The Art of Not Complaining

Every year or so, I participate in Sober October.

This is an event that Joe Rogan came up with to get his friend Bert Kreischer, a functional alcoholic, to stop drinking for a month. They added in an exercise regimen just for good measure. It became an annual thing for Rogan and friends.

I don’t drink or do any drugs, so I use Sober October as an excuse to break from various vices.

Usually that starts with breaking from social media. That one, in particular, has been necessary lately. The rampant, arrogant and purely ignorant delusions of mobs of social media keyboard warriors lately has given me serious doubts about the decency of humanity.

After I cut out social media, I go straight for the sugar. It is damn near impossible to cut out sugar in America, unless you go on a strict water and broccoli diet. And at this point, I'm just waiting for RFK to tell us that they've been adding high fructose corn starch into broccoli.

Even so, I do my best to cut out unnecessary sugar consumption. Not easy, but doable.

Apart from diet, exercise and social media distancing, I add on whatever additional restrictions have been bothering me that year.

This year I chose arguably my most difficult challenge.

No complaining.

Before I even started, I knew it would be hard. Hell, I even considered the possibility that I was incapable of finishing the challenge. Even then, I didn't realize the scope of what I was asking myself.

I started out easy.

A pet peeve of mine is when people ask you about your day. There's nothing wrong with saying “how are you today?”. That's fine. The problem is that people aren't really asking you. It is a pleasantry. No different than just saying hello or good morning. They don't really want to know the truth about your day. They want you to say “fine, and how are you?”. So when you respond honestly, people give you that look. That “what's wrong with you?” look, as if you farted at the dinner table.

So I determined that no matter what way my day went, I would respond with “another beautiful day”. That one has been pretty easy to hold down.

Everything since has been a disaster.

We often think of complaining as a specific rant. Really though, complaining amounts to common, negative speech. Now that I am trying to keep track, I find I roll into it all the time. Take for instance three paragraphs earlier. When I mentioned my pet peeve, I was simply trying to explain my thought process. But as I typed the words, I realized… this is complaining.

It has been suggested that I have what psychologists used to call Asperger's Syndrome. And there is no question that I have symptoms of it. One of my issues is frustration with inefficiency. My brain sees patterns. Everywhere. Speech, color, all the way down to minute movements in people's behaviors. When I sense something off, I get frustrated. Especially when it is something that could easily be corrected. Sometimes it drives me crazy.

When I am unable to affect necessary change, I get angry. Then I express that frustration, which is just complaining.

On its own, that is fairly normal. We all have similar sources of exasperation in our lives. But because I am subconsciously observing and judging things, I am constantly complaining of my own inadequacy. Or the world's inadequacies.

This is a real problem.

I am constantly screaming internally. Why are you doing this? This is simple! Just fix it! And of course, no one does. Why would they listen to me? I’m just some guy. And I haven't done a great job of managing my own life, much less the problems of all of humanity.

So here we are.

Sober October is going… okay. I have some things to work on. And if you're thinking to yourself “but you're clearly on social media, posting this”, you are correct, but it doesn't count. The point is to break the habit of constantly obsessing and checking my phone and getting lost in rage bait.

Learning the art of not complaining may be a long term goal, not just a sabbatical. Figuring out how to deal with my negative feelings in a healthy way is going to take more than a month.

But like all humans, I am a work-in-progress.