The 2025 Pit
We woke up in the wrong timeline again
I kept trying to escape reality by writing about life thousands of years ago, but something kept pulling me back into the real world. It was late November 2024 and something in my gut felt very very not right. Trying to ignore our shared present reality wasn’t working and I was overcome with wave after wave of nausea. I could clearly feel a presidential election sized pit in my stomach. I had to put my iPad down and get some fresh air or I’d risk spewing all over my bluetooth Logitech™ keyboard.
Don’t get me wrong - having an endocarp (aka “pit” or “stone”) inside of my stomach is nothing new. I’ve felt some kind of pit in my stomach as far back as I can remember, due to the state of the world or the anticipation of an upcoming horrific event, like a math test or a swim meet.
These days the pit feels different and unchanging. The combination of catastrophic events like climate change, global war, domestic politics leave me feeling that I'm more pit than olive. If I was at a cocktail bar, there wouldn’t be enough meat on me to stick with a toothpick and drop me in a dirty martini.
Luckily for you, I’ve thought long and hard about how to deal with the dread in 2025. Instead of trying to overthink the complex issue, I’m proposing a few simple solutions:
Try Diaphragmatic (belly) Breathing
Stay mildly informed
I know I should retire the metaphor about olives, but here’s one last one. Imagine yourself as a giant green olive with a pit in the center of you. That pit is the stress of the day, the world, and thinking of the future.
Now go find somewhere comfortable and quiet to lie down. Close your eyes and place a palm on your stomach. Breathe slowly and deeply through your nose and feel the spiritual pit of your olive expand and contract, your hand gently raising and lowering for 4 seconds. Now repeat that like I donno, 5 or 7 times and come back to read this post. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Now, doesn’t that pit feel smaller? Chances are - it will. According to the University of Michigan diaphragmatic breathing reverses our stress response, leading to improved concentration, energy and motivation while lowering blood pressure and decreasing muscle tension. The effort to health benefit ratio here is insane, bro.
In addition to semi-regular belly breathing - I also advise you to stay mildly informed. I’ve come to find that there is no reason to doom scroll or read every headline on CNN, but the void of not knowing about current events can make me feel incredibly uneasy. I recommend digesting news about our modern horrors with a big spoonful of comedic sugar. Luckily, I have a few news sources to help you stay mildly informed and relatively entertained, like Michael Ian Black’s Substack. Michael probes gently and sweetly into modern issues, thinking slightly deeply about our times in posts sure to make you L Oh L.
A similar, albeit obvious, news source that I’d recommend is the Weekly Show podcast with Jon Stewart. I’ve also enjoyed listening to southern left leaning comedians/ranters like Trae Crowder and his podcast Weekly Skews, which can help us understand rural America and our current strange political situation a little better. I could be biased with this recommendation since I currently live in a rural area and am in the political minority here, but it’s nice to know I’m not the only one. There’s much to cover on the rural vs urban divide which I could go into here, but I’ll save that for my next substack.
Until then!
XO
Our Grandma used to talk about belly breaths all the time! This is actually how I lower my blood pressure to get over the anxiety/heat of walking from the car into the doctor's office for my clinical trial. It really does slow your whole body down to do those belly breaths. I've also had to work consciously not clenching my jaw. You are an awesome writer, cuz
Same here! I used that technique at the dentist office today, it can be a bit of a sensory nightmare. Thank you Ali! 🙏🏼