Inspiration

 I'm kind of finished with inspiration. I've said this before; the current onslaught of "Everything will be okay" posters printed in a font comprised of winking teddy bears and sunbeams isn't going to change anything in my brain or my life. That's just how I am. And lord knows I've tried. It's complicated. I love the way these things look and there are certainly a few of them gracing my walls. If I'm in the right state of mind, I might get a little lift. If they help some people take action, great! I want people to be happy. But often, this stuff just makes me feel worse. If you've laid in bed so long that your knees start to ache from inactivity, completely incapacitated by your own fear, the words "DO SOMETHING NOW, YOU INCREDIBLE SCHLUB" in a twee block print might just have the opposite effect; in fact doubling your own shame and self-loathing about just not being able to do anything at that moment in time.

That said, I'm doing great. I've made a lot of positive changes recently. I alternately feel like a million bucks and a pile of cigarette butts, which is oodles better than all butts, all the time. I'll be talking soon about my experience weaning myself off of a physically addictive anti-depressant; alas, not the fun kind like Adderall or Ativan, but a plain old run-of-the-mill SSRI that just happens to almost kill you if you try to stop taking it. It was nuts, and a month out I'm still dealing with the withdrawal effects.


All of this is leading up to one of the most powerful things I've seen in a while from someone who I think probably wasn't wild about inspirational stuff either. David Rakoff wrote about the negative stuff in the most fun way. He got sick, and it sucked. Everything is not going to be okay. That's wildly naive. Things will be terrible and unfair sometimes. What do you do then? How do you change? How do you adapt to your new life? That's what I think is really at the heart of everyone's inspiration attempts, and these are the things that can't be put into a pithy phrase. He talked about this onstage a few months before his death this week. I won't call this video inspirational, but watching it makes me glad to be human.