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THE EPILOGUE: BE ON TEAM YOU!
I have no idea what anyone else is thinking but my brain is normally assaulting me with a running negative self-dialogue. "Why are you going so slowly, why didn't you put the laundry away last night, how come you didn't go over to Debbie Bradley's house in 1991 when she asked you?" I'm tired, I'm tired, and I was afraid. With a little bit of time and perspective, not rushing allowed me to remember to brew some coffee at home, the laundry can be put away tonight, and not going to Debbie's house has served as a lifelong reminder to go on adventures when you get the chance because they may never appear again. Lying in bed on Tuesday, my day off I started going down a long list of things that were bothering me and worrying me and I stopped at ten before it all felt insurmountable! Instead of continuing to pummel myself needlessly, I figured out which things I could do something about and did those. Folks will tell you to be proactive and it sounds great, but energy and motion alone are always the answer. The energy it takes to start and finish things is often a lot, and the rewards are not always worth it. The energy spent on attacking yourself is never worth it as it provides zero results. Hoping that the next person that walks in doesn't ask me about a bourbon from that distillery doesn't stop it from happening. It is going to happen each and every day all day long and there's nothing I can do about it. So instead, I wait for the folks that ask me "well okay, what would you recommend then?" There are not a lot of you but i just want you to know that I love each and every one of you.
Anytime you march to the beat of a different drummer folks will line up to criticize, redirect, challenge you, mock you etc. It is inevitable, the secret is to not join them. You already tried eating Hamburgers without peanut butter on them and you prefer the peanut butter. So put it on! You like your tequila from the freezer, then drink it that way! It is your tequila and your preference and like I said, you already tried it the other way. If right now you think "tequila is gross so don't even drink it." We don't. We love it, we love it the way you love the things you love alright? All day long people confess to me about how many things they are doing wrong or how dumb their questions are. If you like it, then you are winning. Also, the dumbest questions come from confident folks who are certain they are asking the smartest question ever not from folks who have thought about it and just can't quite wrap their heads around it. Either way I'm here to answer all of them and would prefer you ask then guess and never know. We have the best customers on earth and being on the floor is my great preference than sitting behind my little desk.
I've searched long and hard to find a way to quite the noise in my head with almost no luck. Can't meditate, can rarely just zone out, the hamsters want to run and they will find something to run about. What I have focused on instead is trying to get them to run about creative and positive things more than the collection of doom, gloom, past errors, future problems etc. It is all easier said than done, but if you are not even trying then your success rate is zero. If you think it is in fact your job to savagely beat yourself up on a daily basis then getting to anywhere positive is unlikely. I hear people say the most terrible things about themselves aloud on a daily basis. I don't know who put those voices in your head, for me it was my parents, but as Melissa says "they ain't true". Most of the time you did the best you could in the situation you were in. You didn't even have all of the needed information, and you were tired and hungry! None of us are worth much when we are tired and hungry. Suddenly the sounds of birds chirping are Satan's glockenspiel, and text messages are both unimportant and overly demanding! While it is unlikely that a snickers bar would solve the issue, hangry is definitely real. Tired brain is also not of that much use. Yesterday somehow my alarm didn't go off (first time in many years) and I was out of sorts all day long. Now I could have spent the rest of the week being furious with myself for being an adult and not making sure my alarm was set up properly but none of that would have changed anything. Instead, I doubled checked it last night and this morning it worked just fine.
These precious little lives that we have are too short to be spent being your own enemy. There are already so many hardships that life will be serving you early and often. So many things totally outside of your control that will increase the degree of difficulty of your life, and we can't afford to be one of them! Even if you do shoot yourself in the foot and let's face it you will, the answer is not to shoot the other foot! You said or did something that was not helpful, and we have to resist the urge to double down. Instead, you can both apologize and forgive yourself. You had no intention of spilling your drink on someone, but you did. You can blame the other person, you can immediately start berating yourself, or you can apologize and see if you can help clean it up. They get to be mad at you, and you can feel bad about your mistake, and then we can resume our lives.
Kindness is not just meant for others. That same empathy you have for folks that are struggling and hurting can be applied to yourself. You don't have to "win" what I call "the misery Olympics" to feel like you got handed a raw deal. Theodore Roosevelt said, "comparison is the thief of joy" and I believe that to be very true. My house would be a palace for some and a shack for others, but it is perfect for me. I will never be a millionaire, but I can buy my single barrels when they come in, and Ryker gets fancy treats as well! Am I failure because I don't make more money and have fancier things? Definitely not, I would rather be a better human than a richer one. I like where my arrow is pointed, and I think I'm a better Keith Haze in 2024 than I was in 2023 and a large reason for that is diverting my energy from tearing me down to building myself and others up. Being funny used to be the most important thing to me in the world, but now being someone that can be counted on is. When I look at the group of people in my life that care about me it forces me to accept that I have to be doing several things right. These wonderful humans would not tolerate a creep. So even though it was even a challenge to even write that sentence I know that it is true. I'm on team Keith, and what I know about me is that I'm going to show up and be the same person on good days and bad ones to the best of my ability.
I would not be capable of writing a how to live a wonderful life guidebook! In my pamphlet version would be this though; the time you spend on beating yourself up, holding on to the awful things people have said to you, and quitting before you start because you think you will fail before you even try are in no way helpful. Who gets decide what is successful anyway? I played Leonard Cohen for a girlfriend, and she made me turn it off immediately! On Tuesday I wanted to clean the house, but I only cleaned the kitchen and the living room. I decided that I should not burn the house down and start living in a box, and that I could just do the other rooms when I had the energy. I didn't get an MFA but I decided to write The Boozeletter anyway. Punctuation remains a mystery to me and yet here we all are. I just try my best each week and that would be on the cover of my pamphlet. Unfortunately, that phrase has been coopted by a bunch of sarcastic jerk faces and sincerity has taken a hit in general. It just isn't "cool" to stand for things and for people, but that is a The Boozeletter for another day. I just want you to give yourself a break a couple of times a day and try to make it a habit. You can also forgive yourself for past mistakes as well, while you're at it.
Cheers
Keith
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