You Don't Have to Sit Like That, Megan

Honestly. And, Megan, you don't have to have your fingers like that either.

Have you ever gotten anything out of this newsletter?

Or from my show? Or my fashion choices? Don’t answer that last one.

I don’t charge for this Substack newsletter. Partially because I’m not exactly sold on that as a business model for the kinds of things I write about it. If it was investment research, maybe, but it’s not and I enjoy the freedom of it.

I write this thing twice a week and put out a show once a week because I’m promoting my work and my show in particular.

The whole thing, all the stuff I make, is time consuming and does take up resources. If you like it, if you’ve ever liked any of it, please consider making a contribution. Just go here, find a level that works for you, and then select Depresh Mode with John Moe when you see the show tiles.

We’re trying to do important work here and we need your help if it’s going to continue and be strong.

John Moe @johnmoe

(listening to vulgar comedy podcast my son likes, with my son) ME: I think of how successful this show is, how rich they are, and I just give up hope. My spirit breaks. SON: But you've probably stopped more people from taking their own lives than they have. ME: ... okay granted.

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One Push-up

So I just got out of an interview with a psychiatrist who specializes in mind/body connection. We were talking about meditation for an upcoming episode. It was a great talk, very enlightening, you’ll love it. We talked about how meditation, in whatever form best suits a person, can serve as an effective treatment for stress and help lower blood pressure and other forms of inflammation. Inflammation - whether it’s physically in the body or psychologically - can exacerbate depression.

It got me thinking that I need to get back into my own practice of meditation, which was going well before covid, and has completely fallen apart since.

>>>THIS IS NOT A SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER BY SOMEONE WHO HAS COMPLETELY MASTERED ALL PSYCHOLOGICAL THINGS AND LIVES IN PEACE AND HARMONY WITH THE UNIVERSE.<<<

>>>JUST SO WE’RE CLEAR.<<<

I took a class a while back in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and found it very helpful, particularly because it had no religious or mystical quality to it. Sure there was a particular kind of interior design element and the instructor had a vocal cadence not found in most people but it was all practical and relatable. I had gone to an information session at a different facility a couple years earlier where they told us that if we learn how to control our breath good enough, we could teleport around the world. And: no.

Lately, I’ve been incredibly stressed out. It sucks. I won’t get into all the reasons but it’s been choppy waters. Don’t go sailing in my brain. And I’ve been thinking it’s time - for real this time - to resume meditation. But I know that I don’t have the calmness necessary to make it through a one-hour guided meditation or even a half-hour. And I don’t want to start and then bail and feel even worse and beat myself up over it.

So just before I started typing this, I took one mindful breath. It took less than ten seconds. I got about halfway through another one but got distracted and panicky. But I made it through one. It’s like doing one push-up or going for a run down the street. It’s not much. But it is something.

I’m going to keep trying. Maybe I’ll make it to two tomorrow.

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An Abundance of Megans

Something I liked about what the doctor in the interview said was that there’s a problem in the societal view of meditation in that whenever a major media outlet writes about it, they show a white woman in a particular outfit doing a particular pose.

Which is kind of like portraying religion as just monks in robes. Sure, monks in robes is a certain component of some religious practices but all kinds of people have all kinds of approaches to religion.

Let’s do a Google Images search on meditation and see what we find:

White woman

White woman

White woman

White MAN!

African-American woman

Cartoon white woman

Silhouette woman

White woman

Monks in robes

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A Short Thing About Simone Biles

When I was in college, they tried to organize a debate on whether it should be legal to burn an American Flag. The professor of rhetoric and college debate coach they got said the answer was so much “of course” that it wasn’t a debate. He simply could not envision a world where the opposite side had enough validity to qualify as a debate.

That’s how I feel about Simone Biles. I take kind of a simple view that is somewhat militant:

Simone Biles is automatically the leading expert on the topic of Simone Biles’ mental health.

Anyone who says she’s faking it has nothing to stand on except maybe their own sexism and racism.

Even if she was faking it, even if she just no longer wanted to compete, even if she chose to go birdwatching instead, that’s her business and not ours.

If in so doing she broke a contract (or if some other athlete makes a similar decision), that means she’d rather live with the conditions of a broken contract than the cost of fulfilling it.

Human beings don’t exist for your amusement. They belong to themselves.

Simone Biles is awesome and so is Suni Lee, who is from Saint Paul, where I currently live.

Anyway, here’s Stevie Wonder.

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