What Happens When You Stop Scrolling

According to the internet, a significant amount of people are "chugging heroin" and "punching strangers." Learn something new every day.

We’ve hit that sweet spot.

That time of year when we really decide if the statement “New Year, New Me” will really mean anything or if we will just divert back to our silly old selves and down another late night box of Krispy Kremes.

The fireworks have subsided, we’re slowly coming out of our New Year’s hungover hazes; it’s game time.

For those of you that don’t know, or don’t care to know (although I think I can safely assume that if you are reading this you care to know…Hi Mom) I’ve been in an online dating frenzy since my last long term relationship several years ago. The conversation went like this:

Lexi: “You should get Tinder…”

Me: “I don’t know how to build a fire…”

*hands phone*

Me: “Hey! This guy likes me!”

And the rest, they say, is ridiculous history.

Right after the New Year I ended my decidedly last Tinder adventure. The conversation came after two months of hanging out with a nice gentleman who I thought could be the end of my ceaseless venture for love on a screen.

Well, he was the end to be sure. But not in the way I’d hoped.

“Hey, have you given any thought to where you see this going?” I said stupidly after handing him a loaf of stale banana bread and a Christmas card.

“Yeah, about that…I don’t see this going…well, anywhere.”

The last two months of my life went up into the air and disappeared with a metaphoric poof noise.

He calmly explained to me that he didn’t believe in relationships, that he didn’t ever see himself with anyone for the rest of his life. He told me that he wanted to be selfish and take care of himself.

All good things I thought, but that didn’t make me turn any less a shade of Sheet of Paper White.

It then occurred to me that to this man, this older, unmarried man, I was interchangeable. It didn’t seem to bug him that we’d been spending a good deal of time together for the past two months.

He didn’t seem to be “catching the feels” like I was.

But the idea that I could be anyone –the funniest, smartest, most supermodel-like woman on the planet –none of that would matter because this man truly doesn’t want to open himself up to another human that way. And that I was trying to negotiate who I was in the process was completely ludicrous.

This is what screens can do to you.

They can give you what you want in the moment. An attractive face, a pleasant conversation, an endless running document of engagement updates that reassure you that you will indeed die alone.

But what happens when you stop scrolling?

Can you even stop? Is there a way?

It had never occurred to me that this, this simple little toxic thing could make or break my happiness for 2016. When I got home from the heartbreaking conversation that left me wondering if I’d ever find love I deleted my online dating accounts.

This can’t be the only way, it just can’t be.

Mindless scrolling through faces and “About Me” bios that have only led me down the path of destruction and heartache; there’s just got to be a better way.

But I always do this, I thought. I delete it all and then go back after a few months of boredom. But why? Why am I even bored in the first place?

Is my life that comparable to staring at a blank wall that I feel the need to do these things?

Of course not.

If you spent even thirty seconds in my classroom you’d find that the word “boredom” does not exist here.

To research for myself how much better my life could be without scrolling, I went ahead and deleted Facebook off my phone as well. I still exist out there, but now this means that I have to physically get on a computer to scroll, which is a lot slower and leads to much smaller amounts of time spent mindlessly rolling through other people’s lives.

Low and behold this is what I have discovered since I have made these two tiny changes:

1. I see things more.

2. I see people more.

3. I don’t know when people’s birthday’s are.

4. I have more time to read.

5. I have more time to write.

6. I have more time for a lot of things.

7. I call people more.

8. I don’t get as jealous of other people’s lives.

9. I don’t hate myself for wasting my life on my phone.

10. I don’t get gross or sexist messages from unidentified gentleman callers.

11. I have more time to cook and don’t accidentally set things of fire because I’m not paying attention.

12. I’m existentially happier.

There you have it.

Scrolling can numb our brains and often make us hate ourselves. It dehumanizes us and is absolutely no fun when used in excess, which is how most of us use it. Technology and “social” networking are here to stay, but we don’t have to start the zombie apocalypse just yet. We have the power to control how we spend our time and what we spend it on.

Sure, you can still find me laughing it up on Snapchat about my hilarious teacher life and occasionally posting videos of my comedy on Instagram, but you can rest easy knowing that this gal is #TinderFree2016 #FreeFromTheScreen2016

Pretty much anything that rhymes with “free” and “2016.”

How To Not Get Axe Murdered

Every day is a gift.

People have said that your life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die.  This, as it turns out, is a lie.  Hollywood smoke and mirrors; a Christmas fable that we choose to believe in because the world is a cruel, cruel place.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

I’m not dead, by the way.  I mean obviously I’m writing this blog post.  And no, I’m not your friendly neighborhood ghost coming back to haunt you for not subscribing to my blog (although that would be way cooler and by the way you totally should).

Nah, just here to enlighten you on what happens when you leave passive-aggressive notes.  Which, just in case you weren’t aware, don’t actually work on sociopaths.

I have this neighbor, okay.  He’s loud, obnoxiously loud.  And I have high suspicions that he is actually a sociopath. 

Exhibit A) He listens to shitty rap music at every odd hour of the night and morning and I never see him in the daylight which makes him not only a sociopath but also a vampire.  With really awful taste in music.

Exhibit B)  He often yells to himself.  Just for funzies.  Just for shit's and gig’s.  Just loud shouting for no particular reason other than to reassure me that he is indeed a crazy person.

Exhibit C) I once heard him listening to police radio on blast for an entire hour during a manhunt for a suspect to a shooting on Colfax.  So that’s normal.

I could ramble off at least a dozen other instances of his insanity that will surely terrify my mother when she reads this.

Hi, Mom. 

But back to the life flashing before my eyes bullshit.

After a particularly frustrating morning of getting zero sleep as a result of my neighbor’s assholery, I had finally drawn a line in the sand.  I wrote a sticky note.  It read,

“Please resist the urge to scream, moan, or listen to loud music between the hours of 11pm and 8am. Thank you.”

I said please and thank you.

I left for work and hoped that he would get the hint and have some respect for the 20 some-odd other humans that have to put up with his shit on a daily basis.

Fast forward to 8pm that night as I was sitting quietly in my apartment grading papers and preparing for another teaching day when Crazy McCrazy Face arrived to his door to find the note.  He went off the handle; running down the halls yelling to someone else that this couldn’t possibly be the property management company and that it was utter bullshit.

He then began banging down my door.  Because it was obviously me.  I had asked him once before to please keep it to a dull roar the night before my half-marathon.  Because it’s kind of hard to obtain REM cycles when you are blasting the newest rendition of “Big Booty Hoe” over there. 

You motherfucker.

So he’s banging on my door.  Banging, banging away.  So much so that a picture frame falls off my wall and onto the floor.

Oh, let me just open the door.  You sound friendly.

No.  Are you fucking kidding me?  I don’t have a death wish, okay? I just want you to stop being an asshole.

I didn’t make a peep.  Instead I retreated to the corner of my kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and contemplated the likelihood that I would survive if presented the unique opportunity to jump out my second story window.

As he kept banging I mustered what little strength I had in my lungs and announced to him that I was calling the police.

“911, what’s your location and emergency?” A friendly and calm operator asked.

I gave him my address and told him I was pretty sure I was about to be axe murdered by my vampire/sociopath neighbor.  All for leaving a passive-aggressive sticky note.

This is how I die.

We had a good run.

And oddly no, it wasn’t my childhood memories that passed through my mind in those moments of panic.  No.  I didn’t think about all the trips to Europe I wouldn’t take or about all the happy thoughts I’ve had in this life.

Nope.

Do you want to know what I was really thinking?

1) I have unpaid parking tickets.

2) Wells Fargo is going to be pissed when I defer on my student loans.

3) But thank GOD I had time to watch that one last Nicholas Sparks film.

My practical mind took over and I pictured how inconvenient it would be for my friends and loved ones to have to go through all my belongings after my hilarious and untimely death.  They just moved me into this place, too. 

Moving all those boxes again would surely throw out my dad’s back.

The most I could hope for would be for someone to make sure that all my sloppy rantings got published into a book someday in my honor.  But I’m no Anne Frank, okay?  Most of my poetry is written on the backs of napkins and receipts and my two “novels” most surely consist of mainly spelling errors and bad grammar. 

As for the Sociopath Vampire, he’s been relatively tame ever since the police talked him down and off the crazy ledge.  He still blasts his horrendous music like all the time, but has at least kept the screaming at 3am to a minimum. 

As for me,  I won’t be leaving any passive-aggressive sticky notes any time soon.

(Posts sticky note on bathroom mirror for self to read, “Please resist the urge to communicate with sociopaths unless you are really that curious about the afterlife.  Thank you.”)

This Day in History: Happy Brainiversary!

I’m a history buff.  Both because I studied history in college and because I attended CU Boulder.

Go Buffs.

As a furry buffalo friend who loves all things historical, I’m always a fan of learning about the significance of any day of the year.  Like did you know that on August 12th of 1865 Sir Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, pioneered the first antiseptic surgery that would go on to promote sterile procedures, therefore saving the lives of thousands of patients across the world?

Or that on this day in 1908 the Henry Ford Motor Company built the first Model T car?

Or that on this day in 1918 the Allies defeated the Germans at the Battle of Amiens, the last great battle on the Western Front in the First World War?

Oh my goodness, look how exciting history is.  Don’t lie.  You got excited by that last one.

But more interesting to me than any of these events was the event that took place on August 12, 2014.

It was the day I had a brain hemorrhage.

It was just your average day.  If average to you means a twelve hour work day, a broken down car, and a mediocre date with a stranger.  Go big or go home I suppose.

On this day in history I woke up like any other day and began what would be the most important day of my life.  I headed to work at East High school to start a long day of district meetings, planning, and organizing the classroom with my mentor. 

As a student teacher I was eager and ready for the challenge.  But after eight hours of running around like a chicken with my head cut off I began to feel a migraine sinking in.

I shrugged it off. 

“Normal.  Totally normal.”  I reassured as I plowed through the day without stopping to address basic bodily needs like drinking water, eating, and going to the bathroom.  Who’s got time for that?

By 5pm the work day at East had ended and my mentor drove me to a coffee shop.  Because my car had broken down a day earlier and I had to bum rides until it was repaired.  She offered me a Tylenol like the angel she is because I had been complaining all day about my headache also known as a brain hemorrhage.  I insisted that I was fine.

Off to my next meeting.

I sat in the coffee shop for an hour killing time until my meeting.  I remember ordering a champagne and fine tuning my first day of school PowerPoint.  Because I’m a champion.

By the way, alcohol and brains don’t go together so well.  Woops.

After about an hour I trekked several blocks to my next meeting.  I sat in the back among a sea of stressed out student-teacher faces.  I think I won a mug for answering a question about culturally responsive classrooms or something.

Teachers love free shit.

After that meeting I trekked another few blocks down to a nearby bar where I was meeting a blind date.  As I waited for him to arrive I pulled up my first day of school PowerPoint again and questioned whether I should go with a blue or a purple background and which YouTube video would engage my students the most. 

The date was as disappointing as the appetizers he bought for me.  Tons of potential, but I just wasn’t feeling the spinach artichoke dip.  I’ve had better.

At around 10pm my parents drove down to Denver to pick me up and take me home.  I remember being so emotionally spent and in pain that I cried the whole way home for no good reason.

Well I mean, for a good reason.  A brain hemorrhage reason.  But I just didn’t know it yet.

The throbbing in my ears and lack of coordination continued for the next week as I continued to pretend like it was no big deal.  As we all know it was a very big deal.  The kind of big deal that changes everything about a person.

Here I sit exactly one year later.  Today was the first day of school.  Another standard day if standard to you means teaching five 58 minute classes back to back, shoveling food down your face in between, and having a nervous pit in your stomach as you try to convince 14 year-olds to like you.

Go big or go home and take a large sized nap.

Holy shit, you guys.  What a day.

To make matters more significant on this day in history I actually had a headache today.  And yes.  Yes it did make me nervous beyond belief.

At certain points in the day I was entirely convinced that if I sneezed my brain would fall out of my head and onto the brightly carpeted floor.  That would have been a nice show on the first day of school.

But while I was nervous I was also excited; thrilled to be at where I am in life today despite what happened a year ago.

Another tradition of mine is to give a quiz on the first day.  Because obviously I’m as intimidating as the Godfather.

If you didn’t catch that, this is sarcasm.  My classroom is so covered in polka dots that it makes Zooey Deschanel look like a punk.  I am not intense.  But I carry a big stick.  Actually I do.  It’s my yard stick and I carry it to feel cool and rebellious. 

After announcing how “serious” this first day quiz was, my students groaned as they shot daggers out of their eyeballs and into my soul.

It’s an About Me quiz, you guys.  Stop taking everything so seriously.  Geaz.

As we got into silly questions about my favorite foods, my dog, and my history as a sports superstar, the kids lightened up a little bit.  But only a little.  Sometimes I swear this job is harder than doing stand up comedy for a room of five angry men.

I presented the following question:

Which of the following statements is true about Ms. H?

A.) She played 9 years of women’s ice hockey as goaltender

B.) She ran her own improv comedy group in college

C.) She had brain surgery last October

D.) All of the above

“Hey you guys, which one of these can we rule out right now?  Which one is just a gigantic lie?”

The room shouted A and C as answers. 

“There’s no way!  She has all of her hair!”  One lively student shouted.

"She's too tiny to play hockey!"  Another added.

Others shook their heads.  This lady is full of you know what.

I made a grand reveal.  The crowd went wild.  It’s crazy, I know you guys.  My life is really freaking crazy.

So I explained myself a bit.  I showed a few pictures of my scar, my Fall Risk bracelet, and told them about The Great Brain Costume that might make an appearance this Halloween.  The kids were stunned and so was I.  It’s hard to even believe myself when I say it out loud.

One year ago I had a brain hemorrhage that would knock my world upside down, show me humbleness, and teach me more about life than I could ever teach my students.  I feel my scar everyday and am still in denial about the resilience of my body and soul.  So here's to you, you stubborn lil' cuss!  May you have many more crazy years ahead of you.

Happy One Year, Brain. 

Am I going crazy or is there an elephant on my head right now?

Got That S-S-Summatime Sadness

Today marks my last week of summer employment.  As I sit in my wheelie teacher chair that is not actually my own at summer school monitoring my one student I contemplate that the summer is pretty much over. 

He's taking a test.  He's fine.

A week from today I will be enjoying my last bits of summer freedom in The Big Apple.  As a treat to myself and the hectic summer I signed myself up for with summer school tutoring and trying to haphazardly string together a novel, I enrolled myself in a UCB improv class in New York City.

Treat yo'self.

UCB, Upright Citizen's Brigade, the comedy school brain child of Amy Poehler and home to the world's best comedians, is the stuff of legends.  

It's the big deal, the trifecta; Emerald City, if you will.

And like Dorothy, perpetually confused but always fashionable, I will be trying my hand at the big leagues.  During this week long intensive course I will be testing my improv chops with the best of the best.  Or at least the best ones who could afford to be here.  I myself can't actually afford to be here.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, I owe you like a thousand dollars. But really. I'm sorry I'm so poor. But have faith. My degree is being put to good use, I promise.

The class includes five days jam-packed with improv theory, training, and a final performance on Saturday to showcase how awesome we'll all be at improv.  I mean some of us, present company included, are already awesome at it. 

But we'll get awesome...er.

But no matter how awesomely awesome this New York trip will be for me, I can't help but feel like my summer is over.  As I sit now in my sweaty and filthy bedroom and listen to Lana Del Rey's Summertime Sadness, I question what became of the months of March, April, May, and June.

Seriously.  What became of them? 

My guess is that they're sitting in some hipster coffee shop that moonlights as a puppet theater trying to avoid humanity.  I can't make this stuff up.  I actually had a kiddie scoop of gelato yesterday at a small Denver coffee shop that closed at 3pm for a children's puppet show.  Who knew things like this even existed? 

You're drunk, Denver.  Go home.  Anyway.

I'll never know what became of the spring or much of the summer, but I do know this:

A storm is coming.

The tidal wave that is the coming school year will soon hit the mainland and I will likely find myself clutching to my deflated life rafts and arm floaties.  I have a confession.  I can't really swim all that well. 

My mother tried relentlessly every summer of my childhood to get me into swimming lessons and I always ended up shivering and crying in the pool and pissing off my instructor.  I mean don't get me wrong, if put in a situation where I was forced to swim for my life I would certainly put up a good fight. 

But I would also be the first one to die.

You know, like in those survival movies.  It's usually the character that everyone loves the most, too.  The endearing map expert.  The hopeful youth with a gal back home.  Yeah, I'd definitely die first.

I use this hilarious and all-too-real metaphor because teaching is a lot like swimming for your life in shark invested waters.  Especially in your first year.  No one can really prepare you for the shit-storm, you just gotta' kick and hope yuh don't feel something graze your foot.

Speaking of those majestic creatures, excuse me I have a date with my television set to binge on Shark Week programs for the rest of the evening.

Ta!

It's All Downhill From Here: A Letter From Your Fragile Body

Today while sitting on an uncomfortable but necessary paper sheet separating me from the doctor's chair I perused my all-too-familiar surroundings. 

Stethoscope, hello.

Pamphlets for the elderly, good to see you.

Pressure cuffs, we meet again.

Needles, you're dead to me.

I greeted the quasi-clean environment like an old (and annoying) friend.  The kind of awkward acquaintance that you just can't seem to escape from.  But try as we might, we are doomed to make eye contact in the grocery store and attempt forced small talk.

I have been in more doctor's offices, nurse's chairs, and metal contraptions than I would care to admit lately.  Due to my famous combustible brain matter that we all know and love, I find myself in routine check-ups on a frequent basis.

CAT scans, MRI's, PET's, ultrasounds, X-rays, that tiny heart monitor thingy that they put on your finger that lights up; I've done it all, folks.  I have done it all.

And for some silly reason I had the impression that after my brain surgery mumbo-jumbo I would be all good; forever exempt from the medical world of pokes, prods, and sympathy lollipops.

But no.  Ohhhhhhh no, no, no, you silly brain-damaged comedian, you!

After approximately six months spent dealing with doctor's visits, intensive therapy, and a garden variety of medications, I experienced a radio silence.  All of the sudden I was back to normal.  Or the new normal, really.  The kind of normal that has occasional bouts of double-vision when looking to the left and falls promptly out of chairs for no good reason.

It's a hilarious coincidence that while writing this post in the neighborhood Starbucks I quite literally fell out of my chair and onto a complete stranger when I saw a friendly face enter the door unexpectedly (Wade, you have my permission to judge me).

During my student-teaching semester I hardly ever needed to visit my annoying ol' pal at the doctor's office.  I was too busy running around my classroom like a chicken with its head cut off to even notice what condition my health was in and if it needed tending to.

I was on edge and fantastic.  Epically stressed out and riddled with anxiety.

I was a glorified zombie trying to convince everyone that I was a human and not a gooey test tube of medical complications.

Cue my summer body.  And no, not the summer body that does yoga half-naked in the park or relaxes leisurely by some sun-kissed beach tide waiting for the hot beach volleyball playing men to stumble by.  

Nah. 

It's the body I'd been neglecting for the past six months.  A body overcome by a laundry list of obnoxious ailments.  Without penciling in a visit to therapy or the next MRI session I had procrastinated on the upkeep.  I slacked on the oil changes...

Crud.  Now I just remembered I actually forgot to get my oil changed, too.  What an accidental metaphor.

Needless to say some work needed to be done, and by medical professionals.  What I originally self-diagnosed as a callous was soon discovered by the salon technician as she went to town on my dry, cracking feet like an Italian with a cheese-grater.

"Oh, honey that's a wart...those are baaaad.  I had to have mine cut off my foot.  See the scar?"

Oh, fantastic.  Another surgical procedure.  Another scar.

What the hell, body?

My mother took me promptly to the Walgreen's to find the freeze-away remedy.  For the next couple of weeks I tried relentlessly to rid my foot of the wart, channeling Lady Macbeth and shouting, "OUT DAMN SPOT," at the top of my lungs in my bathroom.

So eventually I ignored it and continued on grading papers and thinking of new exciting ways to make my Power Points more engaging for my students. 

Eh, what's a little wart gonna' do?  It's got nothin' on that brain hemorrhage of mine.

Towards the end of my student-teaching semester my body found other ways to casually piss me off.  This time in the company of my friends.  At a local summer food truck event in the heat of May my friends Rebecca, Mason, and I scoured the lot for the best burgers and brews.  Alongside the food trucks were local merchants; hand-made jewelery, bags, and adorable knick knacks.  We found a tent filled with organic hand creams.

Perfect.  Just what I needed for my dry man-hands.

I found an opened sample and rubbed it on my hands.  We carried on our way to the beer tent that would later disappoint us.

After about an hour in the hot sun I could feel my hands tingling and going numb.  I figured nothing of it and thought that it was simply the mystery cream working its magic on my hands.  As we exited the festival I turned to Mason.

"It's pretty normal that my hands are numb.  Right?"

"Mimi, I don't know how to tell you this," Mason said straight-faced, "but I think your hands may have been roofied..."

I looked down at my tingling, red hands in humiliation.  I knew there must have been something in the cream that was giving me an allergic reaction, but I had paid no attention to the name of the product nor its ingredients.  

By the morning my hands had broken out into a full-scale awful, itchy rash.

Figures.

While I knew I always had sensitive skin, I was peeved that my body was doing this to me.  I tried again with a variety of over-the-counter medications and for a while it seemed that the rash was going away.

But alas!  The body is a fragile being.

A little time spent in the sun caused my hand rash to flare up again.  Hence my long-awaited visit to the doctor today for the rash and pesky wart that refuse to go away. 

And here we are again, consistently disappointed in my body's inability to keep its shit together.  So to give my body a little bit of credit for trying to keep pace with my hectic life, I gave it the reins for the day.

Here's what it had to say:

Dear Mimi,

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to me today.  For once.  It shouldn't be of any surprise what I'm about to say right now, but in case you've been ignoring me for the past 23 years (which you have), here's some things you should take note of:

1. We are not immortal.

2. We don't like it when you binge eat chocolate and salty things and watch Netflix for hours.

3. Running five miles sporadically without proper training or athleticism hurts us. So stop.

4. Our skin hates it when we're stressed out.  So just stop thinking about all the stuff that stresses us out.  Like now.

5. Read the ingredients for Christ's sake.  We can read, can't we?

6. Stop doing stupid things like Snapchatting at odd hours of the night.  We need our beauty sleep.  Unless you'd like to see us age prematurely.  Forehead wrinkles, I'm looking at you.

7. Do some yoga, yuh lazy scum.  Lord knows we could use the balance in our lives.  Remember that time, just a moment ago, when you fell out of our chair?  Do you enjoy embarrassing us?  DO YOU.

8. Since when has exercise ever been rational for eating an entire pizza in one sitting?  We can't elliptical our way to eliminating that muffin-top with your poor excuse for a diet.

9. Vegetables do not count if you cover them in butter and salt.

10. DRINK SOME WATER, WOULD YUH. Jesus woman.  You'd think you enjoy making us look and feel like Nebraska during the Dust Bowl.

Well now that we've covered some of my minor complaints, I'd like to end by saying that it is indeed all downhill from here.  The rush you used to feel by running shall soon be replaced with knee replacements and asthmatic lungs.  Don't bother trying to prevent worry lines, they are already here and they are here to stay. 

Oh sure, we've got a couple more glory years ahead of us.  We could capture the eye of a young male suitor at the YMCA. But those days are few and far between, my decomposing friend.

Take it from me, your poor, innocent body, you might look cute and endearing now when you stumble out of chairs and into stationary objects...but just wait til we hit 75.

That shit is not cute.

Yours Unfortunately,

Your Fragile Body