Miss Ashley Pants

“It’d be cool if Facebook’s newsfeed prioritized status updates by comedy level. That way, I’d be in a more compassionate mood from laughing by the time I scrolled down to the negative reality stuff.”

“I’ve got 99 problems and bitching solves none”

–This Bitch, “The FaceBook Files”

No – really. Let’s talk about this.

It’s so awesome that we have social networking and can share everything from thoughts and memes to a pristinely arranged plate of what we’re planning on pinching out of our poop shoots later. All of that’s great. What’s unfortunate, though, is just how much of what we share becomes a cyclical self-fulfilling prophecy.

Specifically, I mean the negativity.

Now, I feel I’ve a right to speak on this because I’ve got volumes of experience on the art of all around wallowing. For four years I did more complaining about back pain than the actual addressing of it, using outward excuses like “I’m too tired from working a full time job”.

My inward excuses, however, were really more like “Yeah… I didn’t ask to feel this way so why the fkkk should I deal with fixing it?” and “I therefore deserve to numb my pain” and the followup-thought to those two: “Aw, now I’m even more miserable from not fixing it. It’s hopeless. So I’m gonna keep not fixing it and take down everyone around me down too!”

Depending on who you are and what kind of life you live, you’re either tugging at your blouse collar and judgmentally pursing your lips at my logic … or standing up with a giant Miley style foam finger and cheering on my insanity out of identification. Either way, good for you. I’m not here to judge you – or even to judge you for judging me #meta #noneofmybizz

The thing is, I woke up one day and realized living my life this way wasn’t serving me anymore.

Mind you, the actual changing of that took longer because, let’s face it, I’m a life-long misery chick, committed to complaining. Don’t get me wrong: I know it’s not my fault that I was made and raised to resist reality, but the minute I got that lightning bolt of dizzying insight – that “do you realize how ridiculous you’re being?” moment, then it would have been my fault if I didn’t try to extract that practiced madness from myself.

So, I spent the past year attempting exactly that.

DAMNED HIPPIES… AND SCIENCE

And I’m not going to list all the ish I did – both because it’s so effing obvious and mostly costs less money (or energy for that matter) than masturbation does, that you wouldn’t believe me. But I’ll say some of it. It mostly boils down to the fact that the hippies had a lot of stuff right. Things like “stop being a negative asshole all the time” (I think Lennon said that?) or take a daily walk or hike or something reflective and active to keep not being a negative asshole. That, and realizing that the world looks a lot less inimical when I act like I’m not the only one in it.

There’s this thing called (caveat- brief bit of learning imminent) neuroplasticity. Simply put, our brain’s neurons team up to make networks based on what we practice repeatedly, but we can totally change those pathways by habit-changing for as little as 60 or 90 days. Whatever we think, say, or act over and over becomes our reality. Our focus and attention is the medium, our brain is the canvas, and we can either become Picasso or Kinkade in a decision’s flicker.

Or this dude…

The hard part is sticking to that change.

What helps is first abandoning the stuff that reinforces old habits and then hanging out with humans who help reinforce the good new stuff.

“TRUST ME, I’M A PROFESSIONAL.”

I’m saying this as a total bipolar bear who chooses to refuse accepting diagnoses given to me – or the accompanying orange prescription bottles thrown at me. A couple of years ago, I’d have totally Pac Man’d that ish, though. I’d have sat there, jaw unhinged, prepared to mouth-catch pharmaceuticals like a pet alligator snapping at flying meat thrown from his toothless swamp master. Anything other than sorting out my intrinsic turmoil, seemed a better choice. In fact, externals so seemed like the only choice and I was so disconnected that I couldn’t even acknowledge that my inner goddess wasn’t dancing anymore – it was more like a flaccid meth-wiggle.

The truth is, handed down from a “professional” or not, it doesn’t matter (otherwise, why do so many of them conflict?)

When I take a DSM diagnosis like “manic depressive” and start repeating it to my friends, family, and that nice homeless guy I donate leftover strip club singles to at the gas station, that becomes my reality. How? Even if they’re just like “Mmmm… yeah…great… don’t care”, I’m still hearing myself say it.

That’s the brain network I’m reinforcing. The same goes for the bulging disc I herniated a year ago. It happened, it was excruciating, and when the worst was over, I had to decide: “Am I going to keep being scared? Guarding? Laying more scar tissue over the injured area? Or do I want to work crazy hard and be in high heels again a year from now?”

Likewise, the same goes for day to day stuff – like social networking.

♪♫”REEEACH OUT AND COM-PLAIN”

There’s nothing wrong with venting if it’s from a place of “I need to get this off my chest and then totally abandon emotional attachment to it so I can move on with my day.”

Far better, though, is complaining directly to connecting specifically with someone to share a problem. In fact, we release “cuddle hormones” when stressed out that beg us to connect with someone to either offer help or accept help. The trick is to seek out people who like to find solutions – not enablers who aid in our wallowing.

The difference with social media, though, is that we’re paradoxically announcing feelings to no one in particular – and yet – everyone at once.

If I put myself out there and nobody validates it, I might feel kind of shitty and like I don’t matter.

If I do, and somebody indulges my negativity, it has a chance to build into a whole post of malevolent momentum and carry through my day. Sound familiar? Congratulations, we’ve just mutually manifested our own misery. Pass it on!

If we think positive self-help affirmations are so lame, why do we keep practicing the negative ones like they’re any better?

As a selfish validation-seekig narcissist, I compassionately and genuinely appreciate this. It comes naturally to me. But I work really hard to try not to be (do you love met for it yet, you pointless flesh sack I have nothing in common with?)

Having lived that way, though (just dressing up the outside of my garbage-bin-body with makeup and streaking bleach across my teeth and hair with one common, giant paintbrush), and then having tried a different way – I can’t say I miss it.

I mean, would you?

Let me ask you, do you want to be anxious? What thoughts are cycling around in your head like a destructive DJ sampling from a bad movie? What if you could identify them and say to yourself: “Shit! My laptop died and my washing machine is flooding. But I’m only anxious because that means I can’t watch porn do work or laundry and have to call the repair dude. And the fix is to use the library computer and just…. uh… call the repair dude”?

How would that kind of life look – where we don’t stop to complain, pop an Ativan, or uncork the wine early – but just do the actual solution? It’s super easy to say “Well, I’m just not like that. This is just who I am.”

Yeah, but, like… Do you wanna be?

If that’s working out for you, awesome. We’re different that way.

Such wasn’t the case my way. I was devoted to that vicious mindset for most of my life (and by most, I mean all of it up until the past year). Then, like my clap infected laptop, I short-circuited one day and was open to reformatting my own shiz.

KARMIC MARIO COINS

Don’t get me wrong – I’m still a hot mess.

I still slather my Sephora mask on just to leave home and crack sardonic low-level one-liners. I still complain to my mommy and I often put off my work until the last minute. I still screw up. I’m not a priestess. But what I am is trying. The key to leaving our self constructed solitary confinements starts with altering fleeting thoughts and follow-through, moment to moment.

Obvious, yeah.

But, when we change our intentions, the whole world opens up. When we act on that and help others out, we get out of our own heads (and land karma currency one Mario coin at a time).

If someone starts fighting with you, you don’t have to sink down a level by getting fired up. It’s your reality. Paint it. Flip that ish and be nice to them (also it’ll piss them off even more because you’ve blue-balled their anger stiffy).

And for the love of fkk, get out of that stuffy office and breathe some real air.

No, I’m totally self-talking here as much as I’m giving advice. I go through life some days like my apartment is a spacecraft and I’ll turn into a floating slut-cicle if I leave it.

Why? I don’t know. Possibly because there’s no controlled temperature, Instagram, or neck pillow out in nature and I can’t press any buttons to make make my dog-walk go faster or the fluffy bastard (I totally love her) shit any faster. And if I can’t control something, what good is it?

Do you identify? Awesome. If you’re so skilled and in control, can you do this:

Set your smartphone timer for six minutes on your lunch break and silence the ringer. Then, close your eyes. Then, think of nothing until it goes off, except breathing deep down into your muffin top – a few seconds in and a few seconds out at a time.

?

DUH, DUMBASS

Six minutes is nothing when I’m doing work or interacting on my obviously witty status updates.

But how long does it seem to last when I’m not controlling anything?

FOREVER. The answer is forever. I totally thought it was a waste of time the first few moments I tried.

Then suddenly, like a hot co-ed under Ted Bundy’s crowbar, it hit me and I was never coming back again. Not the same way, at least. And then I wanted it to be “forever” because when I do this thing, I stop worrying and it’s like all the really good ideas I have deep down – about my work or how to better handle the assgrabs of the world – come to the surface.

The problem is, when my eyes are open, I’m totally consumed by the bewildering world around me and what it means. My laptop reminds me of work I have to do. The mail pile signifies bills I have to pay. My phone triggers anxiety about calls I have to make. Then I unlock that phone and the distracting apps win the battle for my attention, and an hour later I’m fully ensconced in a carnival of procrasturbation.

Holy cough drops! Anyone in this illusory world of stressors could land themselves a substance habit or psycho-diagnosis with even a slightly wrong filter for the perpetual viral infection on reality of unnecessary misinformation. Our ubiquitous assimilation of absolute crap is like diluting out a delicious soup with too much water until we can’t taste it anymore.

When I wakefully close my eyes, all of that excess water drains away.

And I can see some rurrrl shit.

Some people call this meditation. Whatever. That’s great. I’m starting to call it, “Duh, Dumbass” because much like yoga (which is really just stretching while breathing and moving like a calm non-crazy person until the proclivity for committing homicide on a massive scale subsides), no matter how much I do it and get optimal results, I’m still reluctant to relinquish the illusion of the world my eyes feed into and my brain confirms.

Without that, I just look around and the messes in my apartment look collectively like a hybrid monster of unrelated ceaseless to-do’s (rather than individual tasks I could totally attack) so I either return to my phone, eat a snack, or laugh like a dying motor at whatever Buzzfeed has come up with that day.

And actually, that – laughter – is one optimal distraction and a great “Plan B”.

DOWN WITH DE-FRAGGLE ROCK

Sometimes, when I suck at mastering my own mind and simply can’t transcend in silence, I seek out comedy instead.

Humor is like a short cut phone call out of The Matrix, because it jars me out of my furrowed-brow cro-magnon looking state and makes me realize how pointless anxiety is when we’re all going to die anyway. Within seconds (and without drugs) we move from stupid-stressed to a levity level of endorphin excess. That’s pretty major. Make it a goal to laugh at something once a day – be it a friend’s blog or maybe even Jeff Dunham (if you’re missing a chromosome or twelve) and you’ll see what I mean.

There’s a wealth more to be said, but I’m not going to – mostly ’cause I’m bored of typing and I’m just proud you read this far.

So, what possible good can be things or tools that don’t involve our constant manipulation?

The answer’s totally rhetorical.

They lied to us, man.

Freedom is totally free – if we’re down to do a head defrag and free up our c-drives.