#strangefolk

9.18.2020

I fell asleep with my kid Wednesday night at 8pm. So it only makes sense that I woke up at 3:15am when he tried to sleep on my leg and then couldn’t get back to sleep. By the time I got out for a walk at 6:30am, I had already watched too many YouTube videos, ate breakfast, and made coffee. I wanted to go outside earlier, but it was pitch black. So I guess 6:30am it is, because sunrise is only going to get later as autumn progresses. 

The super interesting thing about Thursday’s walk was I listened to rock again. One of the best jamband albums of the late 90s is Strangefolk’s “Weightless in Water”. It sparked a bunch of ideas which I typed out as I walked. And that became my previous post. After that record, I listened to Bob Marley’s “Exodus”, which I haven’t listened to since working in record stores during college. There’s been a lot pointing me towards reggae these days, specifically Charlie Hunter’s “Natty Dread” and Lo talking about reggae beats in GSW songs. 

The song that really got me thinking was “Who I Am”, which is sung by the bassist, Erik. It’s obvious this song is about an argument with a friend. What caught me is how any time I hear a song like this, I always internalize it about myself. I did this with “Guns & Sharp Swords” by Lo. I’m not singing about the woman he’s pining for. I’m not singing about a similar person I might have in my life. The song only makes sense about me. “Once, we were one and not two, and I gave up my soul for you.” 

The thing this entire blog, and my entire purpose in therapy is all about, is squashing my inner critic. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of regret. I should have become a history teacher. I should have stayed in this job or this band. I should have practiced more. I wouldn’t feel like I’m always starting over had I done that. And since starting over is exhausting, my loud inner critic is using that sense of dread against me, this time by showing me my age. 

My challenge here is showing myself the common threads including the sequence of events and choices I made that felt like common sense at the time. For instance, I left the power pop cover band and teaching guitar when our son was born. In hindsight, maybe I should have quit the original band. It was time to stop teaching. I don’t regret leaving. I miss teaching, but I don’t regret it. But my brain will hold up walking away from the music school and scream “LOOK AT THE FAILURE”. It’s not failure. The time to stop doing something was over. I taught for 15 years. It’s ok. 

This all comes as I’m seriously considering what I want to do next in life. I did not have a good end to my last job. Do I want to go back to the hustle? Do I want to do something completely different? I’m seriously considering the latter. Do I feel like I failed at my last job? Somewhat. But, I also feel like I seriously improved in the last 6 months and was over the hump. I understand why I was laid off and there’s no sense in rehashing at this point. 

My birthday is in a few weeks. I’ll be 43. Last July I freaked out at work when a deal fell through and spent August talking myself out of it. I was ok for a few weeks but the bottom fell out for my mental well being and I finally decided I needed to talk to someone a couple of weeks after my 42nd birthday in October. Since I couldn’t afford therapy out of pocket I picked an internist, was able to get a phone visit, and cried my eyes out in my car for 15 minutes. As a result, my profile says “major depressive disorder”. 

In that year, I’ve gone from having uncontrollable physical reactions to stress to being at least a tick calmer. As a result, I got more comfortable at work and started doing the work well before COVID. Having stopped manifesting at work, my “Inner Critic” as my now former therapist called it, started butting into my personal life. Not that it hadn’t before, but now the bad memories were more frequent. I used the techniques we talked about in therapy, and tried to “give it a seat at the table” instead of just yelling at myself. I got better at it this summer as I had no work and started writing this blog, also a therapist suggestion.