Flipping S***

When I don't know what I'm doing in the car, like if I don't know where I am going, I flip a shit. Combine this with traffic, poor drivers, a full working day, as well as my timid under practiced driving and a lot of shit is flipped in my 2010 Chevy Malibu. Yesterday I met some coworkers for drinks and couldn't find where the bar was right away, plus people suck at driving on Big Beaver because they all apparently need to get home and defuse a bomb or something. It was then that I realized, when I am stressed while driving, I turn into the worst person I could possibly be. I say racist things, sexist things, homophobic things and if I'm not saying them I'm thinking them as I scream other things. There is a general peace that is about me, and when I am stressed out it seems to rupture - and nothing I stand for is safe anymore. This is extremely worrisome to me because it makes me wonder about the genuine nature of these beliefs, but not in the sense that I don't genuinely believe them, rather where they come from, where they go, and why they aren't always with me.

I generally advocate forward thinking, I want nothing more that the acknowledgment of inequality and a collective move towards a solution to a bigger problem - a sickness - that plagues the American Culture I love (not sarcastically either, I love America). Why then, do I scream "OF. FUCKING. COURSE" when a polite looking Indian family almost, completely unbeknownst to them, kills me on the expressway? I can't simply just get mad at bad driving, I have to assign their bad driving to the most obvious quality about them. Like I'm trying to really hurt them. I'll point out here that people might give some shoddy explanation about the "truth" of stereotypes, that's fine they can think that, but my point goes deeper; if I never adhere to this implicit racism in my day to day, why do I seem to devolve into it in moments where I am incredibly stressed out? Also, there is no longer a censor, words you couldn't pay me to say are all of a sudden free flowing. I don't condone stereotyping or saying words arbitrarily because we don't think they are bad, I understand that words have meaning and can be a harmful act. This of course does not stop them from blurting out.

This is a hard thing to admit. I get so easily flustered when I'm lost or someone does something infuriatingly ignorant when I'm already stressed out. It boils down to my deep seeded fear of tardiness and my even more seeded fear of disappointing other people or letting them down in some way. I can't seem to overcome this feeling, as much as I try to force myself to think positively, to come back to myself in a sense,depending on the stress level; I can't. I'd really like to work on this, I'd like to exhibit self control whenever I feel this stress boil up in me. I'd like to level with myself, look at myself in the mirror and tell myself to settle down. The problem is; I never get a chance, it just happens. Fast. I wish I had the solution, but I don't and it is throwing me into a panic. I don't like who I become in the car, afterwards I have to break things down and convince myself that I didn't mean what I said or what I thought.

One time I saw a woman walking out of a yoga class, she was the picture of zen; her face held a relaxed smile, her walk was casual, and she seemed as though she had just finished sighing a gigantic sigh of relief....when a car speeding by almost clipped her. At this time, she proceeded to fill the air with expletives and her middle finger and a whole lot of "negative vibes". I bring this up because I think people in my generational category will try to forward me information about yogic culture, or eastern religions, or breathing techniques and meditation. It's not as though I'm completely unwilling to try these things, but the random and primal nature of these...attacks...makes it difficult to simply breathe through them, seeing as they are over almost as soon as they start. It seems like yoga is a great way to selfishly unwind after a long work week, but that its abilities are futile against any everyday instances that might insta-boil your blood. In that sense, these eastern culture remedies are more like detox diets and less like adrenaline shots.

No. The judgement comes from a deeper part of me, one that wants to hurt people. This is how I've managed to reconcile with it thus far; by convincing myself that I don't really belief the terrible things I think and say, but that my brain births them from a desire to harm my "aggressor". My question then, is what I need to do to relax this desire to do harm to others mentally, to go for blood. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. And as always,

Thanks for Listening

With an Audience in Mind

This polar vortex has taken quite the toll on my finances, from what I understand, it has taken a toll on yours too. The roads this winter have cost estimates of over a million dollars in car repairs including flat tires, there have been numerous cases of expensive and in some cases irreversible damages to homes, not to mention record freezing temperatures that have taken more than enough stray animal and human lives to deem it a tragedy. If you combine the very tangible and frustrating effects of the winter on your finances with the far more intangible effects the lack of sun, stressful driving conditions and general cold weather has on your psyche you have a recipe for regional hatred. Though this polar vortex is not the first time I've come into contact with people hating on the mitten, but the rise in off hand comments and facebook outbursts have driven me to be far mar reflective on the matter. Why do so many people I know consider this state to be a trap? One that so many are willing to escape by all means short of  gnawing their leg off and even some who might be willing to do even that.

My first experience where I truly became cognizant of this phenomenon is when my very first girlfriend moved to New York to go to college. This might seem kind of late in the game to be aware that others might not possess the same sentiments towards their location as me, but having lived such a happy and relatively easy life I didn't find much cause to think of these things. Anyway, she would constantly go off on how she needed to get away from the Midwest, away from Michigan, away from this mundane culture. I would be nothing, but obediently supportive. Many of our mutual friends seemed frustrated because to them it seemed like she was touting that she was better than us simply because she moved to a cooler state (NYC). Even today I know that is not true, that she did feel a calling to exist in a fast paced setting and she in no way was condemning those who did not feel such a calling. Although she usually wrote them off as jealous, which I also do not think is correct because this was different, as I said before these people did not have the calling to move. No, it was her attack on the very culture of Michigan that hurt them. This idea that because our state and where we grew up is so much a part of us, we are also our state, we comprise it and therefore we are all Michigan as Michigan is all of us.

Today, I meet numerous people with this "get out" mentality. I can see how Michigan might feel like a trap. The hand shape that seems to be held up in response to your hopes and dreams, the fortress of massive lakes surrounding it leaving you only one congested exit and once out you find yourself in the Midwest region's flat and elusively short, but actually fairly substantial territory. Most people I know want to flock to the coasts like migratory birds fleeing the harsh cold of a culture-less land. They want beaches, interesting and attractive people, art, life. In my mind I see them wanting adventure or a journey. This of course makes me sound like I'm much older than they and know all of their hopes and aspirations as though I've been right where they were at and gotten through it all. Not true, but I have been on journeys and adventures. This again sounds like I know better them, which seems like I'm rushing to the point, let me back up:

My problem has always been pornography, it's an addiction I've struggled with for some time. I have no qualms in saying this because it is the secret of it all that makes it so difficult to rid myself of it. Anyway, I've made great strides in grappling with this addiction over the past few years. I've had a very tumultuous as well as triumphant journey and have found a deeper sense of self awareness and love than I could have thought possible. When I first began my journey I was spending most of my day wasting away in font of a computer screen and though I still struggle at times, through the action of myself and my friends I have it under control. This is the true problem, my inability to talk about it prevented me from even acknowledging it, and the true problem is not acknowledging the true problem.

Connecting the dots: if you feel a calling to move to another state with culture and fun and better weather, you feel that your problem is that you sit wasting away in a state that you feel truly displaced in. Then move. But first acknowledge your problem: talk about it with a friend or write it down. Acknowledge that maybe a change of setting is only going to give you the temporary alleviation of pain the way a vacation does, that maybe your location has nothing to do with your unhappiness at all, but your inability to recognize deep down why you are unhappy and that the tools you have to fix it do not vary from state to state, but come from within and can be accessed regardless of where you are. Again, I'm not trying to make a claim like I know better because I certainly don't. All I know, yes know because I have been there, is that acknowledging and truly seeing what is holding you back in life is the only way to take the necessary steps to getting over it.

This is ordinarily the point in which I would be done. But while I wrote this I can't help, but think of a conversation I had with a friend of mine who asked me if I had a particular audience in mind when I wrote these types of things. I do, I have in mind that I'm writing to a lot of people who are a lot like me circumstantially and so I assume they take similar things away from what I have to say. But just in case, I think a disclaimer is necessary here, if nowhere else. Disclaimer: I am a suburban, white, male individual with a slight, but very basic grasp on my own reality. I am in no way responsible if you find yourself in very different living circumstances than me and your application of what might appear to be advice does not drastically change the circumstances in which you live. Similarly if you are an individual who finds himself in the same circumstantially alike life as me and do not feel the acknowledgment of your problems has made any lasting difference in your life and you really think you should have just moved to California when you had the chance, this is also not my fault, [insert generic dad advice regarding trusting and listening to others here]. 

Thanks for Listening,

Kyle