Addicted to Anger

I've had something on my chest for the past several months, but I've never quite found the words or the right time to say it. Today, however, I have no choice. The main reason I'm about to say this is the tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri; the relevance (and ugliness) of the situation is forcing the words out of me. A more selfish reason is that if I don't put this idea down on paper right here, right now, it will most likely spoil the taste of my turkey on Thursday. So here goes:

Anger is a dangerous drug.

In small, well-managed doses, it can do a lot of good. Those little pulses of indignation pricking your fingers as you type an angry blog post, like the snap of a lighter, can start fires of change--shedding light on problems and moving others to help fix them. But if left unchecked, this anger burns away everything in its path: progress, relationships, the ability to think and make rational judgements. It can drive otherwise sane, intelligent people mad. You can ride anger into battle, but if you don't hold on, it'll throw you off and leave you for dead.

This is old news, of course. Probably half the human race has already made this point in one way or another, in words more eloquent than anything I could express. But I say it again because in the past couple of years, I've seen this truth manifest itself in so many different layers of life that it's more vivid than ever. A group of political protesters outside my workplace waves angry signs, and the group across the street waves angry signs right back, all painted with various insults that only make the two groups more defensive. Two people try to talk on the phone, but neither can raise a concern without the other screaming at them. Instead of weighing different opinions, checking facts, and presenting an intelligent argument, a journalist winds up spewing biased, profanity-laden rage beneath a clickbait headline. Entire towns, even nations, are ravaged because some people are angry at other people.

Nothing is solved in any of those situations, because unlike tempered, controlled anger, which can streamline pathways to justice with its call to action, uncontrolled anger paralyzes. It shuts down discussions and keeps people stagnant in a pit of chaos and hate. And on top of all that, if anger is a fire, reading social media posts can feel like drinking lighter fluid (fittingly, I've heard drinking lighter fluid can make you go blind). In a world that seems designed to keep us hooked on a rage high, I'm convinced that anger management is one of the greatest skills that can ever be taught.

It won't solve the world's rage problem, but I'd still like to close this post with a proposal that we try to make this day remembered for something other than violence. If you have a quarrel with someone, try to examine and resolve it peacefully. If you've been meaning to do something kind for someone lately, do it now. Do something to broaden your perspective beyond your own tiny world. And, above all--when it comes to simple eloquence, you gotta hand it to Jesus--love your neighbor as yourself.       

One Year Later (Or: Where I've Been)

I think the reason I write, above all else, is to make myself believe things. Putting something on paper makes it more real and tangible. It becomes a thing that was actually created, no longer just a dream floating around in my head that no one else can see or feel. It's like watching a thought or sensation turn from a cloud of abstraction to a handful of substance you can squeeze or drop to the ground. Creating something other people can interact with also increases accountability and the drive to do better, at least in my experience.

This why I write about myself a lot. It's been about one year, three months since I graduated from college, and sometimes I need to go back and jot down everything I've accomplished since then, in order to convince myself that I can keep going, keep getting better. So, I apologize in advance for the amount of horn-tooting soon to follow.

The past year and a quarter hasn't been entirely glamorous. Many unflattering parts of my personality have been exposed, as if I've been playing strip poker with myself. I also accumulated six months' worth of meat and cheese on the bottoms of my shoes working at Harris Teeter. However, some of the more awesome things I've done include:

-landing a job at UNC-TV through my own hard work
-Producing my own segment for an Emmy-winning series (http://video.unctv.org/video/2365288554/)
-gaining hands-on experience directing, producing, writing, negotiating, and maintaining a website
-working at Trailblazer Studios in Raleigh
-experiencing the true meaning of Christmas (see my last Christmas post)
-getting to know the incredible city of Charlotte and some incredible people who live there
-driving on some of the most dangerous roads in North Carolina without getting killed (including roads covered in ice, water, and legions of crazed Bon Jovi fans)
-making new friends right in my hometown, one of whom is basically Jack Sparrow
-having a story published in a magazine (http://www.thricefiction.com/)
-working as a production assistant on a reality show
-discovering great places to eat, drink, and write about in my area that I didn't even know were there
-finally getting a haircut I love
-going from playing a few chords on the guitar to playing whole songs
-buying a ticket to Dragon Con
-trying venison (it was really good...sorry Bambi)
-going to a real, honest to goodness pig pickin' where we ate a whole dang pig
-seeing Ralph Stanley, Robert Randolph, Joe Pug, and Tinariwen in concert
-seeing a capybara in person
-getting a hug from Scott Myers of Go Into the Story

Maybe I can actually take all my crazy, ridiculous, dangerous dreams and hammer them into a reality someday. Stay tuned later this week for a new post with less back-patting, I promise.

Things My Dog Loves (That Most Humans Don't)

I could've written some ironic, cynical commentary on the holiday known as Valentine's Day, but instead, something possessed me to write about my dog, Raisintoast (Raisin for short). Maybe it's because dogs have a lot to teach us about love. They lay their heads in your lap no matter who you voted for in the last election, or whether you like cheese in your grits or not. They see past the dividers and recognize the love-needing human in all of us.

As much as I admire a dog's capacity to love, there are some things they love that I just can't imagine loving myself. This especially applies to Raisin. I'll never understand why Raisin loves the following:

1. Eating socks, gloves, and charcoal out of the fireplace. He likes his food smoked, apparently.
2. Chewing on a beef bone that he found on the roadside, dropped, and found again in the snow several months later.
3. Trying to bury said bone in the carpet by scratching and scratching and scratching and scratching, no matter how many times I remind him that this is physically impossible.
4. Swallowing ice cubes whole.
5. Eating roadkill whole (I don't let him do this, he just always manages to get it when I'm not looking).
6. Humping blankets, sofa cushions, dog beds, chair legs, my brother's leg, and the air. Despite having been neutered.
7. Knocking newspapers out of people's hands (actually, this sounds kinda fun).
8. Barking at no one except my friend Gray.
9. Biting a branch off a Christmas tree.
10. Stealing potholders.
11. Dropping neat little piles of dog food on my pillow, and sometimes on my face.
12. Shamelessly displaying his "nether regions" for all to admire. If he were a person, he'd probably be arrested for doing so.
13. Licking himself. All of himself.
14. Stuffing his face with big mouthfuls of snow.
15. Sleeping in positions that would probably break a person's neck.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to run down a busy street and slap the newspapers out of people's hands.

Raisin with "Ashley" the hippo.

It's Easy to Assume...

I wanted to start posting every Friday, but last weekend, I just couldn't think of anything to write about. It's weird. I always have something to say about something, but this time I didn't feel compelled to write any of it down. I just wanted to exist for a while without commentary. I did, however, make a doodle inspired by last week's post:

The call me Flame Nose!

Speaking of last week's post, there is one thing I wanted to add to it. On my list of things to do in your 20s, 30s, or life in general, I forgot to include another tip that came from the Relevant magazine article I mentioned: have real opinions based on facts and not just something you "heard somewhere." It's sort of a paraphrased version, but I thought it was an excellent point. Then I got to thinking about how much work it takes to actually be well-informed. No information source can be trusted at first glance, especially on the Internet, where the bull-to-fact ratio is more disproportionate than ever. You have to fact-check, and then fact-check the fact-checkers (say that five times fast). You need to do a ton of research to have a well-informed opinion about almost everything, which may be partially to blame for all the uninformed opinions buzzing about the comments sections. It's so much easier to assume than to figure something out for real.

And then I thought of something else: many of us seem afraid of uncertainty. We'd rather just assume and take a side on an issue without really thinking it through, or avoid discussing it altogether, because we're afraid of saying "I don't know" or "I'm not sure." You see it all the time, in debates and in public speaking: the speaker is asked a difficult question, and instead of admitting that they're not sure about the answer, they dance around the question by giving a confused, wishy-washy response instead. To me, it's a far greater sign of courage to admit uncertainty than to pretend you know the answer, but I shouldn't be the one talking here. When someone at work asks me if I know how to do something that I don't, it's sometimes tempting to pretend that I know what I'm doing, because I'm afraid of looking like an idiot if I don't.

Ultimately, all this thinking forced me to confront the staggering amount of effort needed to obtain almost everything you need to be a happy, functioning adult. Even being happy often requires actively ignoring the negative while seeking the positive things in life, and don't let a greeting card tell you that's easy, because it's not. It makes me wonder where in the world we got that phrase, "good things come to those who wait," when good things don't "come" at all. They have to be found.

12 Things to Do in Your 20s (Alternate Title: Seriously Why am I Writing This?)

I often write to pull myself out of a crisis, but starting this post actually sent me spiraling into one. Lately, I've been seeing tons of Buzzfeed-style posts floating around the web with titles like "23 Things to Do Before You Get Engaged" or "20 Things to Do in Your 20s." Usually, these posts rocket me into a righteous rage. Some of the activities listed are things only rich people can do, like buying a Macbook, traveling across Europe, or "having sex in dirty hostels," as one writer suggested. The few people I know who spent any length of time in Europe in their 20s either had rich parents or sold all their possessions first, and when you finally catch an STD in one of those dirty hostels, you'd better have health insurance. Other popular activities include things that just make you look like a selfish child ("be selfish" is one that I actually saw in a real post). It seemed to me that my 20s could be about so much more than just YOLO-ing around, that they could actually be a time for tremendous self-improvement and world-changing. I felt that doing things like "dating two people at once," "accomplishing a Pinterest project," and "hanging out naked in front of a window" (again, actual things from a real post) would be wasting a time in my life when I have more power than ever before. I can take action and deal with the consequences of those actions in my own way. I'm no longer a "minor." If I wanna participate in a medical research study that will either cure my insomnia or turn my nose into a flamethrower every time I sneeze, I get to sign the paperwork, not mom and dad. I also believe there are plenty of ways to enjoy life and embrace the moment without ruining all consecutive moments thereafter, or making people want to slap you with a herring Monty Python-style until your stench of immaturity is replaced with an even fishier odor.

Instead of fish-slapping my fellow authors, I decided to release my contempt in a way that wouldn't result in assault charges--and quite an embarrassing police blotter entry. I set out to write my own "20 Things to Do in Your 20s" post. It was gonna be one of the greatest speeches to ever grace a soapbox. My whole generation would quake in its Converses. However, before I even finished the first paragraph, I realized something: I have no business writing this.

For starters, I'm no expert on self-improvement. The following cartoon illustrates my failure to keep that healthy eating resolution:

This is why I shouldn't get candy for Christmas anymore.

Also, I can't honestly tell people what to do in their 20s because I'm in my 20s. The thing about decades is that you don't notice their defining characteristics until you're in a new decade. I never truly began to notice what exactly made the 2000s what they were until the 2010s. And even then, decades are never as strictly defined as we pretend they are, the way they blend into each other. For instance, the 60s weren't an entire 10 years of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Leave It to Beaver was on until '63! Personally, I think it would've been a much more compelling show had it ended with little Theodore Cleaver rejecting his idealized upbringing, hopping in a stolen Thunderbird with Larry Mondello, and riding off into the desert to found one of the greatest rock groups in history.

One by one, those all-too-familiar feelings of inadequacy reared their ugly heads, starting with "you don't know anything," followed by "you haven't even done half the things on this list, idiot!" I almost didn't finish this post, but in the end I decided to keep writing despite the self-loathing curling around my soul. However, even though it's in second person, I wrote it as more of a set of goals for myself than a sermon for my fellow millenials. In fact, I'm really the person I'm talking to the whole time. So here it is, re-titled, and feel free to follow or reject the advice therein. Or laugh at it. Or rant in your own blog post about how wrong it is.

12 Things to Do in Your 20s, 30s, or Life in General That I Haven't Necessarily Done Yet but Hope to Do Someday (I decided 12 things was enough, and it's my favorite number):

1. Learn to talk (again).

It's a good idea, especially when you're first entering the work force, to critically listen to yourself. How many times do you say "like" per sentence? How many memes do you reference per sentence? Can you leave a competent-sounding voicemail? Now is a great time to examine how your speech might be affecting your professional image, especially in an age where people's verbal capacities are getting more and more atrophied. With texting and Facebooking and other ways to avoid actually speaking, more people seem afraid of talking than usual. I know because I've gotten this way. Give me a pen, I can make you cry. Give me a mic, and I get tongue-tied. It's like my brain and my speech are disconnected; they can't function at the same time. And it's worsened over the years. So my advice is to practice and get comfortable with speaking, even when you'd rather write. Call someone instead of texting them. Also, back to memes for a second. If there's one way to get people to not take you seriously as an adult, it's referring to your job as "such quota. very income. wow." Memes can be fun sometimes, but don't make a habit of them. It's cooler to be able to speak creatively without the help of the Internet.

2. Practice honesty.

Sometimes we keep secrets or tell small fibs to avoid hurting people, and on rare occasions, it's the best thing to do. But secrets often have a way of revealing themselves later in nasty ways, like Taco Bell. Therefore, like Taco Bell, you should avoid them whenever possible. Also, being honest with people shows respect. It means you see them as fellow adults who can handle the truth, though not necessarily Taco Bell.

3. Be unapologetically yourself, yet willing to change.

The species that survives is the one that evolves, and the plant that bears fruit is the one that is cultivated. I shouldn't talk about plants, considering I've killed almost every one I've attempted to grow.

4. Learn to have a conversation with an 18-year-old or an 80-year-old.

This is actually a version of something I found in a similar list article from Relevant magazine, which I actually agreed with quite a bit. I especially agreed with this particular advice, because so much knowledge and life experience opens up when you can have a meaningful conversation with someone different from you. In fact, I've often had more fun hanging out with 40 and 50-year-old men from work than with other 22-year-old women.

5. Be clear, firm, and direct.

Speaking of guys from work, this advice came from a colleague. Notice it doesn't say "be a jerk," just "clear, firm, and direct." This can apply to every type of communication in every aspect of life.

6. Recognize when and when not to listen to your parents.

This one can be complicated. I think you should always at least hear your parents out, but once you reach adulthood, your decisions are ultimately yours and yours alone. Yes, they've seen decades and history that you haven't, and they may have better musical taste than you, but they're not gods. They're humans, just like you, and you've also had experiences that they haven't. The challenge is to be willing to consider their wisdom, yet stand firm in your own decision-making abilities.

7. Learn to drive a manual transmission car, if possible.

It'll help you in emergencies if you can pop the clutch, it'll discourage you from using your cell phone while driving (you need two hands), and you'll feel like one of the cool guys on a cop show. Plus, only true rugged individualists drive sticks. Automatics are for sheeple.

8. Have relationships (and not just romantic ones).

There's a tendency in our modern world to only experience the surface or parts of things, to detach ourselves from life. Instead, have relationships, which require investments. Have a relationship with the world around you. Take a walk, and instead of playing with your phone every five seconds or sticking your earbuds in, invest your senses in what's happening, what you can see, hear, feel, talk to, think about. Attach yourself to life. Dream, but don't make dreams your master, to paraphrase Kipling. Invest in the people in your life. Don't just ask your significant other what they did at work today. Ask them what they think about life, the universe, and everything. Give them your time, which we all know is a very valuable gift. Do the same in your spiritual life.

9. Buy a Crock Pot.

It'll serve you in much more satisfying ways than a Macbook.

10. Forgive.

I've had problems with forgiveness. Sometimes it feels like forgiveness is the same as justification, so when I say to someone "I forgive you," it feels like I'm actually saying "I totally understand why you were awful to me, and I'm okay with what you did." But forgiveness isn't about justifying what someone did, or pretending that it wasn't an awful thing. It's just letting go, and not stressing under a burden of hate for that person. On a related note, another good skill besides forgiving is being able to both make and break connections with people and places. Don't be afraid to invest, but if your investment isn't returned, just load up your trusty mule, move on down the trail, and know that you'll find somewhere, someone, or something else you can share yourself with.

11. Explore the place you grew up in.

Once you start going out on your own more often, you might discover some cool things and places about your hometown you didn't even know were there. I started going to a coffee shop in my hometown that I couldn't visit on my own before I had a car, and wound up making some delightful new friends to knit and use politically incorrect humor with.

12. Take responsibility instead of blaming others.

"So go ahead and get mad at God, point your fingers at your dad and ask Santa Claus..."--Atmosphere, "Puppets"

This may be one of the hardest things of all. In the words of the same colleague I quoted earlier, you have to make the life you want for yourself. No one else can do it for you, and blaming people for your hardships will get you nowhere. Many of us millenials have come out of a broken educational system into a broken world, but that doesn't change this fact. It's hard to make the life you want for yourself. I'm struggling just to get going, to change little things like what I eat and how much time I spend on Facebook. But little things build big things.

I'd like to conclude this bacchanalia of verbiage with a link to a TED talk from Lizzie Velasquez, a woman who's doing some pretty incredible things in her 20s:          

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c62Aqdlzvqk

To anyone else who's trying to make the life they want: good luck, and godspeed.

Finding My Linus: On the True Meaning of Christmas

The week after Thanksgiving, I saw a movie where a man almost gets his fingers broken trying to convince a woman to put a plastic snowman on her roof. Later, this same woman chases after a processed Christmas ham like a starving dingo let loose in a supermarket. It was supposed to be a comedy.

The strangest and saddest thing about it was that the characters never really stopped to ask themselves why. Why do people go crazy preserving traditions that don't serve any purpose other than making people miserable? Why do we act like animals every December? What does it all mean? 

The answer is nothing. So much of we do at Christmas means nothing, I realized when I asked myself these questions this year. It's as if celebrating the birth of Jesus, being thankful, and reconnecting with the spiritual side of life wasn't enough (correction: wasn't profitable enough), so we threw in a bunch of other pointless crap that didn't need to be there. This was the first Christmas in my 22 years that the pointlessness of said crap truly showed its ugly self. I got sick of all the overplayed holiday songs, including "The Christmas Waltz":

"Santa's on his way/He's filled his sleigh/With things, things for you and for me..."

The emphasis on "things" made me nauseous. Not even Frank Sinatra could make me ignore it. And don't get me started on "The Chipmunk Song":

"Christmas, Christmastime is here/Time for toys and time for cheer

We've been good, but we can't last/Hurry Christmas, hurry fast..."

No, it wasn't the Chipmunks' squeaky voices that made me want to punch my radio. It was the fact that they based their moral decisions on the promise of material gain. I always knew chipmunks were the greediest of rodents, the way they stuff their faces.

It wasn't just the music, either. I never liked the mawkish milquetoast that passes for Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel, but this year I hated them more than usual. They seemed like the cinematic equivalent of Pop Tarts: flat, identical pieces of cardboard dropping off an assembly line, wrapped up in shiny advertisements. I couldn't stand the way they oversimplified life, how they made it look so easy for people to change or always do the right thing, how everybody was white. They made the complications and difficulty of real life all the more apparent.

Advertisements were also worse this year. One night, I watched another movie that was taped in 1998, when I was seven years old. The 90s commercials were so much less obnoxious than today's, and there seemed to be fewer of them. They were short, sweet, and to the point. They simply said "please buy our product; it works," instead of screeching "BUY THIS STUFF AND ALL THE OTHER STUFF" over loud dance-pop jingles and equally loud graphics. I literally teared up when I saw an old commercial for a Gameboy Color. Aside from this year's ads themselves was the fact that Black Friday tried to bleed into Thanksgiving Day. My friend called Black Friday a "blight upon humanity," but it's more like a suspension of humanity. For one brief moment, people feel it's okay to claw someone's face over a printer (that actually happened to someone).

Even some of the things I normally enjoyed about Christmas lost some of their luster in 2013. I didn't feel like building a gingerbread house, and the mall decorations didn't sparkle quite as much as before. An exception was the Charlie Brown Christmas special, which I enjoyed more than ever, probably because I felt like Charlie Brown. I didn't feel the way I was supposed to feel. Sometimes I could even hear smooth jazz playing when I vented about my problems. I needed a Linus to remind me of what Christmas was all about.

My Linus came in the form of small moments of kindness, joy, and forgiveness. The light in a friend's eyes when they receive an unexpected present (granted, it's easy to light up most people's eyes with free booze, but still). The discovery that another friend isn't angry with you, even when you thought you wronged them and felt soul-crushingly guilty for it. The feeling of slipping a bill through the slot in a Salvation Army bucket. And, finally, hearing Silent Night sung over a guitar, the simple sound embracing a Christmas Eve congregation, faces softened in candlelight. A silent night. What a beautiful thing.

Basically, I didn't find joy in the typical things this Christmas, but I did in more spiritual things. The symbolism of Jesus being born in such a simple, threadbare environment, and the ultimate act of forgiveness He would come to represent, stood out more than ever. Overall, I think this temporary depression led to a change for the better, which makes me wonder if my other emotional ups and downs could do the same.