[HOLIDAY PARTY!] MARCH 9TH 2021 – NATIONAL GET OVER IT DAY with Amy Cowan

HAPPY NATIONAL GET OVER IT DAY! Join us as we celebrate moving on with your life or callously telling people to shut up about their problems! Today we’re partying with someone who was really disconcerted when we told her what the topic was, Amy Cowan (AmyACowan.com)!! LET’S PARTY!!

Show Notes

Activities to Celebrate

Playlist

Sources

Visit HOLIDAY PARTY! with Disa & Alyssa’s main page

Show Notes

back to the top

Definition/history of the topic

  • According to…idioms.thefreedictionary.com, “get over it” means to move on and accept things the way they are; to stop being concerned by or with something that is in the past or can’t be changed. Often used as an imperative.
  • More broadly, “get over” can refer 
    • To recover or heal from some physical or mental ailment.
    • to accept, feel better about, move on from, or come to terms with something, especially that which has already been established or has happened in the past.
    • To overcome or find the solution to a problem, obstacle, or difficulty.
    • To no longer feel heartbroken over or lovesick for someone.
    • In rugby, to pass the opponent’s goal line and touch the ball to the ground in order to score a try.
  • Some examples sentences, courtesy of theidioms.com:
    • I know you are bitter about losing that job, but try to get over it and find another one
    • He was depressed after his girlfriend broke up with him, but with a lot of support from his friends, he tried to get over it and move on
    • Why do you keep coming back to something that happened years ago? Get over it, you cannot change what has happened
    • Get over it, you are doing yourself no good by worrying over what you cannot change
    • Instead of thinking about why you lost the last game, why don’t you get over it and focus on winning the next one?
  • Urban Dictionary’s top response by PepsiMonday on December 18, 2010 with 333 thumbs up and 81 thumbs down gives us the following clarification:
    • “Most people think the phrase “get over it” means to “forget about it”.” If I were to forget about something in life then I would bash my head wide open with a big glass of bottle wine to erase my memory so that way I can’t look back. When we say “get over it” we are saying “don’t let the past ruin your” or “stop living in the past and stick with the current event.”
    • And then gives the following example:
      • Friend: My ancestors were the victims of the holocaust
      • Me: That was the past, get over it
      • Friend: But I don’t wanna forget about it
      • Me: No, I meant don’t let the past screw up your life
  • According to the Dictionary of Cliches by Christine Ammer, it means “to forget your loss or disappointment, move on. A slangy imperative similar to get a life, its use dates from about 1990…It is derived from the idiom “to get over something,” meaning to recover from an illness or to overcome or surmount something which date from the late 1600s.”
  • However, gingersoftware.com advises that “get over it” is actually attested to the use of the word “over” as a late 14th century (1300s) meaning for “recover from.”
    • The term is first seen in alliteration in John Behervaise’s “Thirty-six Years of Seafaring Life”, published in 1839 in reference to an amputation
    • The quote is “Such was his state that no one supposed he could ever get over it.”
    • It’s generally agreed that the single, standalone sentence gained widespread prevalence in the early 1990s in the US.
  • National Today offers an interesting timeline of people who either struggled to get over some shit
    • 40-50 BC, Marc Antony leaves his wife, Octavia, and civil war begins in Rome that ends with Mark defeated and the first Emperor of Rome, Augustus, on the throne
      • This lead to the Pax Romana, during which the Roman world was largely free of conflict for about 200 years
    • May 19, 1436, when church law prohibits Henry VIII from divorcing Anne Boleyn, whom he was no longer in love with, he beheads her rather than just changing the law and divorcing her, which he later went on to do anyway and is how the Protestant church got its start
    • In 1837, Lincoln breaks up with Mary Owens and moves to Springfield, Illinois
      • We all know where this goes. Civil War and assassination
    • Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck divorce in 2015 after 10 years of marriage. This leads to nothing of consequence. Yet
    • And in 2016, Brangelina split and are still engaged in a nasty divorce and custody battle to this day
  • I have five fun facts and tips about getting over it, also courtesy of National Today, and supplemented by hackspirit.com
    • Exercise will help you get over it
      • In multiple studies, exercise (especially if done regularly) has been proven to alleviate anxiety, improve overall mood, and dissolve stress.
    • Time heals all
      • According to psychologists, the best way to get over something is by allowing yourself to feel emotions and letting time pass.
      • It’s important to remember that there is no set timing for when you get over something or someone
    • Don’t think of the ‘white bear’
      • This psychological concept applies to those who are trying to “just get over” something by pushing it from their mind — more often than not, it’ll just pop back up, like when someone tells you not to think of a white bear and then you inevitably do.
      • Basically, face your negative feelings and accept that you’re feeling them
      • Research suggests that emotional stress, like that from blocked emotions, can be linked to not just mental illness, but headaches, heart disease, insomnia, and eating disorders
      • Accordinging to Buddhist Master Pema Chodron, “feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teach, and luck for us, it’s with us where we are.”
      • But just how to face your feelings? Here is a 4 step process
        • Identify the emotion. If you have more than one, pick one
        • Give it some space, imagine that emotion five feet in front of you and observe it
        • Close your eyes and answer the following questions: If your emotion had a size, what size would it be? What shape would it be? What color would it be?
          • Then imagine putting the emotion out in front of you with the size, shape, and color. Just observe and acknowledge it for what it is. When you’re ready, you can let the emotion return to its original place inside you
        • Reflection. Once you’ve completed the exercise, take a moment to reflect on what you’ve noticed. Was there a change in your emotion when you got a little distance from it? Did it feel different in some way once the exercise was finished?
    • A relationship can be like an addiction
      • If the thing you’re struggling to get over is an ex, remind yourself it’s okay that it’s hard — neurobiologically, a breakup and the end of a drug dependence look very similar.
      • We experience a dopamine spike when we develop romantic feelings for a person that is akin to taking drugs like narcotics, and your brain is trained to chase that high regardless of the possible consequences
      • Additionally, the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that puts you on high-alert when you feel like you may be in danger, may associate romantic feelings with incoming pain if you experience a bad break-up
      • This can lead to a cycle that makes it even harder to forget and move on, because getting attached to someone leads to a dopamine spike, but also the possible trigger of the amygdala telling you to run
      • You can also ask yourself the following question to look at the relationship objectively
        • Were you really happy 100% of the time?
        • Did the relationship hinder your life in any way?
        • Were you happy before the relationship?
        • What annoyed you most about your partner?
    • Not being able to get over it is ancient history
      • History is dotted with petty feuds that no one got over, and ended with horrible consequences, like Aaron Burr v.s. Alexander Hamilton, Al Capone v.s. Bugsy Moran, and even the Montagues v.s. the Capulets.
  • There is also a video game called Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. It’s a 2017 platformer game about a shirtless man named Diogenes, who resides in a cauldron and climbs a mountain with a hammer, with the goal of the game being to reach the top of the mountain
    • According to “The Quiet Meditation of Getting Over it”, an article from maxlaumeister.com, the game has a reputation for being highly skill-based, disdainfully unforgiving, and generally unpleasant to play
    • According to the developer, Bennett Foddy, some of the reasons you would want to play this game include
      • Between 2 and infinity hours of agonizing gameplay. The median to finish for the author’s playtesters was 5 hours, but the mean was closer to infinity
      • Lose all your progress, over and over
      • Feel new types of frustration you didn’t know you were capable of 
    • Bennett says he created this game “for a certain kind of person – to hurt them”
    • Helpfully, Max Laumeister included a 6 minute supercut of Twitch rages when people lose all of their progress
    • When someone loses their progress, Foddy narrates a philosophical platitude over a placid jazz arrangement. Examples include:
      • You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it, will make you less miserable now
      • Whenever I climb, I’m followed by a dog called “Ego”.
      • Something filled my heart with nothing, someone told me not to cry. Now that I’m older, my heart’s colder, I can see that it’s a lie
      • Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt
      • To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering
      • The soul would have no rainbow, had the eyes no tears
      • Patience is the foundation of eternal peace. Make anger your enemy. Harm comes to those who know only victory and do not know defeat. Find fault with yourself and not with others. It is in falling short of your own goals that you will surpass those who exceed theirs.
      • Don’t hate the player, hate the game 
    • As Laumeister puts it, “if a player loses progress, that often leads to frustration, frustration leads to carelessness, and carelessness leads to further loss of progress. Success in the game is to break that cycle, to maintain a patient climbing cadence, to not climb carelessly in trying to hastily make up for loss.”
      • The meditation, for a successful player, can be found in climbing “with the acceptance that the work may have been for naught. The more effectively one can deal with loss, the more quickly one can return to a calm and effective mental state.”
      • Laumeister goes on to say that for him, falling in the game is somewhat cathartic, giving him pause to breathe in, reflect on the progress lost, exercise emotional control, and plan for how to mitigate risk on the next try. The game provides a safe space to practice processing emotional loss
    • A quote about the game from Luc Lloyd offers this analogy: “Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy feels like an allegory for depression. A huge, chaotic mountain of trash: obtuse and difficult to climb. Any slight setback can send you spiraling all the way to step one. Then it feels like you’ve lost everything.
      • “Sometimes you fall to the foot of the mountain, both in the game, and in regards to depression. ANd when you do, you feel like you’ve lost all that progress. You’re back at step one, and it’s all undone. But that’s not quite true. Because there is one thing you keep, and that’s your experiences. You climb the mountain again, and it’s a little easier this time. And you might fall, or you might not. But what’s important is, you tried. And you learned. And you’re going to do better next time.”
  • The photo Alyssa sent to the chat:

History/Fun facts about the holiday

  • National Get Over It Day was created by Jeff Goldblatt in 2005 as motivation to get over an ex.
    • Goldblatt, an entrepreneur from Atlanta, strategically positioned the holiday in between Valentine’s Day and April Fools 
    • He apparently realized his plight was relatable, so he made a website and posted a poem, entitled “The GetOverItDaycom Purpose & Perspective Poem”, and it goes like this:
      • Regardless of age, of race, or of gender
      • If you’re tall or short, if you’re heavy or slender
      • If you’re married or single; gay, straight, or bi
      • This day is for YOU, and we’ll now explain why:
      • We ALL have our issues; ALL lives contain stress
      • At some point, we’re ALL an emotional mess
      • Ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, ex-husbands, ex-wives
      • There are people to get over, ALL of our lives
      • But as much as things SUCK, as bad as they get
      • If you got cheated on, if you’re broke or in debt
      • Flunked a test? Lost a job? Got a nasty cold sore?
      • Don’t EVER forget: IT COULD ALWAYS SUCK MORE!
      • It’s ALL part of life; it will help you grow stronger
      • But this “pity party” of yours, can’t last any longer
      • Make TODAY the day, that you finally say:
      • “Screw that! It’s done! It’s GET OVER IT DAY!”
    • Jeff also created a YouTube video with an expanded version of the poem, interspersed with some whiny music and overlayed over a ton of stock photos of sad people, mimes, and bears fucking
      • It’s 2 minutes, 40 seconds long, and has been viewed about 9300 times since it was posted on March 29, 2006, which the getoveritday.com web page informs us was just 12 days before Twitter was launched
        • I fact checked this, and that’s bullshit. Twitter was founded on March 21, 2006, and the first prototype wasn’t introduced to the public until July 16, 2006.
      • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIiZOeVbW4M&feature=youtu.be
    • The page goes on to clarify: “Regardless of what your ”it” may be, you obviously don’t NEED a specific day (or this poorly-designed website!) to “GET OVER IT!” However…. We can be thankful when it’s not Thanksgiving. We can be romantic when it’s not Valentine’s Day. (And we should appreciate mothers and fathers more than 2 days a year!) But, for some reason, it’s often just easier (to remember? To commit and actually DO something?) with the help of a specific day, particularly if friends, news outlets, or social media are discussing it!”
    • The page also includes a list of “Get Over It” songs, but fuck that, my mixtape is better

Activities to celebrate

back to the top

  • Use hashtags #NationalGetOverItDay and #GetOverItDay on social media
  • Femalefirst.co.uk offers a list of 10 activities 
    • Write a list of things that really hack you off. Go through each one and then ball the piece of paper up and throw it away. This can be a visual representation of your decision to not let this stuff get you down anymore
    • Look at the things you can change. Make another list, then write down step by step what you need to do to make the changes happen. If you have small manageable tasks, you are more likely to have the time and inclination to achieve each one before moving onto the next.
    • Make contact with someone you’ve not seen in a while. You’ll be distracted from the things that upset you while making new happier memories
    • Help someone less fortunate than you or volunteer for a cause. You will be able to put your circumstances into perspective
    • Find a way to destress, such as a spa day, getting exercise or a massage. Whatever has worked for you in the past, let it help you again
    • Seek professional help
    • Ask yourself what you really want to do, whether that is forging a new career, starting a new hobby, or seeking out a new relationship. Write down the reasons to do it as well as the ones not to. If there are more positives than negatives, write down a plan for how you’ll achieve it
    • Forget about what others are doing. Detox from social media if scrolling through it makes you feel worse
    • Think of the most laid-back person in your life, pay them a visit, and ask them how they got that way, then take a leaf from their book
    • Think of your life like a holiday (vacation for us plebs). Life is too short to carry around all of that baggage. Drop the bag on your bed, unpack it, and enjoy the stay
  • Watch “Get Over It”, the 2001 American teen comedy film that has an approval rating of 44% on Rotten Tomatoes
    • Starring Kirsten Dunst, Ben Foster, Shane West, Colin Hanks, Martin Short, Zoe Saldana, Mila Kunis, Swoosie Kurts, Ed Begley Jr., Carmen Electra, and SISQO!!, the movie is about a high school senior who desperately tries to win his ex-girlfriend back by joining the school play she and her new boyfriend are performing in. 
    • The movie is loosely based on a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the play in question is called A Midsummer Night’s Rockin’ Eve.
    • It grossed 19 million against a 22 million budget 
    • Hopefully the cast and crew were able to use Get Over It Day to get over it
  • Play Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
  • Print and sign Jeff Goldblatt’s Declaration of Intent 
  • Goldblatt unofficially recommends to shred or burn your ex’s shit, but specifies that you should do it of your own volition only because they are not legally allowed to recommend burning anything
  • Goldblatt conveniently included a 55 second audio clip telling us all to shut the fuck up and keep some perspective about our problems
  • There’s also some merch, in case anyone is in need of some wristbands that say either “get over it” or “it could always suck more”; some get out of hell free business cards; “it could always suck more t-shirts; or “perspective pennies” that are punched out with either a heart, a smiley face, or a 4 leaf clover
  • Go against the grain! Cast a spell to win the love of a woman who does not want you. Thread a needle with her hair, and run it through the fleshiest limb of a dead man
    • To win a love who rejects you, make a wax doll, in his or her name or image, then roast it over the first. As the max melts, so will the heart of the loved one
    • Or destroy the lover of another for you! Burn the person’s nails, hair, blood, worn clothing, or saliva (which may be on partially consumed food). Give him who loves you a knife or other sharp, cutting object. (If you do this unintentionally to one you love, he or she must give you a penny or other small object to break the spell.”
    • Free yourself from a love spell. To procure the dissolving of bewitched and constrained love, the party bewitched must make a jakes (toilet) of the lover’s shoe. Boil cedar leaves in water, then wet your foot or hand with the liquid and kick or strike the person who cast the spell. “If so be a toad laid/ In a sheep-skin newly flaid/ And that tyd to man, ‘twil sever/ Him and his affections ever”
    • Bring back an unfaithful lover by throwing dragon’s blood wrapped in paper into the fire saying: “May he no pleasure or profit see, Till he come back to me”
    • And finally, for one who has been infatuated by illicit love to a female:
      • The person must put a pair of shoes on and walk therein until his feet perspire, but must walk fast so that the feet do not smell badly; then take off the right shoe, drink some beer or wine out of this shoe, and he will from that moment  lose all affection for her.
      • Or if any woman hath enchanted thee to love her, take the gown she sleepeth in out of doors and spit through the right sleeve thereof, when the enchantment will be quitted.
    • All spells courtesy of The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft by Kathryn Paulsen, 1970 edition. Which I was introduced to via Reddit

Playlist

back to the top

Sources

back to the top

Leave a comment