📝 Practice: How to slow down and find your feet when things feel out of control
Step one: turn off your goddamn push notifications!!
I’ve been going to the library to write.
My house is quiet and my office is beautiful and I have the right snacks, but I’ve been going to the library to write.
I don’t really know why.
I’ve gone to coffee shops and book stores and co-working spaces but it’s not the same — I’m always a guest.
In the library I’m home.
It’s not because I love books that much or because I need to access the printer or the free wifi or the clean bathrooms or water fountains or air conditioning or all of the other things that make our libraries such an important part of our communal ecosystem — it’s because the library is one of the last places where belonging isn’t for sale.
I belong in the library because I live in the community served by the library. Because my neighbors and I, though some very complex (and probably inefficient) system have agreed that part of our money should go towards creating, maintaining and expanding our access to knowledge. No muffin purchase required.
The gentleman with an intellectual disability who comes every day to sit in the purple chair next to the big windows — he belongs because he likes to enjoy the view. The girls in the back of the stacks belong because they need a place to study, even though they’ve spent more time stealing kisses than exchanging notes. The grandmother, run ragged by her 4-year-old granddaughter in the blue checked dress, they belong because they are learning just as much playing in the shadows on the sun-white steps as they were at the read along this morning in the children’s section.
We’re equals in the library. You can’t get a better table or more books because you’ve got more money or status or power or education. There’s no game to win, no one to impress. Just a bunch of people sitting together quietly affirming that we can build incredible things when we do it together.
I came to the library today because the headlines have left me breathless. I’ve managed to turn my home into a temple of personal convenience but what I need right now doesn’t come with two-day shipping.
What I need now is to feel like I’m not alone.
That we’re not alone.
That we aren’t our worst moments. That competing to see who can be the most rich and important and powerful may have come to look like a law of nature but history shows us it’s just a trend.
I keep trying to work out when and where the ground will get solid again — when I can start to think further out than a few months at a time. When things will shift back into gear and feel normal again.
But y’all, this is it … this is the new gear.
The psychic ground we’ve covered in the last 8 years has changed us in ways we will never fully understand and the work of this moment isn’t to try and hold tight to whatever version of the past we’re most nostalgic for, but to look around and decide what kind of impossible future we want to invent.
Right now the biggest decision I can handle is whether to keep standing vacantly in the kitchen eating my kid’s leftover peanut butter and jelly sandwich or drag myself upstairs for a shower, but at some point the fog will clear and it will be time to get back to life.
I hope you’ll be there with me. No matter where we go from here, the only thing I’m sure of is we need each other to get there.
xoxo
M
📝 Practice: How to slow down and find your feet when things feel out of control
My favorite pass time when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the news is to READ MORE NEWS! Every day after Trump was elected, I would wake up and in the time and space that used to be for drinking a quick coffee and getting to the yoga studio, I found myself getting a quick coffee and landing paralyzed on my couch, hoping that my little black box would explain what was happening and what I should do.
You can just imagine how well that worked. So today, I’m sending you my personal list of how I stay sane when the world is on fire.
📵 Take a break from the news and social media for a couple of days (and turn off your goddamn push notifications.)
No one knows nothing about nothing right now. Everyone is in a frenzy, feeding each other’s egos (and views and clicks) with a lot of posturing and hand-wringing. Engaging in it will not make you feel better — in fact, it has been proven to make you feel worse.1
Over the last two decades, headline frequency and design have shifted — we hear about bad news more often from more people (reporters, influencers, brands) and with more incendiary language to drive clicks. Mental health professionals have been reporting an increase in patients suffering from stress disorders from over-consumption since 2016.
I’m not saying stick your head in the sand — I’m saying be intentional. Find news outlets that report with less outrage (my therapist recommends PBS News Hour!). Take breaks. Turn off your push notifications.
💃🏾 Move your body and make it fun
Did you know that a new study finds that dancing, over all forms of exercise, is the most effective exercise for treating depression? (Not me telling you to go back and do those dance workouts with La Shawn…)
But seriously — back in 2016, my workouts were the first thing to be sacrificed to my fear and anxiety. Find an exercise you WANT to do — going for a hike or a long walk or rollerblading with your friends and schedule it in your calendar. It’s really important that you find it fun — otherwise it will just become another obligation to fulfill.
🤲🏽 Find ways to serve your local community
Find a community garden, volunteer at your local library or senior center. Helping out in a small, localized way increases our feelings of efficacy and self-determination and helps us feel connected to the places we call home.
There’s even this thing called helper’s high — scientific evidence of the improved health, happiness and longevity we get from acts of generosity and selflessness.2
You can look up local volunteer opportunities on Volunteer Match or with your local Mutual Aid organization … or just go down to your local library, there are always things to sign up for!
I love y’all. Truly, I am so grateful for you and this community we have together. Leave your ideas for how to stay sane in the comments!
ICYMI
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30424992/#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20the%20%22helper's,associated%20with%20this%20psychological%20state.
Love this. I deleted social media from my phone, then Apple News filled that panic vacuum. We can't win on these devices!
My new daily practice is a Hot Mess Walk. Similar to the TikTokkian "Hot Girl Walk," but it's for middle-aged moms freaking out about the end of American democracy to look up and say, "Hey, at least we have trees."
Been looking at so many trees lately...
I'm so lucky to have a beautiful library in my community - right across the street! I'm thinking of making that (and the local parks) my “third space” because literally where else can you go to just exist.