What to do with the anger?

I’m just angry today.

I’m angry at my son’s medical issues he is going through. I’m angry with his nurse. I’m angry with my job. I’m angry with my weight gain. I’m angry at my small apartment and the constant stress of moving into our new house, which seems so far away and yet stupidly close. I’m spiraling with anger.

I opened up Twitter, a site that in a post Elon Musk purchase, seems level set-on making everyone angry. I started scrolling and rage builds. People screaming about a movie casting they disagree with. A pop star being anti-sematic. Angry politics. I started writing an angry tweet of my own.

I stopped.

I wrote here instead. This is my thoughtful little place. No angry messages without nuance. No virtue signals, especially if that virtue is anger and rage and hate.

I keep going back to a story about two albums. I think it helps me reflect on what to do with my anger. Musician Trent Reznor was in a bad place. He was depressed and he wrote that depression. He gave it voice and it became the Downward Spiral. Reznor says that

“The self-destruct button was pushed when I first started writing,” he says. “There was a sense that I couldn’t fit in anywhere, I couldn’t relate to people; I felt alone, I felt angry about it. And part of me is still that. I felt like I was heading down into something that wasn’t going to have a good ending. That ended up being addiction: its claws were in me but it hadn’t fully revealed itself.”

The Guardian Story about Trent Reznor

He started drinking and using drugs and ended up overdosing on heroin half a decade later.

And another musician, Beck. I remember this story, but I can’t find it online. So if it turns out to be false, I am sorry, but it helps me get through the days. Beck, also in a bad place, started writing out his pain. But he realized what it was doing, how it was hurting him and stopped. He instead to head the opposite direction and write himself out of his pain. Odelay was the album that came out of that experience.

The truth is I do not know what to do with the anger. The only thing I’ve found useful is to move away from what the anger is encouraging me to do. It is a fuel that burns and leaves you choking on fumes.

On the bad days I try to stop before I go to far. Sometimes I remember to listed to Beck and make something that will feed love and calm and beauty, not anger.