Cocaine Rat Nation

At the start of the school year, I attempted to switch to tea in the interest of beginning my day less like a cocaine rat and more like a quiet field mouse. By October 21, I was standing in front of the coffee pot waiting until enough had been brewed to pour a cup. If this doesn’t sum up how much my willpower resembles a piece of Swiss cheese, I don’t know what does. I teach teenagers at 7:30 in the morning, I need all the help I can get.

One thing I have stuck to, however, is staying off of social media. Talk about cocaine rat. Always going to that f icon on my phone, every so often the pinkish one, then to messages, then to email, Substack, rinse, repeat. I was caught in a self-destructive loop and the only thing I could do was exit stage left. When Facebook started, it was great. I connected with people from high school, college, Venezuela, and beyond. I had just had a baby, I shared photos because I was just so damn proud. I got updates from friends I had wondered about and soon learned which ones thrived on negative attention through cryptic posts. It was fascinating and addictive. In short, I was hooked.

Somewhere around 2016, a shift in the platform was noticeable and my feed was less satisfying yet strangely more addictive, targeted ads had answers for my every mood and the news found me wherever I turned. I learned just how many people I knew weren’t who I wished they were. In short, I was disgusted. Sure there were so many great things I saw but I’m the kind of person who cranes their neck to see roadkill so I can correctly identify what kind of animal it was, I’m not capable of looking away from train wrecks and the like. Slowly but surely I was finding my consumption of that product to be poisonous. But, it wasn’t until I witnessed the rise of Christian Nationalism in our country through Zuckerberg’s dungeon that I finally decided enough was enough. I didn’t think people were realizing just how dangerous of a place we’re in right now and that scared me, I wanted to scream. That’s the stuff of Nazis and we all know that does not turn out well for anyone. I didn’t need to be watching the fall of an empire in real time for entertainment. I deactivated my account, deleted it from my phone.

The most surprising thing I have found since my unceremonious social media departure is that some people worry that I’m not OK. However, as many of you know, I am a teacher and I saw those in my profession in this state, the very birthplace of our liberation from tyranny, get placed on leave for things they said on Facebook that were shockingly mild and certainly not fireable offenses. I went to high school in the 90s and the stuff teachers got away with back then….well, let’s just say good thing for them that cell phones weren’t around. If you know, you know. I am an outspoken individual and I write for fun and, yes, to help make a living. I could not afford to risk all of that. I’m sure it’s risky enough that I write truth.

As I get older and learn more about myself and others, I am becoming more humble with every realization. I listen to Pema Chodron in the car every single day on my way to work and have learned so much in those 25 minute sound bites, she is my guru du jour. A lot of it is Buddhist mumbo jumbo that I ignore for the most part. What I don’t ignore, however, is the old lady tone of her voice and the wisdom I can hear in her words no matter what she says. She makes me laugh and often, I need that in a spiritual advisor. I fall away from many of the declarations I make, most recently my one on coffee. Maybe I’ll fall away from the one I made on social media and my current love of everything Pema Chodron says. I’m certainly not right about a lot and can recount all the mistakes I have made in life. I believe, however, that I am a deep thinker and what I think right now is that many of us are in more trouble than we realize if we don’t do something drastic about the toxic loops we find ourselves stuck within. I think I’m right about that. We’re all a bunch of cocaine rats for something or other, we just need to decide what poisons we need and which ones we have to abandon for our sake and the sake of others before we have a delusional, neurotic infestation on our hands. Trust me, I know a thing or two about rats.