Sadness Is Not Badness
Season 2, #4: At the intersection of Nightwalking Avenue and Well-being Street
I PUT A LOT of thinking into this final post of the Nightwalking Season 2 quartet of posts (in January we kick off Season 3 and Stargazing—which is perfect for any new year). The mental lifting came from not feeling particularly “nightwalky” just now, since “well-being” and “self-care” have been more on my mind than melancholy or sadness in general.
I’ve been feeling good, being that I’ve jump-started a New Year’s resolution two weeks early in order to “build into it.” When I mentioned that to someone they remarked it sounded like a solid plan. Rather than using a calendar date to start something, just decide what you’d like to leave behind, why you’re leaving it behind (an important step), and then just start living that way.
So that’s what I’ve been doing since the week began.
Hey, you gotta take a first step. Why not now?
Even given the holiday season, after job losses, and the deaths of family and friends, I’m not sad. Also I’m not “joyous,” so “neither glee nor pee” is gonna harsh my current mellow, like chillin’ out on a bare branch that is the beginning of winter 2023-24…
I’D BE LYING IF I didn’t say there’s a tinge of loneliness—and its better half, solitude—going on just now. You can want to be with people, end up actually spending time with them, and yet feel nothing but regret just the same. So, other humans are not the solution to loneliness.
Obviously, it comes down to yourself.
Realizing that, I wondered: How well am I taking care of myself? What am I actually doing that I “think” is self-care when it’s just wallowing in pity party favors like bad food, alcohol, drugs, oversleeping or not getting enough sleep, not exercising, or indulging in stuff that isn’t moving me closer to my goals? So this past week I did a hard No on all that and it’s already working wonders.
Meanwhile, December is a great time to look back at the year’s accomplishments (tick VG, I get a gold star I guess), where I’m at now (could be better, so what needs changing? Let’s fold that in!), and where to go in the year ahead.
In the past year StoryShed’s newsletter definitely changed, from random multiple posts a month (prior to September) to seasons (three in total) with four posts a season, which has amounted to roughly two posts a month. That’s achievable given on Dec. 1 StoryShed launched a companion publication, The Guy Stevens Weather Report, that’s about popular music history and a side project I’m working on. The pivot was unnerving at first but I think I’ve settled into it nicely. Here’s hoping you’ll enjoy it too.
Things just now have been good, with plenty of off-work time to put things in order, make personal habit changes, deal with a potential housing move in January, and prepare to launch a podcast to go with the new Substack pub. I can only wish you this much productive anticipation and solitude—it’s freakin’ restorative!
WHILE OUT LOOKING AT holiday lights with two old friends, we stopped to snap photos of the above display. One pal got out of the car to see if it had a dial tone—it did!
This was the most delightful Christmas display I saw all night. It had a tinge of nostalgia—Nightwalking sadness, if you will—in it, as in “wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could pick up that receiver and call anyone you wish you could talk to” but either haven’t (because you’re afraid to) or can’t because they’ve either died or entirely disappeared from your life. Confronted with a question like that (“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could…”) opens up all the whys and wherefores of conversations you’ve had in the past, or recently, or hope to have in the future.
That, I think, is productive sadness—not a bad thing! From “sadness is not badness” to sadness as badass. LOL.
WHILE NIGHTWALKING IS NOT particularly verbal, it has “a form of self-reflective dark humor.” That front yard payphone easily reminded me of the chilling, yet darkly funny Richard Matheson story “Long Distance Call,” where an elderly woman gets repeated calls from her dead husband.
What could this mean?
Well, because Nightwalking is so tongue-tied it just might need visual prompts—best discovered while out walking—to bring whatever roiling emotions are just below the surface of your consciousness. Again, my post “Nightwalking Speaks!” offers a spectrum of possibilities:
…there’s a range on the mood scale (where a full-blown depressive episode lies at the far end, and Nightwalking at the other) where Nightwalking can evince curiosity, enough in this case where I went to the trouble of recording my thoughts—so an analogy such as ‘late afternoon, sunset, twilight, dusk, nighttime, midnight hour,’ with Nightwalking being on the sunset to twilight-dusk range of the scale and a depressive episode being as ‘dark as midnight’ seems apt.
So coming across a gaily lighted front yard payphone in the days before the Christmas holiday brings to mind a “twilight zone mélange” of wistful amusement. Melancholy delight, if you will.
HERE’S WISHING YOU AND yours a bright path out of 2023 and into a promising year ahead. I’ll wrap up with an admission.
When I took the photo of the front yard phone above, I was appalled I’d left the flash on and went back to shoot it again before we took off in the car. This last shot was the result. I was bummed but then realized this too had a charm to it—the “not badness” to counter my “sadness,” aka disappointment. Oh well. I like it.
Here’s hoping you find similar moments, too.
A quick end-of-year thank you to all the new StoryShed subscribers. Welcome! So glad you’re here. StoryShed is the always-free publication of StoryShed Media, so no worries about upgrading or anything. Ever.
However if you’re a music buff or history and culture fan you might enjoy my new paid-only publication, The Guy Stevens Weather Report, which launched early this month and will post deep-dive essays, a forthcoming podcast, and interviews in 2024. You can read the debut post here:
Happy holidays! See ya ’round campus and in the new year.
Addendum 12/23/23 | 2:14 a.m. CST
The Oracle speaks! Some background: Ten years ago when I was underemployed, I used to consider finding coins on the street a stroke of good luck. Curiosity kicked in (because, well, unemployment) and I wondered if the year on the coins I found coincided with a diary or journal entry I had from past years.
Yesterday I came across this penny, minted in 2006:
There is a journal entry for Tuesday, December 26, 2006—17 years ago next week—that describes a Christmas church service I attended that year. Does Oracle speak through the past and maybe point a way to the future? You decide:
It was something of a charming, not-fussy little parish church in Plymouth and the 82-year old celebrant nearly collapsed when ascending the altar. But his voice was strong and the music was good, and bright light shined through the stained glass. I was watching a lovely young woman who was led in by a slightly older woman—by slightly older I’d guess my age, which is shocking for me to say, but I can’t judge ages anymore—40 is the same as 50 and even 60 can look surprisingly like mid-50s, so I’d place her guardian at 50, tops. I couldn’t judge the age of the disabled young woman, but she could have been anywhere from 22 to 32. Definitely not older than that, although her eyes seemed dark and aged; she was striking to me for her Gallic nose and short-cut brunette hair that slid under her neck and framed her lips. I couldn’t place her disability—she had to be led in and had trouble standing; she coughed often and yet her look was one of faith and determination—and a sort of inner joy that caught my interest. I was tired during that service, as I sat beside D.N., I thought how much it recalled for me odd ’70s moments—being in the kitchen at Casco Point, the Rogers’ home, the Brady Bunch, the Partridge Family, anything that connected with and mythologized that time for me. I think it was the stained glass light belting down from the windows, or the faux trees and Catholic imagery—the look of the determined young woman who was still lovely despite whatever cruelties life had thrown her way.
Anyway, I know I’m going on a bit on this, but it was a feeling that stayed with me all the way into this morning’s bus ride, and made me feel connected with my past, present and future. Those are rare moments for me and I seize them with gladness. That’s as close as I come, I think, to a religious experience, and it’s—I’m afraid—largely secular and sensual, if you had to categorize it.
Take what you will, cats, but DAMN Oracle.
Best Christmas gift ever.
Brilliant piece. Sadness can be a lot but it doesn’t have to be bad only.
As I'll share in a post next week ish (whenever it's ready), I too, am looking at what I'm doing for self-care, whether or not its working, and what I might actually need differently to feel different. We'll see ... See you in '24