Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The first step you take when you're going crazy

The title is kind of a joke. But maybe not.

This idea is something that I think would work for me, and that is when things get stressful to imagine Ira Glass narrating your life. Or maybe you do it when things are going well and you just want to add some special meaning.

Basically, just imagine that whatever you are doing has been turned into an episode of This American Life. One of those really special ones where he talks a lot.

And maybe Ira Glass isn't for you. Maybe you have a different narrator you'd like to imagine. John Madden. George Bush. I don't know. That's really a personal thing.

I thought of this while talking to a friend who was going through a bunch of stressful stuff all at once. It just seemed like being able to step outside of everything she was going through and see it as an episode of something as opposed to her own life might help a little, even for an instant. And even though things sometimes seem awful, TAL does a brilliant job of making things seem hopeful. Then I thought about how it would probably help me, too.

But yeah, in writing this, I realize I'm advocating a) hearing voices, and b) pretending you aren't actually living your own life. One could make an argument that this isn't a good road to go down.

But hey, I once had an entire conversation with Sabretooth in a bathroom mirror at four in the morning and I turned out okay.

2 comments:

Ciana said...

i don't think anyone would hold the hearing of voices against you. in fact, it is rather intriguing.

Anonymous said...

okay, so this was originally a comment for a certain 'My Friends Are X-Men' page (I'm sure you'll be able to figure out after which post it goes), but someone happened to set it for no anonymous posts, and being that I have not joined the tide of people with blogs et al I had to resort to second choice of placing it here. So, here ya go...


Dude, its amazing what one can find on the internet when one is bored at work. I really should be making another depressing graph or table about the decline of physical activity in our youth, the growing tide of obesity, depression in 8th grade boys is underestimated and how girls in 11th grade totally suffer from a crappy ass double standard.

But instead I decided to read the Aught Empire entry of the day, but didn't have the website bookmarked at work, so I had to google it. Hence you find me here.

Glad I could help out with all those collisions. Remembering that actually made me laugh out loud (which isn't encouraged when you work in a cubicle, I got funny looks, remember, I'm working on depressing stuff), so, thanks.