I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!!!
6xy2:
Once you start noticing how the incapacity to handle discomfort affects how people live their lives it’s actually pretty shocking how it ruins pretty much every conceivable aspect of existence. Interpersonal relationships, romantic and platonic. Career and education opportunities. Your politics Your willingness to go anywhere. The kind of food you eat. The kind of art you expose yourself to and your ability to read it. It’s never just one thing, it touches everything, and once you notice it it’s like suddenly being able to see germs or something. Just this horrific catastrophe people look at you askance for screaming about. As I grow older and see what became of my friends and peers who could not learn to handle discomfort, the more I’m like. This is a genuine societal issue
When you can’t handle discomfort, eventually discomfort itself starts to feel like you’re under attack. Your body enters flight or fight mode, and your amygdala starts screaming at you that you are In Danger even when the “danger” in question is like, making an unpleasant phone call or like, you’re reading a book about something gross.
Your ability to make frank assessments about your situation becomes compromised, because, well, when you’re under attack who’s going to stay still and go “Let me think this through?” Of course you’re going to panic. The phone call isn’t just unpleasant, it’s potentially life-ruining. Someone is going to think you’re dumb and that’s going to be TRUE and then I guess you die or something except dying would be better. The book isn’t just gross, it’s actively coming for you, tainting your mind with the memory of its contents, it has RUINED you.
Obviously, you want to try avoiding danger whenever possible. So you create a world in which you avoid all dangerous things. Traveling? Well that’s scary, what if you get robbed or lost? Better to avoid it (plus there are so many things to read, rules to remember, forms to fill out… it’s just too much, it makes you uncomfortable, which means YOU’RE IN DANGER, what if you FORGET SOMETHING CRITICAL? Better to avoid). A new job? Well what if it’s worse than your current one? You at least know the rules here. The unknown is so much more uncomfortable, which is DANGEROUS, so better to stay where you are. A dark-skinned foreigner? Do they even speak English? You don’t know how you’d communicate. They don’t know the laws here, surely? Plus what if other people think you’re racist? It’s so uncomfortable which means THEY ARE A DANGER. Best to avoid at all costs, keeping your bag clutched tightly to your chest. Vaccines? You don’t really know what’s in them. The explanations have a lot of words you don’t understand,you said something that was kind of rude? UNCOMFORTABLE. THIS PERSON IS ATTACKING YOU. FIGHT OR FLIGHT. Someone says you were incorrect about something? DANGER. Someone says you reacted impulsively and seem to have misconstrued someone’s words as a personal attack? YET ANOTHER ATTACK.
Eventually you lose yourself and become this. I don’t even know. This totally reactive thing, unable to think analytically about anything (which is uncomfortable and a danger), unable to assess harms, unable to encounter anything new without having a meltdown. And none of it is a real escape because, well, you’ve created a life defined entirely by aversion to discomfort, which is the most uncomfortable life you can possibly imagine. Of course such people end up falling into fascist ideas about Why Your Life Sucks. When you build a life around trying to maintain as comfortable an equilibrium as possible, you cauterize the parts of you capable of growth, expansion, creativity, learning; at the same time, the knowledge of your own stuntedness is haunting so best not to think about that either. The world becomes this horrifying mirror maze where the only way to survive without offing yourself is by projecting your flaws onto others, bitterly externalizing your self-hatred (who could live like this and NOT hate themselves) just to avoid turning it inward. You end up living like a hollowed-out sea urchin
A lot of people I’ve met seem to think that mental healthiness is characterized by a lack of discomfort whatsoever, and are therefore justified in building a life where all discomforts can be avoided. On the one hand, I completely understand the impulse. Lord knows I have had colossally shitty times and wished I could just retreat into bed and fall asleep for as long as needed for everything to blow over. But like. You also have to understand that that’s a fantasy, not a solution. When you have grown up living a crap life with nothing but discomfort, the ability to avoid it feels like exercising autonomy. But you really do have to be careful about making this your life ethos. I know so many people who have lapsed into total learned helplessness, so consumed by discomfort (mentally catastrophized into dangers) re: looking dumb, looking rude, looking X, looking Y that they just. Idk. Don’t do anything except be bitter. You don’t have to be that way. The solution isn’t “tough it out” because that’s also just a manifestation of your inability to handle discomfort. I also hesitate to say the solution is to focus on how much better your life will be when you do X and Y, because the entire point of the inability to handle discomfort is that it constantly manifests in precluding the possibility of even wanting X and Y in the first place since to want it and not be able to do it IS in itself another source of discomfort.
Idk what the solution is, exactly. I just think it’s important to understand that sometimes things can feel awful and still not necessarily harm you
1/13/26.
One of this blog followers is polaroidblog, who also runs the excellent label We Were Never Being Boring. The label is entering its 17th year and has earned its fair share of nods here over the years (first mention by Micah back in 2015 - the band Karibean).
Weird Bloom’s 2018 release “Blisstonia” was compared to The Flaming Lips and Ariel Pink. “Stargate’s” first song (the aptly named “Stargate”) gives those vibes, but that’s it. The rest of the album is glam-rock heaven. Think Billy Tibbals/Lemon Twigs/Uni Boys crossed with Sweet, T. Rex, and The Troggs.
Discogs states that this LP was released on Hellnation. Weird Bloom are from Rome, Italy.
“Friends outside of Minnesota please read. I’m sharing a post written by a personal friend and medical doctor:
Friends outside MN, you need to know what is happening here. Everyone knows that ICE shot and killed a woman here on Wednesday. But that’s not the only thing that’s going on:
- ICE agents are cruising areas with immigrant-owned businesses, and kidnapping patrons and employees alike. Yesterday they abducted two US citizen employees at a suburban Target, one who was begging them to allow him to go get his passport to show them.
- ICE is going door to door in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, asking residents where their immigrant neighbors live. Read that again. If it sounds like something out of your high school history textbook, that’s because it is.
- ICE is targeting schools and school buses. They pepper sprayed teenagers and abducted two school staff members at the high school up the street from me on Wednesday. Police are literally escorting school buses to ensure children can get to school and home safely. The Minneapolis Public Schools have moved to virtual learning for the next 4 weeks because it’s unsafe for children or teachers to physically come to school.
- They are targeting hospitals and clinics. Patients are scared and are cancelling their appointments or just not showing up. Kids are missing their checkups and vaccines, folks aren’t getting their cancer care, etc.
- They are smashing windows in cars and homes.
- ICE is increasingly picking up Native Americans—again, targeting folks based on skin color alone.
- They are arresting and beating legal observers. A friend of a friend had her arm broken yesterday. Folks are showing up at local hospitals, brought in in ICE custody, with severe injuries that are absolutely inconsistent with mechanism of injury reported by ICE. (Think: patient appears to have been beaten unconscious, while ICE agent says he slipped and fell.)
I can’t emphasize enough that these ICE agents do not have warrants. There are 2,000+ agents here and they are simply hunting for anyone that’s not white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or a green card holder, they will kidnap you first and ask questions later.
But the community is fighting back.- Protests are happening every day.
- Community groups have been leading know-your-rights sessions for months, often to packed venues.
- Whistles are being distributed by the thousands, carried on keychains and worn on coat zippers, always at the ready to be blown in warning if ICE is spotted.
- Drivers are following ICE vehicles, blaring their horns in warning.
- Businesses are locking their doors even while open to keep employees and customers safe. As I type this, I’m standing guard at the locked door of our neighborhood burrito joint while I wait for my takeout order, so the employees can focus on their jobs. The place is packed with neighbors supporting this small business.
- Anti-ICE signs are posted everywhere. The community is making it crystal clear that ICE is not welcome here.
- Parents and neighbors are standing guard outside schools, organizing carpools, and escorting kids to and from school on foot.
- Parents of kids in Spanish-immersion daycare (there are a LOT of these daycares here!) are keeping their kids home so the teachers don’t have to take the risk of coming to work.
- Churches and community groups are holding fundraisers to buy and deliver groceries to families who don’t feel safe leaving home.
- Mutual aid money is going out to folks who can’t make rent because they can’t work or because a breadwinner was abducted, or who need a warm place to stay after their home’s windows were smashed.
THAT is what is happening here. This fight is ongoing and it’s horrifying to watch. But we are not backing down. To my friends in other cities and states, don’t think for a minute that this won’t happen in your town. It will. Be ready. Learn from us, as we have learned from Portland and Chicago and New York. Fight back. Don’t let us get to the last line of Martin Niemoller’s poem.”
-Grant BoulangerHere’s an AP news brief with a little more info. It’s limited in the way major news outlets are right now but provides context that supports the personal account shared.
