Keepinon posted the following flattering comment yesterday under my daily nerdly posting to the News Bucket:

Hey KP: Knowing what you know (I look to you for current info on a vast variety of topics), and living where you live, (the Smokey Mts. are one of my all time favorite places, but the culture there causes my stomach to churn, at times) how do you remain sane?? (Living,as I do, in the Michigan 8th congressional district, I really need to know then answer to this question.)

I thought this question was worthy of more than the glib reply of “What?  You’ve confused me with a sane person?  Silly you!” that it immediately begged for.  And I wanted to open the discussion to the group, since a great many of us live in places that fall short of the social conditions of “The People’s Republic of Vermont” and have to deal with this question on some level.  I suspect that some of the strategies each of has developed may be useful to others, too.  So this is going to be a group project.

  1. Obviously, I hang around here, the “24-hour cocktail party” as I’ve described it to Mrs. K.P.  We all serve as lifelines to sanity for each other on dark days.
  2. Mrs. K.P. is my bedrock.  I know there’s always at least one sane person I can reach out to.  She’s more outgoing than I am, and we’ve found a small circle of liberal friends primarily through her efforts.  I suspect the fact that this is a college town helps in that regard; several of those folks are also not native East Tennesseeans.  Now that our kids are older, they’re also good for progressive conversation.  But there is a risk of becoming overly judgmental if you cut yourself off to much from local people that you disagree with and may have very different worldviews from.  I’ve tried that and it hasn’t worked out well.  You’ve got to leave the door open to building bridges to others, which leads to:
  3.  I really believe the great majority of people are well-intentioned, just poorly informed, or victims of an unhealthy belief system that they haven’t seen through or my be afraid to challenge – possibly because all their social interactions and self-image are tied up in it.  When the kids were younger, school activities were a good way to force myself to meet others and work with them for a common interest, even if they were fundamentalist Republicans.  And for the few that were really over the edge, Mrs. K.P. and I always had humor to fall back on.  We have one set of neighbors we call “the Flanders,” after the holy-roller neighbors on the Simpsons.  But we have to be careful to not call them that when we meet then in Blockbuster!  For their part, they probably call us the Simpsons, LOL.  And that’s OK.
  4.  I don’t force myself to absorb more news than I can handle.  I also try to get news that may be upsetting from the least “hot” source [in McLuhan’s terms] possible.  I watch very little TV news, or TV at all for that matter.  I do listen to NPR driving to and from work, but if it’s something I can’t handle, I allow myself the option of putting in a jazz CD.  Some might see this as a cop-out, but if I burn out from too much war and poverty news I’m not much good for anybody, including myself.  Better to limit it to what I can handle and come back the next day to fight again.  This took many years and cycles of burnout to come and accept as not a moral failure.  Some of you may see this as a cop-out.  That’s OK.  For a long time I did too, so I have no room to criticize.  For local news, I take the newspaper.  For a long time I didn’t, when I was in a phase of “anger at being surrounded by such Yahoos,” but, as I indicated, that approach didn’t work.  By learning more about my local community, I’m finding out the good things going on here that I would never have seen if I was locked in a defensive, self-righteous cocoon.  Plus by getting local news through the newspaper, I have more control than over the TV – I can decide not to read something that I’m not up for, or come back to it later, hash it through slowly with Mrs. K.P. over coffee, or clip it out for later reference.
  5. Confession #1: Local political involvement beyond voting, giving money, and yard signs is a next step, one where I’m still working up the nerve to take the plunge.  Having a very ethnic (Italian) last name I have a level of fear that the native Tennesseeans who seem to be the ones active in local politics might not be very open to me.  Yes, I know, this is probably silly – they’d be happy to have me stuff envelopes, even if they don’t want to turn my Philadelphia accent loose on the phone bank.
  6. A sense of humor, as mentioned above, works wonders.  I love everything from the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges to virtually anything animated to quirky sitcoms (What’s that show with William Shatner as the nutty lawyer?).  The only popular show I couldn’t take was “Everybody Loves Raymond,” as the mother character hit a little too close to home.  She’d make me crazy; I’d have to jump up and go in the other room and do the dishes.  Had the same problem with parts of Fun With Dick and Jane, having been laid off a few years ago.  In general, though, I decided a long time ago it’s best to laugh at myself – it beats Mrs. K.P. to the punch, and she doesn’t miss much.  😉
  7. I was one of those kids that would happily spend hours watching the bugs, clouds, stars, etc. – which turned out to not be a good survival skill in the asphalt jungle of Philly in the 1970’s – and I still have a streak of that today, obviously, as it led me into a career in the environmental field.  The rich biodiversity here is one thing that makes it worth it for me – I can tell there’s a lot more going on here in terms of the complexity of the local ecology even in my backyard, compared to my yards in Philly, Kansas City, or Cincinnati.  Not that those weren’t worth appreciating, of course!  And having the national park, national forests, state parks, etc. nearby is a selling point for living here.  [And real estate is really cheap compared to those other places, so come on down!]  Everyone needs some personal interests that they can use to detach and recharge, no matter where they live.  Art is a good one, as is music.  Or history – when I burned out during the Reagan/Papa Bush years I spent a lot of time investigating my roots and ancient Roman history.  Also collected ancient coins for a time, but later had to sell them when I got laid off.  Thus the occasional allusions to Rome.  But Booman seems to know a lot more Roman history than I do.  Hopefully after 2008 we’ll have the luxury of doing some fun diaries and debate “Who’s crazier – W or Nero?  Who did more harm to their empire – W or Caracalla?”  
  8. I’ve mentioned in the past my spiritual path from Catholicism to Taoism, and that I try to interpret things on a wise-foolish and/or healthy-unhealthy axis rather than a good-evil axis.  It’s definitely helped my blood pressure.  Demonizing someone is not the road to peace or peace of mind.  This whole topic would merit another diary on another day.
  9. Confession #2: In the really dark days (say, December, 2004 through last summer) I seriously, quietly, got to work on an “escape plan.”  We all got passports, I negotiated with Mrs. K.P. the required events that would have to come to pass to trigger emigration (the draft is her hot button; unfortunately, several of my trigger-points have been passed; you can guess what they are), I researched the how-tos on line, last summer we took a vacation to Canada, I even have a Canadian placement professional I talk to regularly.  It might still happen, God forbid.  But right now I’m down to yellow alert (those color codes are starting to actually look a bit quaint, and certainly passe, don’t you think?)  I mention this because I think having an escape plan helped me feel I still had a bit of control over my life, however much of an illusion that might be (and we could debate that – and the morality of that approach – sometime, but probably not today).  It helped keep me from going crazy, and that was your question, so I’m trying to answer it honestly.  The same instinct came to the fore when I was in college and Three Mile Island happened.  For several days, we didn’t know whether we were getting the straight story from the government, and Philly is downwind from TMI.  So my roommate and I had our escape routes all mapped out, just in case, and we listened to KYW newsradio 24-7.  One guy we knew took a different approach – he thought we’d been lied to and all lethally exposed to radiation (think Chernobyl) – so he took serious amounts of drugs and wandered the campus like a zombie for a week.  After which time he said, “Oh look, we’re all still here!”  Hopefully we’ll be saying that in 2008, LOL!

Anyway, I’m no Buddha but that’s my ninefold-path (we need an extra fold because these are unusual circumstances, LOL.)  

So, c’mon folks, jump in with your survival hints as well.  I’m sure I’ve not covered everything!

Yours in presenting a reasonable facsimilie of mental health (whatever that means), at least on-line,

K.P.