May I be absurd?

wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities. ~Dr. Seuss.

In trying to rediscover the real me over the past few years, I have noticed that I have the ability to find something funny in some of the darkest places. I see it as a gift. It isn’t used to deflect, deny, or remove the darkness, but it brings in a little light and then we can go right back into the pit.

For instance, I have been basically working two full time positions in 30+ hours per week for the past 2 months. Feeling on the edge of complete burnout yesterday, I decided that I needed to resign from my Finance Manager position. I was going to write a resignation letter and then realized that the Finance Manager position is the one I technically left and don’t technically have. How do you resign from a job you don’t have? I found this quite funny.

Last week I was starting a yoga practice my therapist had recommended to help process grief. I couldn’t attend the live session, so I was watching the recording of a Zoom session. The facilitator was explaining how things were going to work and he said, “I’m going to turn off the chats now, but you can reach out to Joy, Joy is here to support you.” I laughed out loud thinking about how joy was going to support me in my hour of grief yoga.

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When I ran across the Dr. Seuss quote at the top of the blog, I knew it was the quote for me for May. Celebrating the quirky, silly side of me that I know very well, but few people get to see. (There was one time on a school trip to Belize that I was overtired and thought everything was SUPER funny in the van filled with students and parent volunteers - I think they thought I had been possessed. Gas-O was part of it at some point, I believe) I don’t know why I normally keep my silly self under wraps. That’s work for another day.

Here is what May looks like for me:

North Star: “Wrong End of the Telescope”

Mantra: How silly you are, looking at life from your quirky perspective, how you can find things to laugh about in the darkest of places.

Song: “I’ve No More F*cks to Give” by Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq. If you have a high tolerance for the F-word, or you truly have no more F’s to give, this song is for you!

Honestly, I’m not always in the mood for this song, so I do other silly songs some times.

Here are some top artists for me:

• Flight of the Conchords

• Da Vinci’s Notebook (“Enormous Penis”)

• Tally Hall (“Mucka Blucka”, “Haiku”, “Banana Man”)

• “Weird Al” Yankovic

• Tenacious D (“The Metal”)

• Smothers Brothers

• Jim Stafford

• Ray Stevens

• Bo Burnham (“White Woman’s Instagram”)

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Other things I do to make me laugh:

• Watch cat videos on YouTube (less cringy for me than fail videos, but fail videos can do the trick too)

• Watch Saturday Night Live - especially the Weekend Update segments

• Send “dad jokes” to a certain friend who loves them too

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Do you have go-to things to make you laugh? What are your funny songs? I’d love to add to my repertoire!!! Please share!!!