Well, the time has come!
Having experienced many medical crises in my lifetime, I know a thing or two about the chattering beast that is anxiety. However, my story is one of hope, as I was able to conquer my anxiety using a variety of techniques that I hope to share with the public.
This is a partial transcript of Anxiety Nation, my first podcast:
(Introductory music of Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie plays)
“Hi, I’m Michael Murray, host of Anxiety Nation!
It’s on this podcast where I hope to create a safe space for you, a place where we can openly share our experiences with anxiety and strategies to overcome it. Although I’ll be our guide on this journey, I want you to know that we’re all equal partners in this voyage, and that it will be always be a collaborative, team effort.
I just want to take a moment to identify our introductory music, the classic Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie. It’s just an amazing piece of music. Although its true the artists who brought us this great song both died before their time, and that we’ll all die much sooner than we expect, you shouldn’t let that cold, barren fact alter your mood! No, that would be NEGATIVE thinking, and we’re about positivity here!
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
Helen Keller said that.
She was deafblind.
Imagine that.
She couldn’t see or hear her enemies approaching.
Anyway, if Helen Keller could manage her anxiety, then so can we!
Okay, how’s everybody feeling? Good, I hope! Before we proceed with today’s lesson, I just want to remind you that you shouldn’t still be thinking or obsessing about how Freddie Mercury and David Bowie died.
It was from AIDS and cancer for those of you who might have forgotten, and it’s true, these diseases kill without prejudice– they just take you. Anyway, that should be out of your heads! DON’T FOCUS ON THE NEGATIVE, because by doing that you can start a cycle that’s nearly impossible to break.
Okay, let’s clear our heads of death and disease.
Let’s all close our eyes, take a deep breath and think about all the beauty that Freddie Mercury and David Bowie brought into our lives. Breathe in the good, exhale the bad, breathe in the good, exhale the bad.
Good. Feel better?
Yes, yes.
Okay, I’ve created a 21 day program that I’d like to share with you that should help alleviate any anxiety you might be suffering and put a little spring in your step.
Day 1
Drink eight glasses of FILTERED water each day. It’s very important to stay hydrated. Your mental health is directly tied to your physical health. They say Freddie Mercury weighed less than 100 pounds at his death. David Bowie probably did, too. People associate weight loss with health, but really, when most people die they’re at their thinnest. Just something to think about.
No tap water, by the way. Chemicals in there. Heavy metals and God knows what else. Tap water is VERY dangerous. Just look at Flint, Michigan.
You must drink FILTERED water. Eight glasses. Nine is too many, something could happen. Just drink eight.
(Beeping sound from a phone goes off)
Jesus! What the hell is that??!!
Does anyone else hear it?
(Something falls and a dog begins to bark hysterically, podcast ends.)
]]>On our first day at our new school my friends and I wore crisply pressed overalls and carried Charlie’s Angels or Star Wars lunch boxes, each one containing a meal which a mother had lovingly and thoughtfully prepared. We knew nothing of pessimism, and the kids waiting for us there looked at us like we were a different species, as if emissaries from a past they had never known.
Exponentially cooler than we were, these kids all seemed so much more grown up. I was in awe of how independent and worldly they acted, as if totally free from childhood. They hadn’t just hit puberty they’d shot past it. They knew all about sex and drugs and rock n’ roll, and when they fought, blood was drawn. In short, they radiated everything that I, still prepubescent and utterly innocent, was not, but very much wanted to be.
At this time, as teenaged life was accelerating mysteriously toward me, I watched my first episode of Saturday Night Live. I was probably eleven years old, maybe twelve, and all I knew about the show– mostly gleaned from my sister who was four years older than me– was that it was on late, and was racy and dangerous in the kind of way that adults, or at least parents, didn’t quite approve of.
The first sketch I watched was called Night on Freak Mountain, which was awful in all the ways that are typical of Saturday Night Live. It didn’t matter, though. It was about drugs, and it was late at night, both of which to me seemed inexhaustibly cool. (Later, it was Mr. Bill who ignited my grade seven imagination, probably because I still related to toys.)
No matter, it didn’t spark a love affair. I never became a dedicated fan or made a point of watching the show, and for the most part, like a lot of people, thought it lame. In fact, as far as I was concerned, it was the opposite of cool, but if you’re of Generation X, SNL served as a kind of water cooler around which you invariably orbited, and whether we liked it or not, it was imbued with a gravitational force that ended up bending our lives.
Although I had no intention of watching the SNL 40th anniversary special on Sunday, I ended up doing so, and quite simply, it made me happy. It played like a history of the pop culture of my life, and seeing all the people who composed its landscape was touching. Sweet, celebratory and maybe even a little bit sad, the show was like returning to my old high school or university campus, a precinct that really only exists in memory. And so I toured the grounds, marvelling at all the familiar places and feeling refreshed by the faces of all those I had once known, and those that had receded from memory, too, everything once again feeling vivid and limitless.
