I Was Wrong and Have Been Wasting My Time
For the past few years, I’ve tried to maintain a blog where I’d vent about my frustrations with the political climate in the US. I spent a lot of time doom scrolling political news for tidbits to use and write short posts lamenting how fractured our society has become because we’re all easily misled by powerful, wealthy forces. I did this because I thought it would be a good release - to let things out so I’d stop worrying and stressing and thinking negatively about it all. And, you know what? I wasn’t getting the reduced levels of unhappiness that I wanted. In fact, I was more grouchy thinking about that stuff all the time in preparation for more stuff to post, to vent about.
What does one do when something isn’t working? Google it, of course. I typed “venting doesn’t work” into the search box and Google helped satisfy the confirmation bias I was looking for. “Stop Venting! It Doesn’t Work. ” from Slate and “Does Venting Your Feelings Actually Help? ” from Berkeley College’s Greater Good Magazine are the first two results I received followed by various other articles Google’s search algorithm thought I’d want. The Berkeley article , to me, has better advice on how to properly let out frustration with a whole section on “skillful venting”. Neither articles are long and are quick reads. My favorite passage comes from the Slate article.
In 1999, a group of researchers investigated this media messaging theory. They had some study participants read a bogus newspaper article with pro-catharsis messaging. Sure enough, those people were later more likely to express the desire to hit a punching bag. Some were allowed to hit the bag, and others were forced to wait while researchers pretended to grapple with a computer issue. Those who hit the bag were more, not less, aggressive afterward.
My takeaway from all this is I need to take better care of my mental state and to question why I feel the way I do more often. Just going on autopilot thinking a behavior is beneficial because I feel a bit of relief here and there when the overarching and continually predominant feelings are negative is dumb. And I’m happy to say that abstaining from the blog posts on my other site has definitely helped my mood. Have I solved the issues that made me want to vent in the first place? Hell no. And the idea that posting ramblings about such divisive issues as politics was going to solve anything, let alone make me feel better, seems all the more stupid in hindsight. Some things just need to be accepted. Move on. Let it go. I wasn’t letting it go.
On a side note, you know what seems to help my mood a lot? Hobbies. Hobbies that occupy my time and that give me the little bursts of dopamine I desire. For instance, the keyboard I typed this reflection on was a kit I purchased and soldered together by me. I’ve never soldered before and I can’t recall where I was inspired to get into custom keyboards yet here I am. The USB cable that connects the keyboard to the computer was also a kit that I bought and assembled. I’ve assembled three keyboard kits now, and have another coming. It’s relaxing. And, when I first test out a new build and things work, there’s that dopamine hit. When I successfully debug an issue due to a bad connection in a soldered component and things work, yup, more happy brain chemicals. It’s silly that it took a while for me to evaluate and change my behavior based on how effective or ineffective my emotional and mental outlets were.