Notes From a Slump

a dance, in two parts.

Part I: A screen is just another kind of mirror.

I’ve spent much of this week wanting to throw my phone out the window. (Figuratively — I live in a high-rise with windows that don’t really open, and I wouldn’t want to harm anyone. Except my phone.)

By now we know the deal. Social media bad! Screens addicting! Comparison unhealthy! Yet even when I do my level best (avoid doom scrolling, mute the accounts that provoke me, remember we only see one side of the equation), the unsolicited updates have a way of finding me. And the feelings have a way of following.

Sometimes they leave me as prickled as a hedgehog; other times, frozen in place, unable to summon a single creative thought. As I scribbled in my morning pages, I feel like a possum under capitalism, opting out of fight and flight. Maybe, if I stay very still, it will let me be.

During one such episode, my eye wandered over to the bookcase, where it landed on a little yellow book, Triggers, by psychotherapist David Richo. He writes, “A trigger is any word, person, event, or experience that touches off an immediate emotional reaction — sadness, depression, anger, aggression, fear, panic, humiliation, shame.” Our reactions are a reflex over which we have no control, and they can be large or small. When something triggers us, that reaction is often excessive — bigger or longer lasting than what the situation warrants.

The list of recent offenders is not short — signs of productivity, success, and ease. Perceived evidence that even now, decades after high school, there is a proverbial cool clique, and I am not a part of it. Reminders of loss. Difficult memories. Sometimes, the provocations are arbitrary, minor, ludicrous.

In previous seasons, I would’ve done my best to squash or avoid the feeling entirely, or perhaps to reason myself out of it. But this year of grief — with its up, downs, and spirals, often in the course of the same day — has taught me that emotions are information. Feelings are akin to irritating carrier pigeons, bearing scrolls with deeply personal messages. It can be tempting to shoo them away, but it behooves us to hear what they’re trying to say.

In all cases, these digital triggers have little to do with the source and everything to do with me. The screen I hold is as good as a mirror, asking me to confront my shit. As Richo puts it, “We are being bullied by our own unfinished business.” Business only we can tend.

Part II: Who are we dancing for?

Every time I sat down to write this letter, the universe was not having it.

Our bathroom sprung a leak and required multiple visits from the plumber. The dog barked incessantly at some commotion outside. The neighbor, psychically sensing my attempts at concentration, glued themself to the piano to practice just one bar of “Jingle Bells” over and over again.

By this afternoon, I’d devolved into a cartoon character with a bubble of angry punctuation above my head. So, I threw up my hands and decided to go for a run in the park.

The NYC Subway is always a scene, and today that included a full-scale amateur production. We’re talking lighting. Reflective apparatus. A guy with a camera writhing on what is unquestionably among the filthiest floors in the universe to get the footage. A woman in pointe shoes teetered at the edge of the platform, where an oncoming train — a casual 400 tons of carbon steel — hurtled into the station. I wish I could say this kind of thing is uncommon, but alas, it is not.

I rode several stops to the park, where a few minutes into my run I encountered another scene. “COME DANCE WITH US” beckoned a sign propped against a tree. Nearly a dozen individuals of varying ages danced merrily — unselfconsciously — in the grass, around a boom box playing “Runaround Sue.” No one was filming it, for posterity nor untold virtual eyes. They were simply in the moment, courting joy on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

The two incidents, mere minutes apart, stood in stark contrast to one another. And they helped me reframe much of what I’ve been struggling with, and how the answers may be closer than I realized.

There is dancing for show vs. dancing for joy. Dancing for applause vs. dancing for endorphins, expression, the sense of being alive. There is dancing (or writing, as it were) for an audience vs. because you have something to say.

When Lee Ann Womack sang “I Hope You Dance” (the mention of which will forever conjure Zack and Bliss from Love Is Blind Season 4 - anyone else?) it seems clear she meant the latter.

But the truth is, who am I to judge what gives anyone a sense of joy or meaning or fulfillment? If complicated professional lighting lights you up inside, more power to you.

The question is only ever: who are we dancing for? And being honest about whether we like the answer.

From the beach, last week, on my mom’s birthday. Though you can’t see it in the photo, a pod of whales was breaching. And it was beautiful.

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The neighbor is still finding their way around “Jingle Bells,” and I am still putting the finishing touches on this week’s card reading. Paid subscribers will receive it tomorrow.

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Thank you, as always, for reading. x