Monday can eat a fat one. Seriously.
It doesn't matter what you have going on today. It could be your day off and you're on vacation in the Caribbean and you're being fed pizza and monkeys are doing the salsa dance for you and Joe Biden just honored you in an address to the nation... BUT YOU STILL KNOW IT'S MONDAY.
Restaurants are closed, coffee places are closed (NOOOOOOOOOOOO!), the streets are a little bit quieter. Everything has the Monday vibe to it. The weekend left hours ago and now we're all dreaming of lasagna and telling Jon to take care of his neglected but loveable dope of a dog Odie. There has to be some significance to that name, "Odie" right? Like the Greek god Odin? Or like "O, Die!" That's dark.
Each Monday I'm looking at the week like some arduous task that needs to be taken care of, making Monday an arduous task within itself. As humans, planning is important. It helps us navigate ourselves to some version of success. Planning a hunt, planning a season, planning a drive, etc. We can all agree on that. Personally, trying to sit and plan is like pulling teeth. As soon as I look at the week and what I need to map out I feel the urge to pee. Then I sit back down and I need to stand back up and take out the trash. Then when I get back in and put my pen to the paper I need to do the dishes. I know exactly what's happening... I need to clean the bathroom. I'm totally unsure if it's ADD or ADHD or ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY I need to brush my teeth.
This is probably why I fell in love with the martial arts and exercise in general. If the body can be enduring some sort of "pain" or input, then the mind finally has something to focus on. If the body is at rest, especially without having burned a million calories already, I'm jumping out of my skin. Just trying to write this is like trying to have a 1 on 1 conversation in the middle of a Metallica concert. "HUUUUUUUH?! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?! BATTERRRRY" /Headbang
Whenever I'm writing and posting (Reminder: KrisOakey.com has been around for years) I think of the Pilgrim lady giving the tour in Billy Madison "Is anybody even listening to me?" The writing has never been about having a massive audience or anything like that, but just feeling like I've been able to leave my door unlocked. Here's my soul, my psychotic train of thought, and some analogies that are really just eloquent movie references of a lady that pees her pants to be cool.
On the sidebar, when you're working on a post, you click all the categories of what your post may fall under. As I'm clicking I reminded myself to be "grateful," to queue up "healthy habits," to admit that I deal with overwhelming amounts of anxiety, depression, and am self-conscious to a fault. It all comes in waves. Big, fast, and sudden waves. But save the pity party for me, it only makes the problems worse. It's something we all get in one way or another. People have come to me through the past week and told me that they felt that they were alone in this and I'm here to tell you all, "I need to vacuum."
Honestly, the waves of anxiety can hit hard and today I feel is like high tide with 100 foot waves of the coast of Hawaii. It feels like drowning in emotions that you can't even understand. Almost like if I could cry a tub of tears I'd feel so much better, like relieved. And for whatever moronic reason, I conditioned myself to not cry because "crying's for pussies." Right. Brilliant. I'm not one for political correctness (it's ruined millions of people and conversations in general. Just say it. Be real, be genuine, and save your PC terms for some TikTok reel) but that's definitely some toxic masculinity. The thought of embracing the sadness, anger, *insert a word for an emotion that doesn't exist* makes me feel like I'm weak. Like we should just be able to shake it off, pull a Jocko, and tell ourselves that the enemy isn't crying at hour 0420. He's doing pushups in the jungle surrounded by scorpions with a bayonet pinched between his asscheeks. That motherfucker is a MAN.
It would be nice to just sit on the couch and watch movies all day while scrolling through my phone, taking the day as an L and just isolating myself from all humans. Making eye contact with someone just feels like they could break me. One look at them and my brain tells me, "They've got it all together and you're crumbling. Put on some fake smile and tell them "everything is fine." In actuality, everything IS FINE. We have food, we have water, we have a roof over our heads. Nothing and no one is trying to kill us (I hope). It's all first world problems that we're dealing with, right? Oh no, the bills are due, inflation is rising, it's Monday and the workweek has begun WAAAAAAAAAAH. I'm anxious WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.
There's fucking war all over the world, people are dying of starvation/disease/lack of drinking water, and some people don't even have a place to sleep at night. Those are REAL problems.
But anxiety and depression have no interest in being reasoned with. Logic doesn't have any power over them. You can play the "I'm fine" mental loop on repeat, but they're like a 2 year old having a tantrum. They're screaming and ripping your hair out subsequently forcing you to rip all your hair out. That'd be a good reason to explain my lack of hair besides "male pattern baldness." Such a boring answer.
The only way I've ever been able to put a cork in them is by exercising until I want to throw up. I have no understanding why this is has been the solution for me, but it's not the end-all be-all solution to these emotions, but it's the only thing that buys me some time. It allows me to remove some of the people at the Metallica concert while I'm trying to talk. The music is still loud and there's still a metric shit-ton of people there... but there's less.
Perhaps this will be an ongoing battle for the rest of my life. Each day just trying to conquer some demons that want to rattle my cage. Maybe one day there will finally be some inner peace. But we can't plan on it. All we can do is take each day like a fight of good vs. evil, reminding ourselves that we have something to offer the world. Everyone's fighting a battle we know nothing about. Get out of your house, make the connection, meet new people, be interested in them and forget your own bullshit for a minute. Genuinely get lost in someone else's life and what they have to offer. Learn something new. We have to do all we can to conquer our battles but not get lost in them either. That's selfish. Unlock your door, do some writing for us, play some music, create something to share with the world! You WILL feel better. Go for a long walk, maybe move fast, maybe focus on being still and practicing stillness of the mind, maybe do some pushups with a knife between your asscheeks. You are not in danger like the wave of anxiety is trying to tell you. Just like all waves, it's going to crash and go back out to sea. The beach remains. Whatever you're battling today will pass.
I mean.... fuck it, we're all going to be stardust eventually None of this shit actually matters. Everything you do is meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe. Or maybe it's already happened in an infinite amount of other universes? Or maybe we're in a simulation like the Matrix? Or maybe I should just bang my head off the keyboard until I forget how overwhelmed with crippling anxiety I am? I need to do the dishes. I need to take out the trash. I need to clean the bathroom. I need to eat lunch so I don't throw up at BJJ. I should have done a long cardio session so my body wouldn't be making my brain scream in 4 million directions. I should brush my teeth again. I need to pee.
Goddamnit, I really do not enjoy Mondays.