Dogs, Being Angry, Walk It Off
We live in the perfect country to be pissed in. Pissed in? Pissed off in? The United States is the perfect country in which to be pissed. Whatever.
My Irish friends will forgive me making them think I’m inviting them over for a drink. Although, the invitation stands.
Pissed off, cranky, upset, being angry. That’s it. Let’s all be angry. A few years ago I threw some massive tantrums on Facebook. Hurling political insults and trolling every post, I was amazing. Amazingly pissed. Amazingly un-happy. Amazingly angry. I nuked every social media app I had then spent a year in the dark. I stopped being pissed.
It would be easy as a writer to launch into a spreadsheet of all the social media bullshit that got me angry. I could blame the Trumpers, I could blame the SJW’s, I could blame Biden, Zuckerberg, Twitter, whomever.
It’s amazing how much time you have on your hands when you arn’t trolling social media finding morons to be angry about. I decided to start focusing on my writing. Slowly, the lack of negative input began to wear off and I found I didn’t have a lot to write about. Seemed doomscrolling fed my inner troll, and now I had to really think about what’s real.
All successful writers go for walks. I read that somewhere. There is a lot that could be said for walks, but dispelling negative energy and engaging my inner writer has been the best thing for me. Hovering over a keyboard, leaning into my beautiful Mac Retina display, causes all the muscles in all the wrong places to engage, and stay engaged. Humans were designed by nature to walk. Lucky for me, I wasn’t doing social media anymore so it gives me more than enough time for walks.
Deen Koontz, Stephen King, John Steinbeck, even the great Gertrude Stein, had their conspiratorial canine consorts. For Fathers day my sons bought me Titus, a Great Pyrannees. There is research. Apparantly real research that have somehow measured the effects of even petting a dog. Lowers stress and anxiety. Decreases blood pressure. Provide coping mechanisms to crisis. Provides an explanation to my dog-hating mother-in-law. In short, dogs are good for writers, especially ones recovering from social media anger.
I am back on Facebook, and Twitter. Killed my TikTok account and will probably never go back there. I have stopped the doom scrolling. I have stopped the examination of people with narcisistic tendencies. I have pretty much stopped the incoming stream of negative. I make myself go for walks, and play with my dog. By the time I get home, I’m ready to write. More importantly, I’m a lot less angry.
