A Little Lighter for Mental Health Purposes

Green ribbon for mental
health awareness

LINK HEAVY POST

Because of all the incredible, ridiculous, dangerous, scary horseshit that has been happening lately, I have been retreating more and more into myself and my personal circles, and out of social media. I'm still there a little bit, because a) I still need to know what's going on in the world, and b) I have some very dear friends whom I only see online. But in addition to the aforementioned (click any recent post) time restrictions that I put on my Facebook app (the other platforms are not generally an issue), I have now turned off notifications as well. So if I want to go there, I have to do it deliberately.

In any case, this post is about what I do to keep myself from huddling in a corner sucking my thumb. I suppose it's technically dissociation, although not in the clinical sense. It's probably better defined as my old standby, conflict avoidance. I'll be 57 next week, and I'm just tired of dealing with... well, with all that out there.

I write, of course. Mostly here, or the nightly write-down-my-worries notebook that I have picked back up again. I'm currently not writing fiction, fan- or otherwise. Don't know why.

I'm rereading old childhood favorites. For a while it was Agatha Christie's not-Poirot-nor-Marple novels, but many of those are political or spy thrillers, and are therefore unsettlingly close to what the world is like right now. Though I suppose if I wanted an actual taste of what the world is like right now, I'd have to pull out some Ian Fleming; some of our current crop of political types are one fluffy or hairless cat away from being Bond Villains. I have no objection to Poirot or Marple, but I want to read them in chronological order, and most of the early ones are on hold in my Libby app, as other people are reading them right now.

So I regressed even further into childhood and am reading Nancy Drew. Now, the ones I used to own (about fifty each of the Nancy Boys and Hardy Boys series) and the ones I'm reading now (on Kindle through the Libby app) are rewrites (from the 1960s) of the original stories (from the 1930s-1950s), to update some technology (like Nancy's convertible car) and some language (there are a few words in the early books that would be considered slurs today, and even the 1960s ones are not great by today's standards). Aside from these issues, and the formulaic nature of the stories (Nancy & friends come across a person who has been Done Wrong, Nancy vows to investigate, Bess gets scared, George shows off her "tomboy" strength, there is a Dangerous Situation involving kidnapping or flood or fire, and then they catch the Bad Guy), there is a lot that I notice as an adult that was not at all evident when I was a kid or even a young adult. 

Leaving aside the Mary Sue that is Nancy Drew (she can do just about anything), there are these elements in almost every story. George is there to be the muscle if there aren't any boys around. She also mildly fat-shames Bess at least once a book. So does the narration, as Bess is invariably described as "slightly plump, but still pretty." Ewwww. All three girls, and Nancy especially, have had a truly alarming number of traumatic brain injuries, ranging from the accidental (Bess gets swept overboard by the boom of a sailboat clocking her in the head) to the deliberate (Nancy gets hit over the head by a Bad Guy or indirectly by an Elaborate Trap with everything from decorative furniture to cannonballs about once a book). These head injuries are always cured by a cold cloth to the forehead and a "good nap."

Anyway, reading childhood favorites is a relatively safe and healthy way to keep myself out of the fray, and has been approved by my therapist. Even if I do cringe at most of the stuff up there. It's safe.

I have been looking for (additional) work fairly regularly, as my job (which I love) isn't enough on its own in our hypercapitalist hellscape of a country. I've had a couple of one-day side gigs, but that's not enough either. I can write, proofread, and edit; I could even do simple data entry. Everyone seems to decry my "lack of ambition" because I don't want to be a CEO one day, but really, I just want a job where I can do things that need to be done, in between my day-job shifts. But apparently, that lack of ambition is incomprehensible to hiring managers. I wonder if they think I'm lying in wait like a spider, trying to steal their job; it would not be the first time that people mistrust me because I "seem nice."

 Also, do you know how expensive car insurance is for a single, widowed, fifty-something mom of a 22yo and an 18yo? The 18yo only has a learner's permit and is never driving alone, and the 22yo only drives during school breaks, but that matters not to insurance companies. I'm a teamster with a good enough driving record to be considered safe to drive Other People's Children to school, but that doesn't matter either. Yes, I am shopping around.

Also, video games and TV. Genshin Impact, mostly, the trio of Wordle/Connections/Strands (posted on Bluesky), and stuff on my phone. I've discontinued my Duolingo subscription because I'm poor and I'm annoyed about their switch to AI, but I may as well use it until the subscription runs out. I swapped out Spanish for Chess over the summer there, but I'm back on Spanish now. I'm watching a bunch of those Netflix cooking competition shows (Is it Cake, Cook at any Cost, Easy Bake Battle, etc.) they made in like 2022 because they're fairly light and fluffy. I'm excited about the new season of Call The Midwife, but again, I'm avoiding the heavy stuff right now.

So I didn't manage to be super light here, because of the reasons for the required lightness. But it helped me feel a little better, so I declare this a successful blog post.