In February I went on an abrupt personal writing hiatus to unfuck my life. As it goes, the world did not take a break with me. Somewhere between union strikes, mass lay offs, the AI explosion, and growing global violence, I figured out how many fucks I have left.
Defined:
repair, course correction, growth, survival
In a sentence:
We should unfuck ourselves, before AI fucks us.
Unfuck yourself from those who don’t give a fuck.
Unfuck Origins
Like many fucks, there isn’t a clear origin with Unfuck. Use in popular entertainment goes back to the ‘80s. Of note is Kubrick’s Vietnam War film, Full Metal Jacket. It’s been used in more recent movies like Alpha Dog and Atomic Blonde.
Unfuck Yourself is a popular self-help book. In a similar style of the books: Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck. I’ve read snippets of the those last two, finding them to be simplistic and judgmental trash. Although, I suppose one could say the same of any self-help book, or essay, or unfinished writing project.
All to say that this phrase isn’t new, and looking at the trajectory of the world, it isn’t going to go out of fashion anytime soon.
What does Unfuck mean?
To start with, you have to know what the fuck is going on to Unfuck whatever it is. Best summed up by the age old advice of recognizing, and admitting, the problem.
Unfucking can be tricky, because you have to get down to the root issue. This is even more difficult when we live in a world that’s locked into interconnected messy. Finding the root to Unfuck can take time—a luxury that most of us don’t have much of these days. And by the way, thank you for taking the luxury of your limited time to read this! I’m sorry it took so long, but I wanted to get it right.
When I left the project hanging in February, there were many challenges in my personal and professional life. Besides the grief I was working through over Jon’s suicide, a lot was not going well. I struggled hardcore to make sense of what to do next.
These last two fucks have been written and rewritten more times than I will ever admit. Editing went out the window, replaced by a circular creative mania. I couldn’t get the message right. I hadn’t fully processed what was happening in my life and the correct words escaped me for months, obviously. Not finishing then created anxiety each time I sat down to try again, and again, and again, failing each time. So, I stopped forcing it and took the time to reflect on what I needed to Unfuck.
All that time away from writing was rooted to this project, through the throws of grief and the love I still have for hope. The hope that I will get better at expressing grief. The hope that the world will get better, despite all evidence to the contrary. The hope that my old, sick dog will live to see another birthday, and *knock on wood* he will next week—Axwell will be 13. My dog adored Jon, as he’s adored many of the loved ones I’ve lost over the last few years of tears.
More than anything else, I still want to have hope that the act of creating is still of value. That one word placed after the next isn’t meaningless, or a silly endeavor to spend my life on. After all, there are far worse things than spending your life trying to be a better writer.
If Unfucking is about identifying a problem, having hope is about identifying meaning. Hope for me is highlighting what’s most important, what I cannot live without, and the countless small moments that make living bearable during the worst times.
Jon gave me hope. He was good at that. He could see the world as it is and still see a future worth sticking around for. Until he didn't, and then he was gone. I can’t speak for the many, many people who loved Jon, but for me, the hope his existence provided fell down a bottomless pit when he ended his life. There was no thud of conclusion, it was simply gone, vanished into the bowels of the earth.
It’s been hell trying to locate and pull that hope back up to the surface. But Jon is worth going through grief hell for. He would have done the same for me, and I suspect many others. In previous losses, I often wondered how much of living is habit, a background function like breathing or blinking. Now I think about how life is mostly holding on for those we love, knowing how brief it all is to begin with. Maybe I’m just being middle aged. Probably the latter.
Jon was born in ‘89 and loved to poke fun at how I, an early 80s baby, was soooo much older than him. The plan was that he’d sign me up for the American Association of Retired Persons for my 40th birthday. When I hit that milestone last year, it didn’t make sense to let a running joke of 15 years go to waste. So, I signed myself up for AARP while sitting at one of my favorite bars in New Orleans. And just to be sure it was entered into the cosmic record, I declared out loud, “There you go, you dead sonofabitch.” It was a good reminder that when people we love aren’t around to give us what we need, we have to do it for ourselves.
It will never feel right that Jon’s not here to make fun of my aging irrelevance as a woman. I was rather looking forward to his ongoing jokes about being an old cougar with hot flashes. And my jokes about how he was turning into a silver otter because twinks can only be young.
Oh, well. Maybe next lifetime we’ll get to be old together. I’ve already filed my request with the reincarnation office. They owe me one since I’m on the Expedited Extreme Reincarnation Package.
What exactly did I Unfuck?
I Unfucked Hope.
I am still unfucking hope, and probably always will be. This is how we find new meaning in our lives. Figuring out which fucks to hold onto, which to let go, and how many we have to share, because you have to share fuck to give. Life isn’t sustainable without sharing fucks, figurative and literal.
Some days, it does seem impossible to look through the thick distraction of falsehoods and harm to a better future. So many of my conversations with friends lately center around two questions:
What’s the point of all this madness?
How do we stop doing it?
What’s meaningful, what it worthy and true, ought to be straightforward, but it isn’t always. Everything gets jumbled together with never enough space to pause and Unfuck one thing at a time in a proper order. Life, to me, is a gigantic ball of tangled, decorative lights. It’s easy to be tied into the fucks others have, forgetting which ones are ours. One can be sincerely mistaken about what’s important in a ball of deceit, manipulation and out right madness.
I don't have a game plan to share about Unfucking. It's different for everyone. What I do know is that you have to take stock of what fucks you have, and what fucks you cannot live without. Daily, monthly, whatever works for you, but keep that count accurate.
And give fucks away! You can't carry all the fucks, you have to share, and some you should throw in the dumpster.
As we have limited time, we also have a limited capacity for caring. It's important to make sure we're giving a fuck about the right things at the right time; about what's worthy to us and those we love. As a sensitive person, as a creative humanitarian, I struggle with this delicate balance. I want to give a fuck about everything, all of the time. Quite impossible.
On tough days, I reflect on my stock, let it be my guide. It's okay to lay some fucks down and come back to fetch them later. While it's true that the world won't slow down while you count your fucks, and get your shit together, there is magic in small acts of stillness and reflection.
Slowing down is valuable, and you should always give a fuck about the people who give you the grace to do that. It is rare and precious. I’m fortunate to have a number of people in my life who help me do this. Jon was one of those people for a long time. In a way, through this project, he always will be, and I didn’t have to give away all 50 to figure that out.
Remember to always be kind to yourself when you unfuck yourself.
Next time, on the season finale of 50 Fucks Given, we’ll examine what fucks were lost, what fucks remain, and why you should continue to give a fuck.