Mindless Scrolling to Ease My Anger and Anxiety Finally Brought Relief

Mindset from a wagging tail restarts my writing journey

Photo by Ari Kurniawan on Unsplash

For weeks, my sister, who is also my accountability writing partner, has badgered me with daily morning phone calls asking, “So…what story are you working on today?”

I lie and tell her I’m working on a story about my time as a movie extra.

“Oh, is that the movie with Meryl Streep and Roseann Barr where you thought that mole on Roseanne’s chin with the long hair sprouting from it was real?

“Yeah, the very one.”

“Don’t forget to write about the prison bus they made you take to get to the all-night movie shoot and the holding cell you said they corralled the extras in like cattle.”

“I won’t.”

“And also, what happened after the shoot ended, when you left your keys on the bus and had to rappel out your neighbor’s 23rd-floor window to get back into your apartment.”

“Yeah, working on that too.”

When we hang up, I go right back to scrolling my iPhone. I’m too nervous and anxious to write anything. In fact, I haven’t been able to post on Substack or Medium, the two platforms I write on, or complete chapters for my second book in weeks.

The world is a fucking mess. Every night, I shout expletives at the television. Hating Trump is nothing new. I’ve hated him since the eighties, when he used to try to smarm his way into our dressing rooms during fashion shows, which his first wife, Ivana, held at their residence during that time, the New York Plaza Hotel.

Trump was the laughing stock throughout the modeling world. He was obsessed with having a supermodel on his arm, but when repelled by not only the uber, super, and top models, he opted to pay Eileen and Jerry a boatload to put his new girlfriend, a pretty but boring commerical model and the one he was cheating on Ivana with) on the roster so he could brag he was dating a Ford model.

And when that stopped working, he created his nefarious agency, Trump International Models, with the only international models coming from the Eastern Bloc, like the small country his current, but also cheated-on, present wife, is from. Rumors abounded that these very young models, who were somehow granted work visas before they’d even worked a day, were also expected to mingle at cocktail gatherings with balding, pot-bellied, wrinkled old rich guys as part of their “modeling” contracts.

He still wears the orange pompadour, but now matches it with skin of an equally vivid hue. His hands, still tiny, now sport crimson colored blotches, not from purported taloned women who scratched and discolored his skin or from banging the corner of a Davos table, but more than likely from continual IV insertions for whatever mysterious ailment eighty-year-olds acquire. Never slim, he is now porcine and bursting at the seams. His face, once pedestrian-looking, now burns into the collective consciousness as a demonic image from the underworld. Cruelty oozes from his pores. His pursed lips curl, then snarl. He is a man whose soul is nothing but a black hole.

Devil: “So, let me get this straight. You are demanding to switch places with, let’s see, Nicole Good and Alex Pretti?”

Trumps nods.

Laughter from Satan.

Trump, looking defiant: “They were very bad people. They asked for it. And, anyway, I was just following orders from you-know-who.”

Trump points upwards

Devil, snorting. “Oh, that’s rich. I just love that you said that. So, so, so very evil. My kind of guy! You are definitely in the right place. Besides, there are plenty of people you know down here.”

Trump weeps

Devil, looking perplexed: “It’s not so bad, although now that the flames are a little higher, I can see your foundation is melting. You might want to wash that off before it ignites.”

This is what my ADHD brain thinks about as I watch a news clip of the latest shitshow he’s stirred up.

All these thoughts, heretofore, were locked up inside my brain until Minnesota. My family is from there; my sisters and I attended college there, and I spent holidays visiting there.

I respond to an unpleasant subject or opinion as “interesting,” I agree by answering with “yah sure, you betcha,” and I occasionally slip into the hard “r’s ’ when uttering words like “harbor” or “harder.’

When I thought this current administration and the President couldn’t go any lower, they dug a hole and stepped even deeper: ICE was sent to infiltrate the Twin Cities. Untrained, angry Roids. Men, who before joining, sat on their lumpy couches, wielding joy sticks as they played war games. “Cool, just like Call of Duty,” one of them crowed on video before continuing to shoot tear gas and pepper balls at protestors.

I tell myself not to look at the news. For my own mental well-being. But then I reason, if I don’t look, I’m part of the problem, and this madness will continue until it’s too late.

And I scroll. Watching the videos over and over until I feel so much hate and anger.

Then, out of nowhere, Aloka, pops up in my feed. The dog of peace. I watch him trudge alongside the saffron-robed monks as they make their way along the snow-covered roads. No complaining. No anger. No judgment. Just walking. For peace and understanding.

My mind quiets. I hold onto this image. I know I will never have a monk’s quiet mind. My brain is too tiger-filled and monkey-minded. Nonetheless, I hold onto this image of only love, acceptance, and an overwhelming feeling of good that is missing from the world around us.