Musings & Reviews

I promised myself I was going to write more this year. I fully intended to use this space to share my feelings on all sorts of things, and even if nobody read it at least it would be a platform for me to get my thoughts out of my head in a longform fashion that’s far more pleasant and palatable than social media. Alas, it was not to be. And that’s okay.

This year has been, at times, nearly unmanageable for me. That’s not to say that good things haven’t happened, both superficial (good books! great movies!) and vital (I got engaged!), but the impending sense of dread and malaise that has infected my mind has made things very difficult and at times all but untenable.

Let me start off by saying that I am fully aware of my privilege. I have a good job, I can always pay rent and put food on the table, I’m able to go on trips and do fun things near home. I’m lucky enough to be able to see a lot of theater and movies and sporting events. And although I’m queer in many different ways, I pass as a straight white male in just about every context. On paper you’d think I have everything figured out. There are certain people that I express even the most benign of my mental fatigue to who are so immediate to reflect back everything I said in the beginning of this paragraph to me, as if all of those things should mean that I am wrong to be struggling with my mental health. That, of course, is an absolute folly.

Mental health is not a binary. It’s not an equation. It’s not, “oh! you’re doing well on paper! so you must be doing well in the cranium department.” Sometimes it is. Sometimes it has been for me! But that’s not often the case. The reality is so much more complicated and overwhelming than that. We are thrust into this life without an instruction manual (though those do sometimes come in the guise of our elders and other people we know) and we’re just supposed to… figure it out. As the tides continuously shift around us we’re more often than not left floating in the deep end without any sort of tangible flotation device. We have to “pick ourselves up by our bootstraps!” as the generations of yore are sure to say to us as they lament our $8 coffees as the reason why so many of us can’t afford houses and not the fact that they tanked the economy and watched it all burn down around them. I digress…

So, let’s talk about it. The whys. The reasons. And to be clear, it’s not always evident what the reasons are, especially in the moment. Sometimes I just feel completely down and lost for no discernible reason at all. It happens. No matter how self-aware we may be (which is in and of itself its own potentially precarious and maddening situation) sometimes we just feel like shit. It all adds up. If our brain is a shelf, and we keep loading it up with metaphorical books (our job book, our friend books, our relationship/romantic book, our politics book, our family book, et al) it is inevitable that the shelf is going to bend, if not downright break. There’s only so much weight the shelf can hold. My shelf is runneth over.

Last year, I engaged in the biggest work-related project of my life. I (alongside my partner) put my heart, my soul, my blood, my sweat, my tears, and, yes, my money into this project. It took everything out of me. Everything. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, without question. I am incredibly proud of the work we did and the finished product, but it was a commercial failure. There’s a lot of blame to go around for this, much of it macro concerns that are endemic of large scale inefficiencies within the industry and not necessarily the direct fault of any individuals involved in the project itself. Though there is some blame in those departments as well. But the reality is I (again, alongside my partner) was the top dog and rarely a day has gone by that I don’t wear the weight of the failure in my soul. I can intellectually recognize that there are myriad reasons, many far beyond my control, as to why it didn’t work. But it was my project. And it failed. And no matter how hard I try I have not been able to escape that. I feel like I let so, so many people down and I have the unfortunate feeling that I’m going to continue to feel that way for a long time. In fact, it has all but completely deterred me from ever wanting to work in the industry again. I am so deeply afraid that I’d fail again, and even if once again it wasn’t technically my fault at all, I don’t think I have the mental strength to wear that.

It has now been a little over a full calendar year since this project came to an end and we had to make the incredibly difficult situation to shut it down, and since them I have felt completely and utterly lost. I have been struggling with the very nature of my existence. I feel like I have no purpose. This industry, this project, was my dream. It’s what I thought I always wanted to do. And not only did I fail, it completely disillusioned me to the very harsh realities of the business aspects of this industry. Without going into specifics or details (that would be a whole other post) I feel very confident in saying that this industry is broken. And I certainly can’t fix it by myself, not that I’m sure I’d know how. So what do you do when the thing you thought your whole adult life was building towards turns out to not be the right fit? How does one bounce back from that? I put nearly two decades of my life into preparing for that moment, holistically, academically, experientially, and on and on, and it may not have been right after all? I barely possess the words to express what a blow that was and the ever-increasing confusion and malaise I have felt this last year. I wake up, I deal with my day job, I watch my movies or read my books, I eat, I go to sleep. It has been an almost out-of-body experience. It’s as if my soul is trapped inside a robot that’s merely going through the motions, desperately hoping to find something tangible to cling on to. Where is that fucking flotation device, huh? Where is the instruction manual?

I don’t want any of this to be mistaken for me not being happy in my relationship. I adore my partner. As I said, we got engaged a few months ago and I look forward to spending the rest of my life with her. Growing old with her. Experiencing everything and nothing with her. But I cannot put all of my eggs into the basket of one single person. That’s unfair to me and even more unfair to them. I should not be the reason someone else’s brain shelf breaks.

Similar notions apply to my friends and my family. Although relationships strain and issues can occur, this isn’t about other people. I won’t sit here and say that things are necessarily going swimmingly between me and my family right now. I yearn to be understood and accepted for who I am, how I think, how I choose to live my life and not be lamented for who people wish I was. And that is hard. I wear that weight deeply as well. It has caused me immense pain and frustration because I often feel like I am the one who gets overlooked or unappreciated because I don’t fit the mold of society’s expectations. But if I take a step back it’s not the be all and end all. I may be annoyed or angry at the way certain things have gone down with family members this year, but I can’t let it have too much of an impact. If you don’t like me or accept me, that’s your problem, not mine.

And then there’s the politics of it all. Listen, if you know me at all, if you follow me on social media, you know where I fall politically. Without going into too much detail, I think the current political climate in the US is absolutely fucking abhorrent. The things the POTUS and his sycophantic minions are doing on a daily basis disgust me, devastate me, destroy me. I weep as I watch this woefully underqualified sociopath with severe narcissistic personality disorder destroy everything that I think is so great about what America should stand for. “We the people,” as long as you are straight, white, Christian. A full on war has been engaged against immigrants, against trans folks, against the LGBTQ community, against Muslims, against anyone who can be othered or marginalized in any sort of way. And it fucking breaks my heart. I feel things so deeply. I wear the weight of all of this political unrest on my shoulders. I know this isn’t healthy! I try so hard not to feel this way! People tell me that I should tune out, that I should stop reading the news, stop paying attention. But an uneducated citizen is a complacent citizen, and that’s how technofascism will continue to creep its way into this country as the billionaires and tech bros gather up all of our assets and define society in a way that makes them richer while everyone else suffers. I feel so strongly that it is my civic duty to stay informed and pay attention so that I can actively participate, stay aware, and do my part. But that also makes things mentally exhausting for me. There’s only so far my empathy can take me before I begin to crumble under its weight.

“The stress of following daily political news can negatively affect people’s mental health and well-being, but disengaging has ramifications, too, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.”

“When it comes to politics, there can be a trade-off between feeling good and doing good,” said Brett Q. Ford, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. “Protecting oneself from the stress of politics might help promote well-being but it also comes at a cost to staying engaged and active in democracy.”

(source: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/01/politics-affecting-mental-health)

I am clearly not alone in the ramifications politics can have on one’s mental health. This is not a me issue, this is a widespread issue that I wish more people were talking about. Of course, those on the other side would be sure to call us soft or make fun of us or use any of the sort of disgusting rhetoric they seem to use about all sorts of things. And I’m so tired of it. Diminishing my feelings on these things only serves to make you look callous and cruel, but it increasingly seems that a lot of people are okay with being cruel to others.

I also want to briefly touch on the stupidity and rudeness epidemic. People far smarter than me have written thoughtful and cogent articles and analyses of all kinds as to why stupidity is in fashion and why people seem to have no common decency or concern for others, but the impact it is having on me is immense. (I highly recommend getting a copy of this week’s issue of New York Magazine that boldly says, “The Stupiding of the American Mind” on the cover.) Every day when I go out into the world I brace myself for what fresh hell is going to be enacted on to me. The lack of common sense. The fetishization of the anti-intellectual movement. The utter disregard most people seem to have for others. I hate to sound like an old man yelling at clouds (I’m not that old and I actually really like clouds, they’re beautiful and necessary!) but many days it is absolutely fucking exhausting just trying to live my life and exist in public.

How do I reconcile everything I’ve discussed above with the desire to not be so sad all of the time? I haven’t quite figured that out yet. Yes, I’m in therapy. Yes, I take an SSRI. Yes, I self-medicate and cope with probably a little too much cannabis. (But hey, it’s legal! And far less damaging than alcohol, of which I only use occasionally.) What is the answer? How do I fight through all of my demons, all of the world’s demons, all of the things I feel so deeply that have rendered this year incredibly difficult for me? I’m still working on that. But I cannot even begin to tell you how cathartic and freeing it has been to put all of these thoughts that have been swirling around my head like a tornado onto paper. Sadly, Glen Powell isn’t here to chase these thoughts away. Sadly, I haven’t been very good at chasing these thoughts away either.

People are always asking each other, “How are you?” When they do that, they don’t want a real answer. They don’t want to sit and listen as you lament all of your problems, as you honestly reveal your true inner self, not hiding any of the ugly bits. It’s just small talk. They expect you to say, “I’m okay, how are you?” And they don’t want to give you a real answer either. But if you actually want to know how I am? If you’ve actually been wondering how I’m doing? If you want a real answer to that constant and vague question? Here you go. Thanks for reading.