My Face Itches

I got a gum graft last week. Like my hairline, there was a bit of gum under one tooth that receded slowly enough that we could pretend it wasn’t a problem, until suddenly it undeniably was.

I got bumped up a month. There was an opening in my surgeon’s schedule, and I’d asked to get in as soon as I could, so oral surgery got wedged into an already full week. When I got to the surgeon’s office I realized I’d forgotten the original order, and he’d explicitly asked me to bring it. Had I forgotten to tell him about the jaw surgery when I was 21? What if he didn’t know, and he hit titanium when he started cutting into me?

I realized, as I paced in his expansive Haussmannian waiting room, that I was trying to self sabotage. Throw a wrench in the gears, and stop this whole thing from happening. Keep from going under the knife.

I opted not to sabotage. I chose to shut up and ride it out. He didn’t need the order, never even asked for it. He remembered about the jaw surgery. As I lay back, got numbed, and then thoroughly manhandled by his assistant for an hour as he cut, stitched, and shoved my face around, I thought about how I’d nearly tried to get out of it. When a man’s knuckles are in your eye and all you can taste is blood, you can understand wanting to skip out. But it made me think of life outside.

There’s a lot of uncertainty. Discomfort. Worse. And I catch myself wanting to follow those negative feelings into sadness, depression, or even despair. Trying to sabotage what is supposed to be my life. I’m opting not to. Here’s what I tell myself instead.

Make Something

I’ve picked up some hobbies. I really miss making things with my hands. I don’t have much space in Paris, no woodshop or even a house of my own to work on. But I picked up some electronics kits and have started learning by building circuits and little robots. It doesn’t look like much, but I’m losing myself in the process and regaining energy I otherwise wasn’t sure I’d ever get back.

Vlogging does the same thing for me. It amazes me how much satisfaction I still get from piecing together a little video of my day. Unfortunately I was told to try and talk as little as possible for a while so…

Meet Someone

It’s really easy to feel like we’re socializing when we spend our time online, reading other people’s words, messaging, commenting. That’s why they call it “social” media. This is the great lie of it though - we are still alone when we are with our phones. Getting out to share a drink, take a stroll, or even co-work with friends fills in the gaps. It doesn’t have to be time spent in deep conversation or any big activities; just sharing some mundane moments of life is enough to do us good (which is good because I haven’t had much energy above ‘mundane’ for a while now). And thankfully I live in a city that’s overflowing with life to be had, if I can just get out into it.

Minimize Screentime

What makes an even bigger difference is putting the phones down altogether. This opens us up to the void, and that builds momentum towards actual solutions. Let me explain.

I’ve been celebrating every weekly update that lets me know I used my phone less than the week before. I try to keep the news and social media usage to weekends only - and then it has to compete with friends who want to go out and have fun.

I also ask myself when I pick up the phone, why did I just grab this? What am I looking for, as in what emotion drove me here? And then I realize that my phone doesn’t have what I really want and, more often than not, I put it down.

I might feel some initial discomfort. Whether I grabbed my phone from boredom, anxiety, or loneliness, putting it back in my pocket doesn’t solve for any of those. But it does help me stop looking in the wrong place to solve them, and leaves me with a growing momentum towards the things that will. Like the things I listed above.

Boredom can be addressed through creation. Anxiety can get worked out in exercise. Loneliness can only be solved by other people. They’re all the harder options, especially when there’s a dopamine machine in my pocket, but they’re the real thing.

If I want to live a full-to-overflowing life, it won’t happen sitting and staring at a glass rectangle in my hand. The last step here is really the first. My phone acts as a temporary filler that must be removed to make space for the truly fulfilling. We all know it. We keep talking about it. For me, it really is time to do something about it.

Jay