How I Broke Up With My Funk

The journey, The Substack that inspired me, and my Breakup Funk Quote Playlist.

Forgive me Substack for I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since my last post. I have broken the cardinal rule you have so mercilessly preached to me. Consistency.

Why have you strayed my child?

I don’t know, Substack. I haven’t been inspired. I have found myself in a sort of…funk.

A what?

A funk.

Go home. Post. Write a meaningful Note. Restack. Respond. Make yourself Relevant And for the love of Substack edit your About page. It’s still on the Default one I set for you. Are you serious?

I know. I’m fleshing that out. I want The Underdog Bet to be a sort of Arcadia for readers, for artists. A respite of…

Just DO it!

And with that, the confessional window to Substacksphere shut. Substack has many children to attend to.

I am now home. I’ve been home. For a week. I haven’t edited my About page. I still can’t put into words what I want to say. I did post a Note. But not because Substack told me to. I had fallen across a quote that I had read before, and I love it.

I did restack because when I am in Notes, I like reading them. And I like to share them.

I wrote five drafts of different posts but scrapped each of them. They didn’t seem right.

I began to wonder. What exactly is a Funk anyway? Being the nerd I am, I looked it up through several different sources. To sum up:

A Funk is when you feel disconnected. Not yourself. It’s not the same as depression. Sometimes you might just have a very long bad mood. You might want to stay in comfy clothes like pjs or sweats. You feel like you’re in a fog.

First you must recognize your Funk and accept it. Embrace your Funk. Stop feeling guilty that perhaps nothing has gone wrong in your life, you’re just in a funk. Everyone goes through funks. It’s part of being human. I decided to welcome my Funk and explore why my Funk had decided now, was the time to become besties for a while.

I thought Funk might have come over because I recently (a week and a half ago) had a lumbar back ablation. It was a victory. After three years of growing chronic back pain and trying to find the right doctors to help me get diagnosed, I finally had. I endured Physical Therapy to no relief and several different medications. Until finally, back ablation. So, this is good. Yes. But recovery has been more difficult than I thought. It’s not an overnight fix. I’m still in the spine flare up situations that occur up to three weeks after the procedure. So, Funk may have been summoned by the muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatory medications chill out afterwards. A frustrating time but overall, for a good outcome. A perfect time for a funk. A weird in between state both of consciousness/unconsciousness, victory and pain. Perfect living conditions for Funk.

Next, you must allow yourself to rest. Me and Funk have that one covered.

Third they suggest exercise, but that’s not a good option for us right now. Although we do walk my dog.

Then they suggest: find something that inspires you. This is a step to be taken when you’ve grown tired of Funk. You start to feel a twinge of depression. Because you aren’t doing anything. So, I began to think. What immediately inspires me? I thought of one of my favorite Substacks: Mark Danowsky from Stay Curious: markdanowsky@substack.com.

Not only do I draw inspiration from Stay Curious and all it covers, but I also admire the person behind it. One of my favorite Stay Curious posts is a recurring one titled: A Curated Collection of Quotes. Mark’s curated quotes are varied yet cohesive. Always different points of view and thoughtfully selected.

I started to think of quotes that I had stumbled across over my years of reading. I went to my bookshelves and began turning the pages of books I have collected. Reading through notes I had scribbled in the margins or passages I had highlighted. Revisiting things of inspiration. I began to engage again. I began to depend less and less on my Funk. I began to feel inspired.

I thought I would share some of these quotes with you. Perhaps you will find something in them that you draw inspiration from. And thank you Mark and your Stay Curious Curated Collection of Quotes. You have successfully facilitated a beautiful parting of ways between me and my Funk.

MY QUOTE PLAYLIST: BREAKING UP WITH MY FUNK

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. Ralph Waldo Emerson

A lot of people try to counteract the ‘I am not good enough’ with ‘I am good enough.’ In other words, they take the opposite and they try to invest it. That still keeps the world at the level of polarities. So the act is to go not to the world of: ‘I am good’ to counteract ‘I am bad,’ Or ‘I am lovable’ as opposed to ‘I am unlovable.’ But go behind it to ‘I am.’ I am. I am. And ‘I am’ includes the act that I do crappy things and I do beautiful things, And I am. Ram Dass

what I like about hippos being the most dangerous animal in the world: they’re vegetarian, not even omnivores. they don’t want to eat you, they just hate you. and I think that’s a beautiful thing. reb on Facebook

Learn to say ‘Fuck You’ to the world once in a while, You have every right to. Just stop for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss trickling, nosesticking, ass-gouging, eyeball poking, finger-poking, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO. Don’t worry about cool. Make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. Sol LeWitt’s freewheeling, inspirational, artist to artist advice to fellow artist Eva Hesse.

You see things and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’ George Bernard Shaw

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being. Jackie Robinson

If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? David Sedaris

Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, live out their lives…on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Carl Sagan’s comment on Voyager 1’s image of The Earth.

Taken together, these studies prove that fictional outsiders, outcasts, and those who crash-land into strange worlds do more than entertain; they create the mental muscle memory needed for kindness. They teach us how to look past our differences and into the heart of another being. Gabriel Quintero “How Aliens Make Us Better Human Beings.” Counter Arts.

I think it’s extraordinary that letters are called ‘letters,’ the name of that small denomination with which we build our words. A letter is a sound and a sound is a voice and a voice to which we attach meaning – or significance – is a life. Marly Ruefle “Remarks on Letters; Madness, Rack and Honey”

a collection of things, even everyday things, promises wonderment, too, as these things become no longer everyday, having been enshrined by a collector. Walter Benjamin, who collected books, said that one of the finest memories of a collector is the moment when he rescued a book to which he might never have given a thought, much less a wishful look, because he found it lonely and abandoned on the marketplace and bought it to give it its freedom. He added ‘To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.’ Michael Kimmelman “The Accidental Masterpiece; On the Art of Life and Vice Versa”

To me, having the courage to tell your own story goes hand in hand with having the curiosity and humility to listen to others’ stories. Sarah Kay

That moment when you finish a book, look around and realize that everyone is just carrying on with their lives…as though you didn’t just experience emotional trauma at the hands of a paperback. Anonymous

I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say. Flannery O’Connor