Lit up, People!
I’m doing it. I’m in it. I have been off nicotine for a week. I know, I know. I’ve been here before. It’s always exciting though. Manic. Crazy. Wild eyed.
Withdrawal from anything sucks. The challenge of riding out a craving until it passes is crazy. It’s all being generated from your own head and you literally have to wrestle with yourself. Wrestling with yourself as an emotional foundation is a little intense. I’ve been doing it for years over one thing or another and I’ve finally started to relent a bit around general life and brain stuff but everything gets reinvigorated when you pull out that nicotine. Fuck, man.
My brain is trying to fucking function after being starved from all that jacked up dopamine intake. I’m not even sure that is what’s happening. It feels like my brain has to regroove to work on its own juice. My body feels thick. My metabolism just cranked down immediately. Like it was trying to keep up with a machine on the fritz and is now going to operate at its normal speed. Fat speed.
That’s always what gets me back on the shit. That feeling of weight. I’m exercising and eating pretty well but when the machine drops down to normal speed it's challenging. I wish I didn’t give a fuck. I wish it didn’t bother me. I wish I didn’t feel like a piece of shit when I put on weight but… I do. It’s the way I’m wired. I really want to be done with this shit.
I do like when my brain is on fire though. Good times.
I’m really excited about the conversation I posted today with Dale Beran. It dovetails nicely with the Kurt Anderson talk from a couple weeks ago and also with all this ridiculous reaction to the joke I made on Conan about Marvel Cinematic Universe fans: The world of fantasy and the roots of the frustration that pushed it into the mainstream that is manufacturing a creative monoculture in film and a troll-based garbage-scape in politics.
As a middle-aged guy there is a lot about the engines of contemporary culture that I don’t understand, that I am not proficient in. So, it’s very exciting and informative to be given a proper context to understand the fall of our democracy and the homogenization of our entertainment and the adolescent drivers that guide it all. Great talk today with Dale.
On Thursday I talk to Edi Patterson about working with Danny McBride on Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones and other things comedy and acting related.
Enjoy!
Boomer lives!
Love,
Maron