Why Does He Only Text On Holidays Part 4: Cue the Rerun, Thanksgiving Day Edition
If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am now. – Clark Griswold, National Lampoons Christmas Vacation
I’m not sure what time this meme was sent, I guess it was around 7:44 am. At least that’s what it says on my text messages. Yes, here we go again.
Welcome to the rerun season of “Why does he only text on holidays” Thanksgiving Edition.
Perhaps I brought this all onto myself by binging on TikTok’s again until that one gal pops up telling you to “stop scrolling” and “take a break!” Of course, I never listen. That is until I scrolled onto another TikTok’er talking about the avoidant men who only text on holidays.
Here we go again
And yes, we’ve now entered the official “pumpkin spice everything” holiday season with Thanksgiving. Or did it all start during Halloween while I was sucked into a torrential tornado of other people’s insanity that resembled a cross between Alison in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz. Only the characters invading my world were way more chaotic with true mental health problems. ( A blog post for another day or perhaps it’s all part of another screenplay or Netflix dramady.)
The last time I spoke to my “Why does he only text on holidays “ guy was on Halloween. I guess that’s where this portion of the story starts.
We chatted on the phone. He was driving down PCH in Malibu in his car probably in a “theta wave” state of mind where you’re literally driving on autopilot. I hate talking to people on the phone who are driving or doing anything else for this reason. They are not present in your conversation but floating away somewhere else in highway hypnosis, not really paying attention while their subconscious takes the wheel.
In our conversation he seemed covertly angry and not so happy with the latest transgressions in his life. Ouch! Anger can really fuck up your liver big time if you don’t release it in a healthy way. However, we are the writers of our personal screenplay.
Who is writing the script?
“You’re right. This narrator might very well kill you. So, I humbly suggest you forget all this and go live your life.”
The above quote comes from the movie Stranger Than Fiction,” when the protagonist Harold Crump starts hearing a woman’s voice in his head narrating his life and saying that she’s going to bring him to an “imminent death.”
Harold goes to speak to a Professor of literature to try and solve the problem. The Professor encourages Harold to go live his life because it seems that thus far, he had been living in a state of highway hypnosis. Creating his life unconsciously.
“I’ve worked so hard.”
Last year at this time, I spent the thanksgiving holiday with my 90 year old father in a hospital room while he recovered from hip surgery after falling off his scooter. My mom, his current wife was not allowed to visit him. He blamed her for falling off his scooter because at their senior center, my mom was talking to another man. My dad got annoyed because my mother loves to be social and start random conversations with just about anyone who crosses her path.
While she stopped to talk to this other man, my mother was blocking the path to the entrance of the senior center. My dad got angry and decided rev up his scooter and speed around both of them hitting a speed bump knocking him off his scooter breaking his hip.
“I’ve worked so hard my whole life” my father grumbled as I helped him off the commode in his hospital room.
“Everybody works hard” I corrected him which knocked him out of his “highway hypnosis.”
At that moment he paused and said nothing. He must of heard Frank Sinatra singing in his head “ And now, the end is near. And so I face the final curtain.” because just a few months later, after telling the PA “All my friends are dead,” on his last post op hip surgery appointment, he decided to take his final bow in his living room.
“You never want to be the one doing CPR on a family member .”
That’s what they always say in CPR class. I’ve been hearing this statement for the past 30 years and now here I was, just a little after midnight the day after St. Joseph’s day, doing CPR on my 90 year old father while my brother yelled out “call 911” and “start CPR” like he was the physician in charge of running the code blue.
I was staying at my parent’s house celebrating St. Joseph’s day, one of my dad’s favorite holidays since his name was “Joe”. I was asleep and having a strange dream where I was sitting at a kitchen counter with the “guy who only texts on holidays.” He was cooking me dinner and chopping up some type of food with a butcher knife. I was looking up at him. The dream seemed distorted like I was smaller. Then I saw a few more men that looked similar to him rushing in. That’s when I woke up and went to check on my father who I found in distress after getting up to the commode after possibly having a vasovagal response which threw him into a stroke ending in a cardiac arrest.
His ribs started to crack as I applied pressure to his chest trying to pump blood through his heart as I started chest compressions after calling 911. “Don’t crack the ribs. That’s always a bad sign!” echoed in my head once again through the numerous CPR and Advanced Life Support classes I had taken over the years.
Then the paramedics rushed in. At least seven of them all tall and bearded looking down on me as I continued CPR. “It’s not a good sign when you walk in the door and someone is doing CPR” bellowed one of the tall bearded paramedics wearing yellow slicker like pant overalls over a blue uniform. It must have been a slow night for so many paramedics to be there all at one time. I think the battalion chief joined them as well. It was definitely a surreal moment since it felt like these guys had exited my dream and entered into my parents living room on cue.
What does this all mean?
Many people live their lives unconsciously driving through the highway of life. Living the same drama day in and day out. Living in loveless marriages riddled in abuse thinking it’s normal because that’s what they experienced growing up. Which leads to boring jobs with tyrannical bosses and coworkers who are bullies.
They don’t know what they’re doing until they start hearing a voice in their head that forces them to wake up because they aren’t living their lives in “their way,” but in a sort of weird trance placed on them by society or by some deranged psychic who told them that this was how they were supposed to end up.
So, ask yourself, who is writing your script? Who is making the holiday texter only text on holidays? And how do we ‘stop the insanity?’
It’s all about the RAS
It’s that part of your brain, the reticular activating system ( RAS) a network of neurons located at the bottom of your brainstem that act as a “gate keeper” for sensory information filtering stimuli to highlight what’s important.
The RAS also regulates consciousness and sleep wake cycles. It regulates your heart rate and respirations. It’s also responsible for regulating motivation and goal achievement.
This is where sensory processing is modulated. The RAS acts like a gate keeper. A sort of “Gollum” guarding what comes into a persons mind. Much like “Gollum” from the Hobbit guarding the ring in a dark cave or the gollum’s from Jewish lore, who guard a village from intruders, the RAS filters out what it thinks is not important.
Basically, in regard to these so called avoidant men only texting on holidays, they are not to be blamed for they don’t even understand what is going on with their RAS or why it’s only making them text you on holidays.
Because you are seen as dangerous. You don’t fit the script that they are use to. For example, maybe they are use to chaos. You’re not chaotic. You instead are funny and kinda quirky. The RAS sees you as a threat since you don’t fit the usual script. So the RAS literally “filters you out” and much like the narrator in Stranger Than Fiction, writes you out of the script deeming you invisible until the holidays come around because that’s when he’s programmed to send you a holiday meme wishing you a happy holiday season.
Trophies, Those Chicks On Only Fans & My Social Experiment
A few weeks ago I was coaching a guy who kept saying he was ready to get married. He’s got a successful business, he’s a homeowner, and not a bad looking dude. So I started to coach him. One of the things I noticed about him was that he kept taking his dates to his country club for brunch which would then end up in a Netflix and chill situation. I told him to stop doing that.
I introduced the guy to a few women who I felt were a good match. I coached the women not to accept his invitation to a “country club brunch.” During our coaching sessions the guy shared with me his frustrations with the females I had connected him with. It seems that he would start texting them and as soon as he invited them to the country club, they immediately declined.
I did tell him to text them again and ask them to do some type of activity like a bike ride, dancing or tram ride up to the mountains since we live in the desert. Well, he took my advice of texting them again but failed because he once again asked them to have brunch at his country club.
You see, his RAS was stuck on a loop.
One day he told me he was taking a new girl he’d met at a Halloween party to an EDM concert. He showed me her picture where she was wearing a “wench” Halloween costume with a thong exposing her buttocks.
“Do you want her to be the mother of your children?” I asked.
“She use to do ‘Only Fans,’ and she bought a candy shop in town. “ he replied.
The guy started telling me how chaotic this woman was. He had a coffee date with her where she brought her adopted daughter. He told me that she was pulling on his heart strings. I told him it was “manipulation “ at its finest. I wasn’t surprised because his RAS, much like Pavlov’s dog was conditioned to salivate, was conditioned for chaos. He agreed with and said “I love the drama.”
After the EDM concert, the guy took his date to his “country club” followed by a Netflix and chill evening. He uncensored himself and told me about the sex and said it was “just ok!” After he told his date he wanted something serious and was looking to get married The Only Fans girl told him to not call her until she decided to call him.
The guy started doing something else his RAS had conditioned him to do. He started to call me every time he got nominated for an award or someone asked him to speak at an event. At first, I was happy for him, but then I started to notice an unhealthy pattern.
He started to call me at the same time everyday, 3:30pm. It’s at the end of his work day when he needs a little extra dopamine and motivation to finish his day. Since I felt my social experiment was complete and I wasn’t getting paid for the coaching, I decided to abort the mission and stop answering his calls coming in at 3:30pm everyday. He still tried to get my attention by DMing me and following my IG stories on all my platforms.
Sinatra’s Wisdom
At one of Frank Sinatra’s concerts, he says that he’s going to sing his national anthem and starts to sing “My Way.” The song ends with the following lyrics:
“ For what is a man? What has he got? If not himself, he is naught. To say the things he truly feels. And not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows. And did it my way!
But are the majority of men really living their lives their own way? Or are they living someone else’s programming? Are they letting their RAS control them? Are they not seeing opportunities and situations in front of them that could better their lives because they are not “programmed” or conditioned to see them?
These are the guys who are proverbially stuck in that holiday text loop. These are the men who continue to see women as objects and not as human. These are the men who have turned into automatons ie Gollums guarding their rings in their caves until they are gross and decrepit. These are the men who wake up one day in a hospital room at 90 wondering what they’ve done with their lives.
Don’t be that guy! Dump the tesseract. Exit the loop and live your life like Sinatra only “your way!”
notoriouslysinglegirl 
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