Unclench

WINNIPEG, SPRING '25

Unclenching your jaw: It’s the one thing the mew boys are right about. It’s also something I should’ve learned to do earlier. I’m sure my masseters would’ve appreciated it. But it’s what I’ve been trying to do this year: unclench my jaw, my body, my soul. Better late than never, as they say. The results of unclenching may or may not surprise you, but they definitely surprised me.

Unclenching necessitates unpacking which means processing and moving on. And sometimes when you’ve been manifesting bodily functions via your internal monologue there are unintended consequences. I’d been clenching myself to hold myself together for so long, without even really noticing it. It was background noise to the extent that I’ve been dealing with chronic pain for half a decade now. I really had no idea how much I’d been holding in, but processing that has let me start living a life that is less ego-driven and simply calmer. I’ve cared about too much for too long and letting myself forgive and forget lets me move on. Fuggedabowdit is more than just a fun thing to say, it’s also a divine maxim.

I spent a lot of time building up that things matter and the weight of that gets tiresome to maintain. Obviously there are things that matter but not everything does or at least needs my emotional weight behind it. I don’t need to care about every thing. A lot of stuff isn’t for me or about me to begin with. The crux of my BPD is how emotionally-driven I get about every thing. It’s just not worth it. I don’t need to care so much about every thing, but I have struggled to stop. This year, though, particularly since the spring, I’ve been unclenching and letting go. Letting myself chill out and in that quiet finding different paths that don’t lead into emotional turmoil. And seeing more clearly because of that.

There are the stretch marks, though. No, seriously, I didn’t realize how much I’d been squeezing my abdomen unintentionally and by letting go my body stretched out. More recently, I’ve been realizing that I also hold a lot in my feet, and it seems to be partly why I often have sore feet after walking longer distances where I’m more likely to be walking much faster and thus clenching my feet. So I’ve been trying to walk differently, more relaxed, and it seems to be helping. I’m still walking faster than most, but honestly some of us are just tall Dutch men and that’s fine.

It was in the spring, too, that I got rid of Instagram. So much of that app has been about destructive habits for me. It seems like we all kind of collectively agree that Instagram is bad for our souls but we’re all too addicted to leave. So we excuse it under the guise of things like “what about businesses that only have Instagram?” But I just woke up one day and decided that if a business is too lazy to get a SquareSpace account then that’s their loss. I’m done.

I will say that unlike pretty much anything you’ll read as testimonial for how much better life gets after Instagram, my progress has not been so exponential and linear. It’s not always been a great time ever since. There’s still work to do. But, I think I’m at an age where I’m able to see that things may not always be great but they also won’t always be like this…there are better days ahead.

What I’ve come to accept is that people often won’t meet you where you’re at. I mean, that’s another huge reason we’re all still on Instagram — the fear of missing out because you’re not there. For me, I just got to a point where I decided that I don’t need to know and I’m ok with missing out if it’s for the overall betterment of my health. We were given the technology of the gods — infinite wisdom in the palm of our hands — and it got churned by capital into the most vile assault on our attention spans. What I’m missing out on from not being on Instagram is comparing myself to exes and being reminded of how uncool I am compared to everyone else. Besides: what I missed out on from being on Instagram was much worse.

I already knew my attention span was broken, but what surprised me was how starved of mere thinking I’d become. I’d lost so much in the way of creativity and curiosity because I stopped thinking over the years. When you don’t let yourself sit with things, you aren’t able to really grapple with anything at all. The smartphone is the great pacifier of our time. The convenience of cheap dopamine whenever we want means we don’t deal with friction, which lets tension build up from being left unprocessed. Or at least that’s been my journey. Maybe you’re built different. Maybe you’re Built Ford Tough.

In the before times, I really believed in the ability of connection through the internet. I thought I was so unique and special that the only way I’d find folks to vibe with was through the World Wide Web. Cuz obviously I was bigger and better than Edmonton, Alberta. Yeesh! I was ready to jet off to Trinity-Bellwoods or Outremont at the drop of a hat. Even Vancouver was too smalltime for Tyler. This is all to say that there’s been a lot of ego to unpack this year. No longer needing to be the best lets me relax.

That was back when I adored the urban, though. I mean, I still love a sharp Bay-and-Gable or lovely spiral-staircase triplex like any Canadian urbanist should, but my perspective on the urban has shifted. I think the value proposition of cities has weakened a lot, especially in Canada, which seems to be paralleling the ‘managed decline’ of England outside of the Home Counties. A lot of this is rooted in the selfishness of neoliberal ideology coming home to roost.

In the roost, we’ve become cloaked in overconsumption and our hyperindividualism is showing. And whether we’re doing Temu hauls or not, we’re still watching them, collectively, as a species. Our overconsumption isn’t just from one-click purchasing, it’s also from drowning in content from infinite feeds. These feeds seem to relish keeping us from out there, in our actual communities, relating to one another, and supporting each other. And, yeah, we do need to hold the structures that allowed for this situation with phones and apps to occur accountable, but we should also be accountable to ourselves and willing to do the work of thinking and being in the real world.

I don’t think the internet is necessarily bad, either. It contains boundless knowledge and we are collectively less naive for it. But the internet works better when used intentionally and specifically rather than letting algorithms decide everything for us. It sucks that our leaders have failed to keep big tech in check and so instead we have brain rot, greater division, and filler face. It sucks how addictive these mindless little apps are. I know even without Instagram, I’m still addicted to dopamine feedback loops. And fret not, there are still algorithms in my life.

But Instagram was a great tension-inducer. So at least without it, I can start to claw back to reality and move on with my life. One of the biggest changes that deleting it allowed me was the ability to ponder. To let ideas linger. To sit with something. That’s the only way we can process anything and move on. And by having Instagram gnawing away in my pocket, I was robbing myself of that possibility. The dope fiend in me was like “but what if I just compared my life to one more persons in stunning Retina display?”

I used to think I needed distractions instead of thinking through complex feelings. I could disrupt the negative feelings with a quick scroll and swipe. But that disrupted me from going through the motions of that feeling and letting it ruminate so that I can find a way forward. And the feeds just filled me with new dread, anxiety, and negativity. So, since the spring, I’ve been unpacking and, at times, unravelling, and trying to process a backlog I was too distracted to notice. And it’s good — so many things I’ve been able to stop holding and let go of. Fuggedabowdit and such.

Through that, I found myself living a way that I had long wanted: one where I am enjoying things without fear of judgment. I’m not stressed by what to wear so that I stack up nicely next to others. I’ve gotten back into decorating and design lately, and I’m exploring it more as a way of expressing myself and things that bring me joy in my everyday life rather than something based around trends or what’s cool. It helps getting older, too, and learning to care less about these things and allow room for imperfection.

All of this to say: maybe unclench your jaw, too! Put down the damn phone, look at something further than 3 feet away. You may find yourself lingering in reveries. Find things that bring you joy and don’t sweat it if people don’t get it. Do it for you, do it for your community, even, but don’t do it for success like I did. That’s a hollow path. And remember: it’s not that serious. Unless, of course, it actually is, in which case I trust you to know the difference.

Some general housekeeping:

• I’m going to try switching the title format— instead of it cataloguing the place and time period, I want to try working with more evocative titles that hint at what’s inside the post. The place and time period is moving to the subheader as I find it still useful as a demarcation.

• Later in the month, I’m likely to start archiving stuff over at Nostalgia Kills as I consolidate things here. If you want any last peeks at anything over there, now’s the time!

• If you’re reading this in your Gmail inbox then you’re probably gonna see a message at the bottom that says: [Message Clipped] View entire message. Click the hyperlink to see the full post.

AND FINALLY… the Polaroids!