The Dishes of Redemption

Mundane and gross, dishes can provide the start of your redemption narrative. Probably.

Sometimes acknowledging your erroneous ways is the first step to redemption.

Ravi Shastri

Anticipatory Anxiety, Again

If you’ve been reading this substack for more than a post or two, you may remember that I am working on my anticipatory anxiety. This… obstruction to my life has been quite detrimental. Unfortunately for me and perhaps for you as well is that changing something that has firmly cemented itself into our lives is difficult. It’s also time consuming. Oh yeah, and a lengthy process. It’s slow. Like, molasses in Antarctica on a perfectly level surface with plenty of friction to keep it in place slow.

However, change is still possible. In fact, slow change tends to have staying power as well as being malleable in trajectory. What I mean by that is when change happens slowly, and we are aware of it, we can manipulate the direction OF the change if needed. So that’s nice. Let’s say, for instance, your slow molasses was hurtling towards a cliff at a rate of 2 feet per week. That cliff happens to be 40 feet away and you want to avoid it. Well, a slight deviation, if you can make it happen, will help you avoid sliding off the edge.

That deviation may be difficult to pull off, of course, but it’s likely to be worth it. So the change is slow going, the deviation from the originally plotted course is slow going, but the benefits can be lasting and worthwhile.

But why am I talking about frozen molasses? Well, because I think it’s funny. Also, because I feel as though I am making some progress myself. Anticipatory anxiety has been crippling for me. It’s not always present, but it’s there more often than it isn’t. This afternoon I felt it again and it was intense.

Not inside of tents, but intense. You know, extreme. Strong.

I had to make a call about the mortgage because the company’s website is, for lack of a better word, dogshit. Unfortunately I imagine this is par for the course. In doing so, I had to run through all my accounts and finances and we’re working out what their problem is tomorrow. Either way, plenty of moving pieces and reasons to become anxious. Post call I had that horrible feeling of anxiety and I noticed what it was.

That’s the first step, I believe. Recognition of the issue and an awareness it’s happening. That’s also part of emotional intelligence, self-awareness. While I noticed it, it still affected me tremendously. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything in the time between that call and picking up my boy.

I then remembered I needed to do some dishes. So I went about that seemingly mundane chore. There’s something wonderful about dishes, though. Dishes, of all things, can be redemptive.

At least there’s some property of wiping away gross and straightening away clutter. Let’s take a moment and divert off the path of my anticipatory anxiety journey and talk about the dishes of redemption.

The Dishes of Redemption

First, we must go down the psycho-physiological trail of motivation and reward. We have brains, I think. Most of us do anyway. And one thing it likes to do is reward us when we do good things. Much like dogs get treats when they’re being trained, we get fun little dopamine hits. That’s part of our reward system.

We don’t get them by achieving a goal. Oh no, our brain is rude like that. Instead, we get them by taking steps TOWARDS a set goal. So if your goal is across the room, every step or two you take you get a little dopamine treat thrown to you by your motivation handler.

Now that we’ve established that, what the hell does that have to do with dishes and redemption? Well, everything.

As I am down on myself for everything and feeling myself slip into a self-pity coma, I notice I haven’t done the damn dishes. That’s just another thing on my plate, right? That’s what I thought, too.

I decided I needed to at least clean up some of the trash. Crap, the garbage is full. Just my luck. Why the heck am I having to do this?

Then I remembered this weekend, my kiddos actually took the trash out twice for me. I didn’t ask them to. Their mother may have, but I didn’t. Wonderful kids!

That automatically made it easier to take out the trash. Let’s count some dopamine real quick while we have time.

1. I made a goal of the dishes and getting them done.

2. I settled for a mini-goal of at least throwing away some garbage, which I did. So that’s at least a small hit of dopamine.

3. That hit of dopamine came in handy when analyzing the effort/benefit ratio of taking out the trash. It allowed me to remember other good things to be grateful for. And that’s another hit of that wonderful dopa-drug.

That’s fairly substantial already. Who knew something so small could do that?

At this point I have the trash taken out and some trash picked up. I am already feeling like husband of the year. But why stop there?

Jovially, as jovial as possible for me anyways (I have RBF or Resting Bitch Face), I went about rinsing off dishes or rinsing OUT cups!

That was great, so much done with little effort. Boop boop boop, dopamine all around!

By the time I was done, the dishwasher was going and I am in heaven. Also, it’s time to get my best boy!

The Journey With the Boy

Well, I successfully picked him up, in case there was any question on whether the journey worked out. It did. But there was another journey.

We were listening to “Zombie” by Bad Wolves initially, per his request. That one is fun, we can just yell and say zombie over and over. We also head bang and just rock out. It’s great bonding time, if you’re thinking about doing it yourself.

Then “Zombie” from The Cranberries was requested and I obliged. Somewhere along the way it hit me, I recognized that feeling of anxiety for this evening. I recognized that I was arrested by that feeling when I was thinking about “having” to go get him previously. But now that I have him, there isn’t trouble. There is no issue, anger, anxiety, stress, there’s nothing but fun and jamming out to some rock.

So what was I anxious about? This boy is dope. I love him. I’m an idiot sometimes.

And then something else hit me, I RECOGNIZE the ANXIETY. And given I can recognize it, I can reframe and I can recover. I haven’t yet, but I have applied that with other issues previously, so why the hell not?

I tried and I tried for a whole five seconds. Finally, on the sixth second, it worked! Time will tell how well it works or how long, but what I was worried about is still out there and I am not allowing it to affect me as of this writing. In fact, this writing was only possible because I told it to screw off. Now that’s liberating.

I have been working on this for over a month. Only today did I realize I could actually make a difference by THINKING about my issue.

That’s not something that should take a month. But I don’t see it that way.

It didn’t take a month to come to that realization, it took about an hour. Still slow, but not a month.

It took a month to get to a point I would ALLOW myself to think about it and come to that realization.

So why is that substantial? What’s the big deal?

Revelation.

Maybe my problem isn’t being unable to see the path forward or the way out of a situation.

Maybe my problem is being comfortable with what I know, with what I have suffered from and being too scared of the desert that lies beyond the tyranny I have subjected myself to.

Freedom from that tyranny would mean having to brave the vast desert.

But screw the Pharoah, I’m going to go play in the sand.

Love,

Dad