Lani.
Yeeeeah.
The Toolbox Fallacy got some traction, then tapered off.
Ok.
Then...I made...a minor modification to the thumbnail aaaaand...the Youtube algorithm
grabbed it and has been putting it out there more everyday for the past week.
Channel subscriptions are waaaaaay up this week.
“Hello imposter syndrome!” *waves
Another video I put out after that had some controversial topics I got all apprehensive
about it and then I fixated on negative comments afterwards.
And, I ended up somewhere up in my head, in a little bit of a rut the past 10 days or
so.
For this next video in our series, I had planned on doing a something about the Fly and my
own mortality, turning 40, and intentional living.
Or an essay I’ve been working on called How to Ditch Your Dreams.
But, instead, after Toolbox Fallacy, I thought I might deliberately go a little lo-fi with
this one.
A little...
*rose wine box pour
...basic.
So instead, I just want to tell you a quick story about the last I got high.
Now, I live in Colorado and, even before weed was legal here, you could still go for a bike
ride and find yourself riding through clouds of smoke that appeared to come from NOwhere...NO
one AROUND.
Oh there’s a dude hiding behind that bush.
That said, I’ve always kind of hated getting high.
I have friends with anxiety issues like mine who say weed helps them relax.
But it’s always had the OPPOSITE effect on me.
If I’m going to indulge a vice…
I’d prefer it be one that grabs the volume knob in my head and turns it waaay down.
Buuuut, I'm not blessed with...the world's greatest memory.
And the gaps between the instances when I've tried weed tend to be about as long as it
takes in order for the goldfish up here to forget how much I hated my last experience
I had with it.
As the goldfish was starting to do it's thing, last October 2018 rolled around and my friend
Tilda asked if I wanted to go and see the new Halloween with her and Derrick.
I didn't.
Not a huge horror guy and even less a fan of slashers.
But Lani, in the past few years I've tried to adopt a policy of saying yes to almost
any social invitation.
When you're young you're sort of...drowned in opportunities to meet new people.
But, as you start to approach middle age if you don't make an effort, those opportunities
get whittled down to meeting people at church or work.
And I'm an atheist that works from home.
SO sure lets go and see ‘Halloween.’
And then from somewhere deep within the inner bowels of my impulsive boat-buying soul the
gold fish babbled, "And hey maybe I'll get high with Derrick first.
Might make the film more interesting."
Movie day.
I head over to Derrick’s so we can get a Lyft to the theater together.
Tilda mentioned you wanted to get a little toasty before we go and see it.
Never see high Ian before.
And he hands me a smokey pen thing and says, "Hold on I'll be right back."
And he...leaves the room for a minute.
I hadn't had any weed-thingies in 4 years.
I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
Derrick came back in the room as I'm hacking and said, woh that's uhhhh...that's a pretty
good hit.
Uhhh...How...how do you normally react to weed?
And the goldfish squinted, thought very hard and I said, "Oh you know...p...panic attacks
and extreme anxiety?"
Several things happened in the exact second after.
Derrick’s eyes got VERY big and concerned, the whole world dropped into slow motion,
every sensory input I have started malfunctioning simultaneously, and I thought to myself...oh
shit.
The next hour or so between sitting there with Derrick and getting to the movie theater
were...challenging.
Derrick kept trying to talk to me.
But I pretty rapidly lost the capacity for forming complete sentences without forcefully
employing 100 percent of my mental capabilities.
I don’t know what being high is like for other people but, for me, my senses get pretty
scrambled and the collective volume of them gets turned way the hell up.
And my brain is hyper distracted trying to process EVERY one of those individual sensations
all the same time.
Derrick’s asking me out here: Are you okay buddy?
While whats going on up here:
“Does anyone else here...construction noises?”
“Do you remember making that sound when you were a baby?”
“This is never going to end” “Lips are kind of a miracle?”
“My skin feels like pudding.”
My brain is so preoccupied that the only thing I can stammer to Derrick in response is:
Comp...com...Compicated
And I started to fight what’s happening.
Control it.
And that’s when I started to get anxious.
So this goes on for a bit.
I kind of forgot how to walk and sort of...bow legged waddled into the theater lobby where
Tilda was waiting for us and asked, “Are you OKAY?”
As I’m standing there, stuck way up in my head wondering why the dude with the shirt
with WAY too many stripes on it was standing so close to me and would melty kit kats dipped
in butter popcorn be a great snack or THE greatest snack I just kind of realized...I’m
not getting out of this.
I’m stuck with this situation until it wears off.
And, I wondered if I couldn’t eliminate all of this extra sensory data I was receiving
that was overwhelming the part of my mind that always tries to process and analyze everything,
could I turn off THAT machine?
That part of my mind?
Could I just let all this input go?
And stop trying to do anything with it.
And the second I had the thought, it happened.
I popped out of my head, my shoulders relaxed.
Suddenly I could speak.
My anxiety went away.
It was like suddenly time traveling into the moment my body had been bookmarking for me
in my mind’s absence.
I was just...present.
And I’ve realized, that has become my approach to fear.
Not “Getting high.”
But, in The Toolbox Fallacy I talked about one of the ways I would lie to myself when
it came to my lifelong pursuits in order to mask the real problem, which was I was afraid
to suck.
Afraid to fail.
And that’s great.
The thing that’s missing from that video how-to for the next step.
If I’m sitting in front of a blank document with a mind preoccupied by thoughts of ‘Is
the audience gonna like this?’ or ‘Do I really have anything to say?’ or ‘Maybe
I’m just not good enough,’ I’m never going to be able to write anything.
I’m never going to able to speak my heart.
And when it comes to making things getting past that is just not as simple as, “Just
do it.”
That works for jumping from a plane which requires two courageous seconds of, “ALL
RIGHT HERE WE GO.”
There are videos on this channel that took me a 100 hours to make.
You don’t clear that airplane until the video is on the internet.
I needed something practical.
And the reason I always remember this story is it’s very hard to explain what letting
go means.
How to untense a muscle.
Fear is a healthy thing.
If a bear is running at me fear tells me to get my ass up and out.
But fear turns to anxiety when I start planning for bears around every corner.
Anxiety is a fear of mine multiplied by my attempts to control it.
That’s what persistent fear of failure is and since the only surefire way of never failing
is to never start and fighting the fear with more thought is what imbues it with power
over me, the only thing to do is let it go.
Be present.
And, after 10 days or so of doing the opposite, here I am.
This video may suck.
Some people are gonna dump on me for it.
It’s the internet.
There are always going to be negative comments.
Oh well.
It is what it is.
...see you in two weeks Lani.
OH!
As for the movie Halloweeen, I don’t really remember much about it other than thinking
it was...HILarious.