looking down looking up

As this drags on, the need to feel good grows. So many of the things that I/we use to self regulate our brain chemistry are now gone. Group exercise, friends, dine in anything. It sucks.

i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and asking others what they are doing to feel good/better.

And in my own experience, I’ve only found two things recently that really soothe me and bring some kind of hope.

I call it looking down and looking up.

Looking down.

I have always hated when people say “hey mannnnnnnn other people have it way worse mannnnnnnn” knowing that other people are suffering has never eased my suffering, and honestly I think it would be creepy if it did. I hate gratitude tricks. I know it is a choice, a discipline, but I hate trying to game the system like that though other people’s bad experience.

But

Lately I’ve been finding a weird type of solidarity and release of tension and strength from documentaries about past world calamities, namely the black death and the dust bowl.

Both were times of unimaginable hardship, social upheaval. The last became first and the first became last. Everyone was vulnerable. Times like this have always appealed to my ADD hard to function in normalcy brain.

But knowing that other people have lived through something and came out the other side is vey encouraging.

The stories are gripping.

There was a story about the dust storms looming in the distance like a moving mountain, and once they hit you couldn’t see the light of your front porch unless you were on it.

There was a story of the pope’s physician Guy de Chauliac who was one of the few who contracted the plague and survived. According to the story, he removed all of the terrible tumors that grew from the plague, cutting them off his body himself as his friends had long abandoned him to die.

Looking down into the well of what can happen to other fellow humans, does give some kind of perspective. The feeling I get isn’t that I’m glad I’m not them, its more that I can find a way to be brave in the throes of my own much smaller calamity as these people had to be brave.

Looking up

As you guys that follow me know, now that i’m no longer a teacher, 100% of my income comes from air bnb which has been a disaster of late.

First the disaster of the travel industry being frozen, and the second compounded disaster of how Air bnb has abandoned hosts. For perspective, in March, I had 6k in bookings gross. In April, I have 100 dollars in bookings. Outragous loss, everyone is scrambling and terrified.

The only thing that has given me peace is to look at what I can do. Many hosts are starting to take the approach of building their own sites for their properties where people can book from the host, its called direct booking.

As I started working on mine (stay tuned, I’ll share when its done), I had to come up with a brand.

I settled on hyggebnbs. If you aren’t familiar with the word hygge, its a Danish word/ideal that is difficult to translate that means the feeling of comfort/safety you feel in a house or with friends or over a meal where everything is in order. Like a candlit dinner with friends, popcorn and movie by a fire, etc.

As a concept, hygge has become pretty popular, maybe even a little played out. But I’ve decided that since it comes from my own extensive time in Denmark, its not disingenuous to use it.

Anways, Ive been working on ways to carry the branding forward, and one fun idea I had was to name each property after someone who meant a lot to me in Denmark. The Esben after one of my favorite musical companions and friends, the Andreas after my great friend and boss etc..

As simple as an idea as this is, this thought got me through some rough days.

To me this is looking up. When there is no light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes you have to manufacture your own light, become a lantern in your own brain until you get back to the surface.

I hope hope hope that whoever you are, you can find a way to look down at what has been, and up at what could be, and in the mean time find some modicum of peace, and even joy. God knows we need good news, even if we have to be the source of it ourselves.

Love all of y’all.