Some Thoughts I Have Had While Attempting to Meditate

Just breathing is more difficult than I anticipated.

After more than two decades of struggling with issues I was unable to clearly articulate until they were diagnosed as anxiety and depression, I recently began taking more proactive, necessary and long overdue steps to try and cope with the near-constant storm in my head, the unpleasant buzzing that often pervades my body and the nausea that comes with both. One of the things I’ve been trying is mindful meditation. For the unfamiliar and uninitiated, mindfulness is all about being aware of the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations. In short, mindful meditation is a lot of attempting to focus on your breath and then coaxing your mind back to said breath when it inevitably wanders.

Mine wanders a lot. Here are some things I have thought about while meditating.

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What if the Kool-Aid Man is just really bad at making glory holes?

Living alone is pretty cool but if I fell in the shower or something nobody would probably find me for a couple days. Am I too young to get Life Alert?

So many people worse than me are doing so much better. And so many better are doing so much worse.

Why am I even trying to be mindful? Why do I want to live in the present and be aware of what’s happening around me? The world is a fucking dumpster fire! If anything, we all need more reasons to escape. Living in the moment isn’t very appealing when you’re so constantly and cripplingly shocked, angry and downright sad that you’re thinking such insane thoughts as “You know what? Maybe George W. Bush wasn’t actually that bad!”

Why is Jada Kiss as hard as it gets?

Ha, I can’t believe I ordered a fried fish sandwich and fries from a Chinese restaurant last night. What the fuck is wrong with me? It was pretty good, though, so I wouldn’t rule out making this same purchase again at some point in the future. Kind of makes me feel a little bit rough when they deliver four sets of plastic cutlery and four free Cokes every time I order, though, since it’s just me and all and also after eating that much food the last thing I need is a line of Cokes staring me down.

Why are boobs good?

Is my mind playing tricks on me, as usual, or does my urine really smell like seafood because I consumed a pound of spicy peel-and-eat steamed shrimp in less than 20 minutes last night?

Where have all the cowboys gone?

You can’t just, like, build a city on rock and roll. That’s not a legitimate foundation. There is absolutely no way you would be able to get the proper permits for that kind of thing.

When does a dude spreading his legs become a full-on “Man-Spread?” Also, how do dudes think that’s an okay thing to do? I guess I should wonder this about like half of the things many straight white men habitually does without really thinking about the people around him or general human decency, but I’m trying to fucking meditate.

I wonder when the sex club is going to have that “Mindful Masturbation” event the owner told me about last weekend during the Japanese Shibari bondage workshop. I might check it out. It combines one thing I’m awful and a novice at with one thing I’m great and a seasoned pro at, which would be interesting. However, it might be weird to, in practice, combine the two. Also it would be strange to masturbate with a bunch of dudes around, which I assume is what would have to happen for that kind of workshop to be a success, or even be defined as a “workshop” in the first place. I guess I did that once in middle school when a bully instituted this thing where we would watch Cinemax softcore porn during a sleepover that was, like, a dozen dudes deep, and we would all snap one off, and the person who finished last would be the big loser. I’d like to say I wonder why I went along with such nonsense, but it’s because I didn’t want to dissent. What the popular kid said went back then, where I came from, because social constructs are strange. This same dude used to tell people I liked to put my thumb in my ass, even though my thumb has never once in my life entered my ass (and it interests me that nobody ever thought to ask him how he might have come across this information if it were true), though nowadays I guess I’d try some anal play, just to see what was up. I also wish I knew what I know now, which is if someone does dig putting their thumb in their ass, they should go ahead and do it as often as they want to within some modicum of reason. It’s also funny to me that back then the last to finish in this masturbatory contest was the loser. I wonder how many of those dudes are now doing everything they can’t to delay ejaculation. Bullying is weird.

I wonder why that woman whose sister I kind of know denied my Facebook request.

Fighting fire with fire seems like an ineffective and sweaty way to deal with something.

What kind of trial and error went into discovering that marijuana, if smoked or consumed in other ways, would make you high? Were people just smoking every piece of random foliage they found? Did someone have to die from smoking poison ivy?

I feel like having a bachelor party even if you never get married should be a thing.

How was cheese discovered? How was mayonnaise invented? Seriously, did people just like try and eat every single thing just to see if it was edible? The pure scope of humanity’s trial and error process in relation to pretty much everything is pretty impressive, if you think about it, which I am, instead of concentrating on my fucking breathing.

She’s not going to text me back is she?

I wonder what Donald Trump sees when he looks in the mirror.

I wonder what Chris Kirkpatrick is doing right now.

Fashion is weird. It’d be interesting to find out why the Founding Fathers felt like powdered wigs were fashionable and something that should be worn.

If nothing happens when you die, religious people will never know that they were completely wrong. That’s kind of a shame. But if you’re an atheist and you’re completely wrong, you might have to spend eternity being mercilessly tortured via cattle prod to nipple or something. Seems unfair, but hey — what isn’t?

What in the fuck even is Math?

Life would be so much easier if I believed in fate — that everything happens for a reason or whatever, because then I could expect for things to happen to me and write off unfortunate events and personal fuck-ups to some sort of unidentified and unproven cosmic plan. It’d take the pressure off a little bit, you know?

I hope I never get curious enough about how much of my life I’ve spent on social media to actually figure out a way to quantify it. The time I have spent browsing the posts of exes or women I had some sort of thing with that never made it far enough to even become exes would account for for a scary amount of time in and of itself.

Why do I like to be alone so much? Do I really enjoy it and get satisfaction out of it, or have I just grown too used to it, too set in my ways?

Dicks sure are funny-looking.