i’d love to change the world but i don’t know what to do

Posted on By Wil

…so i leave it up to you…

I’ve been talking with some friends about the increasing belligerence, toxicity, and general shittiness of the Internet lately. It seems like it’s just exploded in a logarithmic curve in the last week or so, and websites I generally enjoy browsing, like Reddit and Fark, and social networks I’ve always liked, like Tumblr and Twitter, seem to be overrun with real dickwagons.

“It’s like somone pushed a button, and unleashed a horde of … angry … children …” I said, the reality dawning on my as the words came out of my mouth.

“Oh god. It’s summer vacation and the children are online, unsupervised, all day.”

I’m going to sound like an old man now, but fuck it: I’m genuinely concerned by the lack of basic empathy and kindness I’m seeing online from the damn kids today. Maybe they’re not like that face to face, and maybe they don’t think that being online is “real”, but the cruelty and bigotry and misogyny that I see blithely spouted all over the place online worries me. Are we letting an entire generation grow up believing that behaving like the whole world is [whatever]chan? Is that healthy? The Internet has always had awful people on it, but the farther away I get from my 20s, the worse and worse it seems.

Maybe it’s because I’m a parent, and I know how hard I worked to help my own children develop empathy and kindness, so I have an observational and confirmation bias … but I’m genuinely starting to feel, for the first time in my entire life, like I don’t want to interact with people online. I don’t mean that in a flouncy, goodbye cruel world I’m leaving this forum forEVAR way, either. I mean it in a “man, what happened to this neighborhood? It used to be so great,” kind of way.

I’m looking at websites and networks and communities that I’ve been part of for close to a decade or more, and I hardly recognize them. Is that because I was just less touchy about people being shits back then? Or is it a real and meaningful change in the culture? For the sake of the damn kids today, I really hope that this is just me feeling touchy and overly-sensitive. Because I’m trying really hard to make the world a better place for this generation, and if the behavior I see online from them is indicative of their norm, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

How I deal with anxiety

Posted on By Wil

Here’s another one from my Tumblr ask thingy:

ditrysia asked:

Hey Wil. Do you have any advice/tips for people with anxiety to calm down when they feel they are starting to freak out and might have a panic attack? I don’t know if that particularly happens to you but you seem to know a lot about dealing with mental health. Thanks.

I’m not a doctor, and this is not a good substitution for medical advice. I’m not saying that to cover my ass, I’m saying that because it’s true. If this is a problem for you, please talk to a professional. If you can’t find one, or can’t afford one, go to Nami.org or call the NAMI Helpline at 800-950-6264 and you’ll be able to talk with someone right away to help get you out of crisis. NAMI also has a lot of great resources on the various flavors of anxiety that I encourage you to look at.

Okay, so for me: I do a couple of different things. If it’s really, really, really bad, I’ll take some medication that helps calm me down. But that’s a last resort for me. The first step for me is to recognize that anxiety is rising up, and then work to identify what’s causing it. (I realize that, for some people, doing just that can cause the anxiety to increase into a feedback loop, so maybe meds are a better first step until the anxiety gets under control). If I’m able to identify the cause (maybe it’s upcoming travel, or a deadline, or I have to deal with a personal thing that I’d rather not deal with) I work to separate RATIONAL thoughts from IRRATIONAL thoughts. This is a real challenge, because the brain is responsible for that job, and when the brain is being controlled by anxiety or other mental health issues, it can be less than helpful. But, with practice and experience, I can separate rational from irrational thoughts. In the beginning, it helped me to write things down. For example: Rational: I may miss my flight and have to take another. That’ll be inconvenient. Irrational: I may miss my flight and not be able to get on another flight but if I do get on another flight it’s going to crash. Rational: This meeting is important, and I’m worried about doing my best. Irrational: This meeting is important and if I’m not perfect I’m going to fail at everything in life and lose my house and family.

You may think I’m joking or being deliberately hyperbolic, but these are real thoughts I’ve had in my life.

When I separate the IRRATIONAL from the RATIONAL, I put irrational thoughts into a space that’s like a mental trash can. They aren’t helpful, and I don’t need them. I focus on what I can do about the rational thoughts. The rational thoughts can be helpful, by making it clear to me that I need to work hard for something, or make sure that I’m ready to leave for an appointment, or whatever. Sometimes, the rational thoughts can feel irrational. For example: What if it rains and we can’t do the big thing outside that we’ve been planning for months? If we can’t do the thing outside, we’re doomed! So part of that is rational: I’m worried about not being able to do the thing outside. But if I can’t, it’s usually not the end of the world. We move inside, or we deal with some rain. But it is not the end of the world. The end of the world is when we do the thing outside on the same day that an asteroid crashes into the park. In this (and all of these circumstances,) the trick for me is to recognize when IRRATIONAL thoughts are beginning to overtake RATIONAL thoughts, before they can spiral out of control.

One more thing: sometimes anxiety isn’t about worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. Sometimes, anxiety is about being totally overwhelmed by what’s happening RIGHT NOW. For example: I’m having a great time at this convention or concert or party but HOLY CRAP I CAN’T DEAL WITH ALL THESE PEOPLE RIGHT NOW. That’s totally normal, by the way, and when that happens, I accept that I may need to take some time to myself to just get into a quiet, solitary space, and recharge. BUT THEN I’M MISSING OUT ON THE FUN! Really? Is it really fun to be spending all my energy and focus trying to maintain and not go into a panic attack?

Finally, I keep a pill in my pocket (usually in my wallet) at all times, so if I start to feel a panic attack coming on, I know that I have an escape hatch of sorts.

Oh, also: none of us have to do this alone. Our friends, family, partners all need to know that we have mental health issues. They need to be our support network, so when we are somewhere and are feeling the rising bile of anxiety, we can turn to whoever is with us and tell them that we need some help.

I hope this is helpful to you, or anyone reading this who struggles with the sort of thing people like us struggle with. It’s really important to know that we are not alone, there is nothing wrong with how we feel, and we can get through this, and have a good life.

with apologies and thanks to the oatmeal

Posted on By Wil

I went to The Oatmeal earlier, because I knew that Matt Inman would have written down a series of letters that approximates the sounds coming out of my lower abdomen. I thought that I would copy those letters and post them on Twitter, because that was amusing to me.

What I found was a comic containing an image that, with a little dialog change in gimp, let me give a visual on how I’m feeling today:

apologies to the oatmealPlease don’t yell at me, Matt. I’m fragile today.

in which i am terribly sick for the first time in years

Posted on By Wil

I once played a great game of Microscope with some friends, where we were telling the story of a colony that arrived in a foreign place, tried its best to establish itself, but was ultimately destroyed by a native species. Some of the rules were that it existed in a liquid state, we had no high technology, and that we didn’t know where we came from, just that we needed to survive. When the entire thing was over, we looked at what we created, and realized that we had told the story of a bacterial infection that had found itself in a body, and the body’s immune system eventually fought it off. It turns out that I’ve been reliving this story inside my own body since Sunday.

About two weeks ago, I proudly told a friend of mine, “since I had H1N1 a few years ago, I just don’t get sick anymore. I guess my immune system is a golden god.”

Tuesday night, my immune system decided to take my hubris down a little bit. I started having aches in my elbows, hips, and knuckles in the early afternoon. Shortly after dinner, I was shivering and sweating, and my entire body hurt. By the middle of the night, I woke up in sheets that were completely soaked through. My body was covered in sweat, and my hair felt like I’d just climbed out of a swimming pool. My stomach and entire GI system hurt, and oh my god the aches in my muscles.

It was official: I was sick. I was, like, intensely sick. I was as sick as I’d been in years, and my poor wife had to wake up in the middle of the night and take care of me, like I was 5 years-old.

In the morning yesterday, while I struggled to sleep, Anne called my manager and assistant, and asked them to cancel my day — including @midnight, which was a real bummer — and then she made me a doctor’s appointment.

When we got to the doctor, I described all of my symptoms, and how long I’d been having them (I didn’t realize it until I said it out loud, but I’ve, uh, been shitting like a goose since Sunday morning). He told me that it could be a long list of ailments, and that we’d probably never know precisely which one it was, but he suspected that I got some weird bacteria from eating shell fish on Saturday, and it went Battle of Helms Deep on my body (not his exact words). So I’m on some antibiotics, and taking acetaminophen to keep the fever down, along with some anti-nausea medication to help me keep down food.

Anne got me what I realized is the standard “I’m sick and this is all I want” kit from the store: chicken soup, green Gatorade, and apple sauce. So far, I’ve been able to hold it down, and I think my fever may have broken overnight. I’m still sore, and my body feels wrecked, but my doctor told me that I should steadily feel better over the next few days, and that yesterday was the worst of it.

So I’m hoping that I can just rest and stay hydrated and help my body fight off whatever is trying to ruin my day, and maybe I’ll watch a bunch of Adventure Time or something.