We All Need Soothing (Blog #967)

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Well crap. All day I’ve been worn the eff out. The last few days I’ve slept more than a bear in hibernation, but I just can’t seem to get my rear in gear. Plus, my hips have been hurting. The weather must be changing. Oh no. Is THIS what it’s like to get older? If so, you can have it. Of course, it beats the alternative (dying). Still, I wonder if it wouldn’t help if I were a SMIDGE less cognizant of my body. That is, as a dancer I’m pretty tuned into every square inch of my physical self, and–I don’t know–maybe I wouldn’t make such a big deal about things getting slightly out of whack if I were one of those less self-aware people who, as my dad says, can’t find their ass with both hands. But just imagine how inconvenient that would be.

Especially when going to the bathroom.

But I digress.

I spent this afternoon doing laundry, first my clothes, then my sheets. That’s right, smart alecks, I’ve now washed my sheets twice this quarter. (Miracles never cease.) Anyway, while the washer and dryer were doing their thing, I started reading a book about the importance of the vagus nerve, the longest nerve (that’s actually two nerves) in your body and the one that’s the most responsible for regulating not only your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, but also your heart, liver, and lungs. In other words, it’s important. And whereas I haven’t gotten to the part in the book about how to consciously activate your vagus nerve (and thus calm down your body and stimulate healing), I’ve heard before that humming or singing, as well as gentle rocking, help switch your vagus nerve from the “let’s freak out” to the “everything’s gonna be just fine” position. This makes sense to me. Think about how babies respond to humming, singing, and gentle rocking. Well, you and I are no different.

We all need soothing.

This evening I helped a friend update their website. Okay, fine, we technically started over, since their site hasn’t been updated in eight years. And whereas starting over obviously required more work, we had the best time. At least I did. I spent most of my college years engrossed in photography, layout, and design and have spent most of my years since engrossed in writing and communication, so this really was the perfect thing for my friend to ask me to do. I dove right in. That being said, since each website hosting platform is different, much of tonight was a learning curve–how to change font sizes and what not. But hey, I like learning and my friend bought dinner, so Hakuna Matata!

My friend and I worked on their site for–I don’t know–four hours, then I worked on it a few more when I got home. I guess I got hyper-focused on figuring out how to add pictures and link to their social media accounts and couldn’t let it go. (I’m no Elsa.) While I was with my friend I kept futzing around with text alignment–to the left, to the center, to the right. My friend said, “This is why you DON’T want someone who’s OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE designing your website.” I said, “This is why you DO want someone who’s obsessive compulsive designing your site.” Along these lines, my therapist says there are times when my perfectionism serves me. Because it allows me to attend to ALL THE DETAILS when redecorating a room or redesigning a website or whatever. I just need to be able to turn my perfectionism off so I don’t use it against myself. (Like, my nipples aren’t perfect, and all that.)

JUST ENJOY YOUR NIPPLES, MARCUS.

Now, the fact that I stayed up until two tonight working on my friend’s site when 1) I was already tired and 2) there’s not a deadline–I guess–means I haven’t quite figured out how to turn my perfectionism off. At the same time, it may just mean that I got excited about something, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We creatives (that is, all of us) need to get enthused about new projects now and then. My friend and I tonight were brainstorming ideas and ended up laughing, laughing, laughing. This is huge. Not just having fun, but also bringing LIFE to yourself, to others, and to your work.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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None of us is ever really lost. At least we're never really alone. For always there is someone to help point your ship in the right direction, someone who sees you when you can't see yourself.

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On Being Less Attached (Blog #895)

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Last night I spilled hot tea on my phone and two of the buttons stopped working. So after I blogged, I shut my phone down, removed the battery, and sealed my phone in a Ziploc bag full of rice. According to the internet and some (but not all) of my smart friends, the rice is supposed to suck the moisture out of the phone and–voila!–return it to normal working condition. (I’ve had moderate success with this method before. It’s worked for my phone but not for my laptop. And yes, I spill hot tea on my electronics a lot. Always after I’ve stopped carrying insurance on them, I should add.) Anyway, being without my phone has been a bit like being without my penis, I’m sad to say. That is, we’re pretty attached.

When I was in my early twenties and all my friends had cell phones, I refused to get one. “I don’t need one,” I said. Instead, I used my parents’ landline. I memorized everyone’s numbers. (Remember when that was a thing?) But when I turned twenty-five, I caved and got a flip phone. And me and my phone have been married ever since. Like almost everyone else in America, I’m rarely without my device. Not that I’m proud of this, but facts are facts.

Since I usually use my phone for my alarm clock, last night I used an honest-to-god alarm clock instead. Consequently, I didn’t sleep well. I wasn’t sure it would go off. I set it for eight this morning and–on my own–woke up at six-forty-five. Well, I never went back to sleep. But here’s the great part. Instead of picking up my phone and mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, I meditated and contemplated. Not like I closed my eyes and chanted, but last night I talked about my phone’s “death” as an opportunity for me to unplug and even get my nose out of other people’s business, so for over an hour this morning I considered these things. What’s really important to me? I thought.

When I finally rolled out of bed, I pulled my phone out of the rice, put the battery back in, and–with hope–pushed the power button. Thankfully, it worked. Everything operated as if nothing had happened. Except that I’d “lost” my contacts because I’d purposefully disconnected my accounts so they wouldn’t be exposed in the event I had to take my phone to a repair shop. But anyway, back to the good news. No serious problems. Still, I decided to turn my phone off and put it back in rice just to be on the safe side. Would it be the worst thing in the world to disconnect for a day? I thought.

No, no it wouldn’t, I thought back.

After eating breakfast and showering, I went to therapy, and my therapist told me I had really big balls (“elephantiasis” was her word) when I told her about my confronting someone recently. “I don’t know how you’re sitting there with your legs crossed,” she said. “Your nuts seriously must be cantaloupe-sized.”

“It’s just because I’ve been hanging out with you for five years,” I said.

Recently I’ve talked a lot about changing patterns and behaviors, and I use this story as an illustration of the idea that when you’re wanting to change or transform, it’s important to have a role model. This is why people in Alcoholics Anonymous have sponsors. You need someone who acts as an example of what you want to be. For me that example has mostly been my therapist. However, I also often think about Doc Holiday as portrayed by Val Kilmer in the movie Tombstone. The guy’s an absolute badass. He says what he wants and doesn’t take shit from anyone. Granted, he’s the sharpest shooter in the wild west and can back up his words with a his bullets, but still, the point remains. In order to reach our potential, we need mentors, people who say (by either their words or actions), “This is possible. Look what you can become.” Indeed, I don’t think it’s an accident that Tombstone has been one of my top-five favorite movies since it came out. It’s like a part of me knew–There’s something here to aspire to.

Now it’s nine at night, and my phone is still shut off. I’m thinking I’ll let it continue to dry out until tomorrow afternoon. And whereas I’ve had a couple twitchy, compulsive moments (like reaching for my phone after therapy or whenever I’ve put my car in park), it really has been the best thing. For one thing, I’ve been more intentional. Instead of letting someone else decide what I should think about, I decided what I should think about it. This morning I read the preface for a book after breakfast. This afternoon I paid bills. Tonight I had dinner with some dear friends and was absolutely present (when I wasn’t staring at the hot waiter). I can’t imagine I missed out on anything on social media. Also, I never once felt bad because some friend or stranger was bitching or talking about politics. Or because I was comparing my life to someone else’s. Rather, I was simply living–less attached.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Some days, most days, are a mixed bag. We cry, we laugh, we quit, we start again. That's life. In the process, we find out we're stronger than we thought we were, and perhaps this is healing.

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everything right where it belongs (blog #41)

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This afternoon I met my roommates (my parents), my aunt, and a family friend at a cafeteria for lunch—like a buffet line, green Jell-O, all-you-can-eat-dessert-section cafeteria. Personally, I think places like this are heaven, but not when you’re on a diet. Somehow I was able to stick to salad and baked chicken, but kept drooling over the tacos, macaroni and cheese, and soft-serve ice cream. It felt like having a spectator pass at an orgy. Like, I wasn’t completely satisfied.

After lunch, I’d intended to go to my office (the public library), but realized that I’d left my laptop at home. Well, when you’re retired (unemployed), you don’t have anything else to do, so I drove home, got my laptop, then drove all the way back to the library.

Recently I discovered how to sync my laptop files to an online account. I realize I’m a little late to that party, but I can’t tell you how good it feels to have everything backed up, especially considering the fact that I lost all the files from my other computer. It feels good to know that something is secure. So today I copied the files from my recent CT scan to my online account, and I kept looking at the file structure, satisfied that everything was both “safe” and “right where it belonged.”

Even now, I keep going back and looking at the files. Yep, they’re still there—organized—exactly where I left them.

It just makes my little heart sing.

A couple of weeks ago I took a metal shelf from my parents’ garage, cleaned it off, and put my collection of Broadway show magnets on it. The project took about an hour because I arranged the magnets first by the city in which I saw the shows and second in the order I saw them. I realize NO ONE ELSE GIVES A SHIT or would even notice, but every time I look at it, it makes me happy and reminds me of a line from a poem I memorized in high school: “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”

I think my therapist has only used the term Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with me a couple of times in three years, and I think she said, “A little OCD” or “A touch of OCD.” (You think?) But it’s definitely a label that comes to my mind whenever I’m arranging my computer files or magnet collection. Hell, I should probably put it on my business cards:

Marcus Coker, OCD
(Let’s alphabetize!)

My psychologist friend Craig told me the story of a lady he knew who HAD to wash her dishes five times by hand before they could go in the dishwasher. She was afraid her family would get sick from germs. No one ever got sick, so that reinforced her habit. He also told me about a woman who could never see her son because she obsessively thought about killing him. (Whoa.) So Craig said OCD can get really bad; it can seriously alter your life.

Once I read a slightly angry blog that said people like the dish-washing lady and the might-kill-her-own-son lady who have clinically-diagnosed OCD don’t particularly appreciate people like me using the term. Like, YOU don’t have real OCD, I do. You’re just tidy.

I mean, I can appreciate that. And I am tidy. But I guess OCD is a bit like a scale, and Craig says that a little OCD can be functional, so I’m not quite ready to give up the label.

We can hang on and put everything safely in its place, and then at some point, we’re forced to let go.

This evening I went for a two-hour walk. I ended up on Mount Vista, an area of town that was hit by a tornado in 1996. It’s really weird walking in that part of town because I used to ride my bike there, and I have all these memories of the houses and landmarks I’ve seen hundreds of times. Well, there’s this one house on my Mount Vista route that stands out because my sister and I volunteered to clean there after the tornado. And I really don’t remember much about it, but I do recall standing in the kitchen in a puddle of water and going through a cabinet, and there were dozens and DOZENS of Cool Whip containers stacked neatly inside each other, right where they belonged, tidy except for the fact that the house around them was completely ruined.

I’ve thought about those Cool Whip containers a lot over the years. My guess is that the person they belonged to was a little OCD like I am. And I think it’s interesting how we can hang on and put everything safely in its place, and then at some point, we’re forced to let go. A tornado comes into your life, and everything is out of place, and safe no longer exists, if it ever did.

Even though I recently voluntarily let go of a LOT of stuff, I still fight the tendency to start hanging on again, whether it’s with computer files, magnets, whatever. To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with collecting, and I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with putting everything in its place, right where it belongs. I imagine I’ll always be tidy. But whenever I start hanging on and organizing, there’s part of me that feels like I’m reaching for control, as if I’ll somehow be able to avoid a disaster if everything is—in order.

But life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes it’s chaotic and sometimes it’s messy. So going forward, I don’t want to kid myself into believing that having everything just so makes me safe and secure. It doesn’t. Everything, after all, passes way, and it’s not like anything temporary completely satisfies. And that’s more than okay. I don’t need all my things lined up in order for my heart to sing. The heart sings for its own reasons—it doesn’t need a thing.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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No emotion is ever truly buried.

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