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Happy New Year!
Now the merriment is over. The holidays have finished, and with that you ability to procrastinate and push off responsibility for our actions and traumas and now we are presented with a year’s worth of hope, glittering in the eye wishful for what may be and - oh s#!* it’s January 19th?!
What did I do in the last three weeks?
I stumble to the garage to see a large bin full of empty handles of Jack Daniel’s.
Ah, there's the first 18 days of 2023...
But what was I supposed to have done? December 31st I’d made a list in a notebook of things I’ll accomplish, but that notebook is nowhere to be seen. If only I still had that notebook. If only I had accomplishments…
When in situations such as this, do not panic. Do not overwhelm yourself with hypotheticals, do not scramble and fall deeper into the hole. You are not a failure, you are just in a funk.
So what to do when you're in a funk, when you're out of booze and you're down on luck?
What is a funk anyway?
The sensation of having a two week or so span of minimal productivity and sporadic mentality seems to be a modern concept. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming nature of life in the age of the internet, perhaps it’s because we stopped jailing anyone who had any signs of mental illness (much to the glee of my therapist), or perhaps it’s because we’ve progressed as a society where we start to take personal accountability for our actions and don’t drown our emotions by getting plastered and physically assaulting our families (at least some of us, that it…most of us I hope...more of us at least).
But alack and alas I have recently found myself in a funk and many people I've spoken to can relate, acknowledging the droned repetition of brain waves, the lack of ability to pay attention or focus, the void of urgency in any activity while still not falling into the full pratfalls of depression. You are not alone in this mess, we are getting ill and getting better together!
It seems funks are a way of life in the age of the internet, and with it we should learn to conquer.
How do we break out of a funk?
Well funks are usually caused by some unhealthy change in lifestyle, conscious/necessary or not.
Mine typically correlates with when I’m eating garbage, or drinking to excess, or under high stress, or transitioning, or not exercising, or not sleeping.
It ends up that the food and beverage we put into our bodies directly correlates with how our brains work. Whoda thunk.
Anywho, today we end our funk!
After my morning coffee, I put on my sneakers and shorts, ready to exercise. I stretch to the sky, stretch to the floor and prepare to hit the street for a jog. Upon opening the door I was given the chilling reminder that it’s January in New York and running in the cold doesn’t seem super incentivizing.
So maybe we save exercising for tomorrow.
Today we conquer our eating habits!
Opening the fridge to see what we have to cook. Four eggs, hot sauce, sriracha sauce, an empty Chinese food container with lingering rice on the sides, a bag of salad that expired in November.
Guess I could go to the store, but again…cold…
Maybe cooking is a tomorrow thing as well…
That leaves the only thing left to fix is my sleep schedule. Does that mean I should go to sleep? It's the mid afternoon...
Maybe the lesson here is that funks cannot be won over in a day, and must be beaten by small incremental wins over a period of time to re-route your brain back to a productive wavelength.
We’ll go with that.
Don't be hard on yourself, don't fix the problems of the earthly world in an hour. Productivity leads to more productivity and productivity is the nemesis of the funk!
And hey, I put on pants today.
Time for a drink!
This weeks drink is based on the fact that I only have a third left of Jack Daniels in my cupboard.
I used to be a Jack and Coke boy, but then soda pop started hurting my belly, so now I’m just a jack boy. Sure, Jack hurts my belly too, but It’s my liver to kill, and I don't appreciate your judgement.
I call this weeks drink, the Funkinator:
3 Fingers Jack Daniels
Handful of Tums Antacids
Slam ‘em both at once
Let ‘em duke it out in your gullet.
Happy funk recovery everybody!
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