January 8, 2026 – I’ve been shaking my head for a few years now. Today I did something about it.

Texters use the initials SMH to stand for shaking my head. SMH indicates disbelief, frustration, or disapproval—something that can happen on an hourly basis in today’s political climate.

My head shake is different. My head shake is called cervical dystonia. When I Google it, it sounds awful and painful. Mine must be minor. It causes my head to tilt slightly and shake at random times. The tilting is slight enough that it doesn’t bother me at all. I notice it if I’m in a Teams or Zoom meeting. I don’t notice it in real life.

The tremor is noticeable IRL, especially if I’m sitting in a chair that has a little spring to it. Then my whole body resonated with the shake. It’s annoying.

None of this is life threatening. Just a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.

I also have a hand tremor called essential tremor, which half my family has. I’ve been taking pills for it for a couple years. The pills suppress the hand tremor, but not the head. That’s why I have separate diagnoses for my hands and my head.

I told my sister about the head shake last year. She said that she thought I was just agreeing with whatever she said. I probably was, but that’s not why my head was shaking.

At that time, I was still in the process of testing to see whether the pills would work. In the meantime, I thought my sister’s interpretation was hilarious. And I came up with another interpretation of my own. My tremor was to keep time to a song playing in my mind—a response to an ear worm.

SMH.

The next treatment for cervical dystonia, after the pills, is Botox injections. This is the same stuff that celebs use to iron out the wrinkles in their faces. Apparently Botox somehow reduces the shakiness in neck muscles (sorry for the non-technical description).

I got my first injections today—in my neck. Hopefully, the effect will kick in next week or so and I’ll be good for a couple months thereafter. If not, they’ll up the dose at three-month intervals until it either works or I max out.

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Regardless of how these injections work out, I’m not sure that they will have any effect on the other type of SMH. And I’m not sure that I would want that. I SMH because I still have a sense that things going on in the world are not right and are often astonishingly not right. It’s upsetting, of course, and I’ve given up some of the click-bait that causes distress as a New Years’ resolution. But I still keep up with what’s going on precisely so I can shake my head in disbelief, frustration, or disapproval—and maybe contribute to fixing the problems, thus making the world a better place.

I have noticed, however, that a lot of the people who enable our awful politics are obviously Botoxed.

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