What to Do When You Wake Up Feeling “Off”
Self-helpy AF
Welcome to an occasional advice column by me, Sara Benincasa, a person with many opinions but definitely no expertise. This column will not diagnose, prescribe, or probably even “cure” anything at all! Hopefully, reading it will be a sweet treat for your gorgeous brain.
Think of it as a dose of loving care from your weird but benevolent aunt, the one who wears bright purple eyeshadow with matching lipstick to family reunions sometimes, a gal who just winks when she catches you smoking your pot drugs with your silly little cousins in the garage. If you have specific questions for the column, hit me up at saratoninnewsletter@gmail.com. If I use your question in a column, I will keep you anonymous and disguise any identifying details.
In my inaugural advice column, I decided to do what new presidents do in their inaugural addresses and just make some inspiring shit up! Isn’t it fun to be at home reading this inaugural address instead of dressed up in some overpriced bullshit you didn’t want to wear anyway, sitting on folding chairs in frigid fucking D.C. in goddamn January or whatever? The only downside is you are probably not close to Ben’s Chili Bowl or Busboys and Poets. Still, you are better than every Notable American who ever lived!!!!
Hopefully, after reading this column, you will encounter the spirit of Aretha Franklin wearing a gorgeous hat and singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Maybe you’ll run into Jennifer Lynn Affleck singing “This Land is Your Land” and “America the Beautiful” feat. a line from our most sacredly patriotic paen, “Let’s Get Loud!” Perhaps Bernard of Vermont shall wear mittens made by a nice lady out of recycled bottle cap yarn or whatever! At any rate, welcome.
Today I wish to address a query I asked myself today: “What does one do when one wakes up feeling ‘off’?” You know, a solid case of the mehs. A self-diagnosis of the blahs.
This is the feeling one gets when one can see the point of getting out of bed – the absolute need to do so, even! – but is really not sold on the move.
Now, I am not talking about a mental health crisis. If you feel hopeless or helpless and don’t know where to turn, please contact a trustworthy mental health counselor or medical doctor. I also want to make sure you know about the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, the Trevor Project, Mental Health America, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
When I speak of “feeling off,” I also do not mean spiraling in addiction. As a sober addict myself, one day at a time and all that, it behooves me to say there is no shame in such pain! If you are into it, 12-step meetings are available for free in person, on Zoom, and on the telephone, 24 hours a day. Do a Google for your particular program of interest, and you will find free options. I am also a fan of The Small Bow, a newsletter and recovery community that tries to promote health and wellness without a specific agenda or philosophy other than that it is good to be good to yourself and others.
In the final part of this little auntie sermon, let me say: nobody else can tell you what is best for you. They may be understandably enthusiastic about what works for them, but you will find your own recipe. Just don’t be afraid to admit you want help.
With all that outta the way, I want to offer some helpful ideas on what to do when one wakes up just not feeling motivated or particularly enthused about the day. Your vital signs are all good, you have presumably taken care of all your basic needs, and you are not in crisis. You just feel sluggish, bored, uninspired.
First, it is good to use water in some way. Taking a trip to America’s most perfect oceanic spot (the Jersey Shore) sounds great, but is not possible for most of us. Can you go for a summertime ramble alongside a humble local creek, lazy river, peaceful lake or non-disgusting pond? Maybe you will meet some nice, happy, healthy dogs!
The only trouble with nice, happy, healthy dogs is that they tend to have humans, and humans can be annoying. It is not best to engage in long-term isolation when one is feeling grumpy, but a little alone time can be quite restorative. Let’s explore how you can interrupt your bad mood with water whilst alone.
Can you take a brief shower, varying the temperature from what you usually choose? It’s annoying to hear this, and I’m not going to repeat some pseudoscience bullshit about how it’ll clear your brain demons or whatever, but taking a brisk cold shower really can wake you up. It can interrupt your negative mood and return you to something resembling alertness. I had a great deal of anxiety recently, pre-panic attack tremors, and putting myself in a cold shower really helped.
Again, I don’t do medical advice, buuuuut my therapist said that dunking your face in ice water can give you a pleasant kind of shock, resetting the system. Many a skinfluencer also says it helps you wake up in the morning and makes your face brighter.
Also on the water tip: if you are fortunate enough to have access to clean, potable water, drink that shit! You may feel bleh because you aren’t sufficiently hydrated. Seriously, it may be that simple! I drink about 64 ounces a day, and I piss constantly, but my skin mostly looks good and I mostly feel sane. Ask your doctor how much water you and your precious foxy kidneys should be dealing with each day. Your mileage may very! And don’t chew ice chips! My dentist and I agree it is a bad habit! Suck on them! Suck! On! Them!
Alright, enough about water. Second thing: writing about stuff for which you’re thankful. Fine, let’s call it what it is: A GRATITUDE LIST. This is so gross and embarrassing and I’m sorry, but I am not the same beast who babbled at you in these Wonkette streets a decade and more ago. I have softened into a (sexy) middle-aged (hot) dork who has a (perfect) cat and writes gratitude lists like an asshole.
Like an ice bath for your face or a cold shower for your whole sexual body, a gratitude list can be a free, easy, useful reset for the system. I like making them because they make me extract my cranium from my hellish shame-rectum for one sweet moment and think about good things and people and animals. Then I can go back to my cave of fear (butthole) if I want.
Here is a gratitude list for today. You can use it as a model for yours, which I suggest you put in the comments because I refuse to do this shit alone.
Sample Wonkette Gratitude List Thing Oh God Fine Ew
Rebecca doesn’t have cancer! Are you not fucking stoked? Of course you are!
The sun reflects nicely off the buildings across the street.
My CHONKY cat, Polly the Demon Queen, seems to enjoy looking out the window.
I have clean water to drink today.
I have enough food to eat today.
I have a little extra money to give to mutual aid today.
I am in debt but working on it today.
I still have time to meditate today.
There are still so many good books yet to be read.
Holy shit, speaking of which, I can read! I’m so glad for that!
Candles are cool, right? I’m grateful Sky Mommy invented candles!
That Man has been indicted on so many counts of things LOLOLOL, I accept justice may never truly be served but I am allowed to be glad people have spent time and energy trying to do the right thing.
Just one blood donation may help save more than one life, and also they give you free snacks!
Wonkette still exists and is so good (fuck you, I get to put this one, and you’re here, so I’m right!!!!)
I may feel kinda low and unfocused and crampy but I’m well enough to type these things at you, so that’s pretty fucking good!
I get to listen to Bruce Springsteen whenever I want and I saw him at Wrigley Field last week because somebody took me there as a surprise for a first date, ewwwww, can you imagine? Huge swing and a home RUN as I am a Jersey girl, duh.
My replacement driver’s license showed up.
Organizations like Miry’s List and RAICES Texas are out there doing the good work of helping refugees, including helping children get ready for the new school year.
I am wearing a Dolly Parton shirt and comfy sweatpants.
Okay I’m embarrassed to share that with you but anyway.
Here’s another deceptively simple way to change your mood: move your human body. No, I’m not ordering you to exercise! I’m not a monster! I mean just the act of moving your human body, in whatever way is safest and available to you, can help.
Maybe you’re reading this while laying on one side in bed. Well, if you can, roll over to the other side! Maybe you are dispirited because you are still recovering from knee surgery and can’t play tennis with Muffy, Buffy, and Sir Reginald Charles von Farthingham (your financial submissive) at the cunty country club. Perhaps you can stretch your arms out and wink sensually at your comely elbows.
Doing breathwork counts as moving your human body. Perhaps you might enjoy some deep breaths into your diaphragm (unless you have a respiratory illness, in which case, do not force anything! Just stare at something pretty and fall asleep if you can).
My final recommendation? Oh, that’s easy: do some art. Draw with crayons. Make NARSTY graffiti in your own shower with washable paint. Sketch something. Write something. It doesn’t have to be good. If you usually use one hand, use the other one. Or use your foot or your filthy fucking mouth! Make a beautiful mural by dipping your butt in nontoxic paint and then putting your butt on the wall! (Please don’t poison your asshole with art supplies.) Glue macaroni to a paper plate and list it for $1000 on Etsy. CUT TO: your case of the blahs has made you rich!
I hope you enjoyed this nutty weekend post with goofy advice. It was meant to make you smile. If you have other recommendations for easy, safe and simple ways to interrupt a bad mood, please do let us know. Ugh I’ve gone soft, I used to be cool (JK, I was never cool).
And take good care of yourselves, okay? We like having you around. It is good that you are still here.
I’m grateful all you crazy, lovely mofos are here, commenting and posting and sometimes writing advice columns and being my online friends. The absolute absurdity of the world is easier to contemplate with your rainbow coloring lighting up the corners.
Okay, now let's talk about factoring to identify prime numbers. Let's use the numbers 121 and 137 for our test cases. If you have just a few prime numbers memorized, we can do this easily, but even if you don't, we can quickly find those first few numbers that allow us to get started.
0 and 1 are by definition not prime numbers. A prime number has exactly 2 factors: 1 and itself.
If you divide 2 by 2 you get 2, and if you divide it by 1 you get 2 and there are no other numbers as small as 2 or smaller to test, so ... VOILA, 2 is a prime number. Let's check 3.
If you divide 3 by 3 you get 1 if you divide it by 2 you get 1.5 which is not a whole number so it doesn't count at all, and then if you divide it by 1 you get 3. VOILA, 3 is a prime number.
If you divide 4 by 4 you get 1 and by 1 you get 4, and this is obviously true for every number so in the future we can skip that part. So now we just need to check the numbers between 1 and 4 to see if any of them are factors. Unfortunately for 4, you can divide it by 2 and get a whole number (another 2) which. means that 4 is not prime. In fact, no even number is prime except for 2 itself, because all the higher even numbers are divisible by 2.
While easily checking the rest of the odd numbers between 1 and 20 we find the primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19.
So to determine whether 121 and 137 are primes, we ONLY have to divide them by previously established prime numbers. Why? Well because if they're divisible by a number that's not prime they are ALSO divisible by at least one prime number (The number 16 is divisible by 4, which is not prime, but also by 2, which is a prime factor of 4).
121/2 = something.5, because 117 is odd, so 2 is not a factor. We'll skip 2 in the future when we're dealing with odd numbers, though computers won't, since they don't glance at a number and determine it is even. They have to do the math to see that it's even.
121/3 = 40.3333... Okay, not divisible by 3
121/5 = 6.2 ... not a prime factor
121/7 = 15.8something
121/11 = 11 Oh, hey! Eleven is a prime factor of 121. In fact it's the only prime factor, because 121 = 11 squared! So 121 is not prime.
So that's the basic process, but it's all so brute force b/c you have to continue until you find a prime factor or until you reach the number you're factoring, right?
Well... not exactly.
137/2 doesn't work, and 2 is not a factor. But **because** 2 is not a factor, that tells us something. That tells us that the largest number that could be a factor of 137 has to be less than 1/2 of 137. Think about it. Is 130 going to divide evenly into 137? Nope. Nothing less than itself but more than 1/2 of itself can be a prime factor specifically because there's no other prime to multiple it by that is more than 1 but less than 2.
So okay, but not generalize this --
137/3 = 45.66666 so 3 is not a factor, but that also means that the highest thing that could be a factor must be less than 1/3rd of 137, which we just figured out was 45.66...
Since only whole numbers can be factors, we've already limited not just 2 and 3, but also every number above 45.
keep going.
137/5 = 27.4
So 5 is not a prime factor, and also no number higher than 27 is a prime factor.
137/7 = 19.57ish
So 7 is not a prime factor, nor is any number over 19.
You can see now how the upper bound drops radically, right?
137/11 = 12.44ish
So now we've eliminated 11, but we've also eliminated every number larger than 12. This is easily verified by multiplying the next prime (which is 13) by itself. The product is 169, which is more than 137. So there's nothing we could multiple 13 by to get 137 that isn't smaller than 13, and we've already checked everything smaller.
Since there are no numbers greater than 11 that are prime unless they are also greater than 12, we're done.
So it started out looking like we were going to have to check every number from 1 to 137, but in the end we did some quicker calculations to find the early primes under 20, and then checked some of those, not even all of them, to determine that 137 has no prime factors that are not itself. Therefore it only has the factors 137 and itself. Therefore 137 is prime.
Cool beans, huh? So now you know that when checking a number to see if it's prime, you can stop as soon as you hit a prime that, when squared, produces a number higher than the one you're checking for primeness.
Since 20 squared is 400, for numbers below 400 you'll never have to check them against more prime factors than just the ones below 20, so our 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19 which we started out with.
You can use other winnowing tricks to find primes more quickly than most people expect, but the work of finding primes still quickly becomes pretty huge.
Remember after all that if you divide a 24 digit number in 2, you still have a 23 or 24 digit number. And if you want to find the smallest number that, when squared, is larger than your 24 digit number, you're still looking for a 12 digit number.
And sure looking for 1 in 10 ^ 12 is a lot less work than looking for 1 in 10 ^ 24, but it's still a TON of work.
And this is why, to this day, you've got computers working every second on nothing but finding the next prime, so that codebreakers at the NSA and other places can use a database of only-primes in their decrypt attempts. (And also so that banks can use the highest valued prime numbers we know to multiply together to get new decrypt-keys.)