So.
We did it.
We got the divorce.
With pits in our stomachs, with holes in our hearts, we put the house up for sale, we met with a family lawyer, we went to a courthouse, we processed the paperwork, we packed up our boxes, and we stumbled through the awkwardness of splitting up our furniture and carrying it out of our house with random people we had spent years turning into mothers- and fathers-in-laws right as they were turning back into random people again.
I moved into a tiny 500-square-foot bachelor apartment downtown in a building called The Hudson. A friend helped me move my dining room table up the elevator and we set the whole thing up before realizing it filled the whole kitchen. So we took it all apart and moved it back out. I never replaced the table. I never bought kitchen chairs. I never bought bowls or oven trays or salt and pepper shakers. My cupboards were empty.
So was my fridge.
So was my heart.
I was embarrassed by the black bags growing under my eyes so I bought a fancy eye cream from the drugstore down the street and started applying it under my eyes every morning. I didn’t want people knowing I had been up all night suffering from intense sleeplessness, anxiety, and loneliness.
For the first time in my life I was living alone, living in a big city, with every single thing I’d hoped for by the time I was 30 washed out to sea…
No marriage, no house, no kids.
Back to the beginning.
Most of my friends were married with kids in the suburbs and I had six contacts in my cell phone. I didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood and had nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Over the months this was all happening I was angry, I was sad, I was trudging to work every day, I was sitting through meetings like a zombie, I was coming home to take-out dinners every night.
One day as I was driving home from work I told myself, “There’s gotta be something positive out there.”
A tiny little flare. A tiny brain bolt. Something to grab on to. Something to listen to. I decided I had to find it. A positive thing. I just had to turn over a new leaf! I just had to change the channel! So when I got home from work I turned on… CNN.
Do not do that.
Every single TV station, every single newspaper, every single radio station is bad news.
I’m being honest when I tell you that I don’t listen to a single news channel or watch a single news show today. I have canceled all my newspaper and magazine subscriptions. I have no news sites bookmarked. I get enough from skimming headlines at the grocery store, and I willingly sacrifice knowing deeply what’s going on in order to live a more content life. Can you imagine how many apartment building fires and traffic jam updates and reality TV star engagements we’re both missing out on right now?
Now, I’m not saying you should put your fingers in your ears and scream LALALALALALALA as loud as you can when people start talking about climate change. What I’m saying is the world is full of bad news and our primal brains are desperate to read it so our media outlets are desperate to hawk it for dollars.
The solution is to be intentional about your attention.
Chop all sites out, and then choose the issues you care about, study them deeply, and act accordingly. Just stop being on the receiving end of the rat-a-tat-tat machine-gun barrage of superficial negativity fired at you from every elevator television, treadmill, and radio station.
So back then I flipped off CNN and went online. I typed, “How to start a blog” into Google and then pressed the “I’m feeling lucky” button that no one ever presses.
Ten minutes later I had started a tiny website called 1000AwesomeThings.com as a way to try to put a smile on my face before I went to bed. The writing started off very sarcastic. Acerbic. Cynical. Reflective of the cynical way I was feeling. I wrote about how fat baseball players give us hope. I wrote about how locking people out of the car and pretending to drive away is the world’s best gag. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.
Every day I’d come home from work and add another one. What about putting on warm underwear just out of the dryer? Or flipping to the cold side of the pillow in the middle of the night? Hitting a string of green lights when you’re late for work? Finally peeing after holding it forever?
The writing was cathartic. It was a release. It helped me swap dark thoughts for lighter ones right before bed. I posted every single blog post at 12:01 a.m. every day. Why was posting just before bed important? Because you know what happens when your mind is spinning? You can’t sleep! And then how’s the next day? Worse. And your energy and resilience levels the next night? Worse. And the night after that? Even worse.
The blog was a soaking wet shammy rubbed across the dusty blackboard of my mind right before I turned out the lights. I’d be brainstorming metaphors for what it feels like to take out your contact lenses. Taking your socks off after work! Taking off your ski boots! Taking your rented tux off after the sweaty wedding is over!
So what did I go to bed thinking about?
Slightly more positive thoughts.
The blog was a dot-dot-dot.
The blog was a way to shift the spotlight.
The blog helped me see things as a step as I tried to just keep moving.