Archive: Do you have anything that's just for you?
Hi friends,
I began April with a minor car accident. Literally—it was about 12:04 am on April 1 when some idiot in a Tesla ran me off the road (and then kept driving). Luckily I was fine, though my car needed repairs. The very next day, I spilled an entire bottle of water in the leather purse my laptop was sitting in, and didn’t notice for almost a full minute. Laptops, as I’m sure you know, are not meant to marinate in water. Between you and me, it kind of felt like I was being pranked by the universe. Like any cruel April Fool’s Day prank, I was not laughing along.
Those things ended up getting fixed. Fixing my car put me back about $500, and when the water spilled I did everything right so that my laptop suffered no permanent damage. Despite that old adage about bad things coming in threes, nothing else big and bad happened in April. And yet I still crossed the finish line into May feeling distinctly like I was limping and out of bullets. (I just finished binging Agent Carter and am now catching up on Archer, so analogies might get a little spy-themed around here today.)
Because despite nothing else “big and bad” happening, April never really let me get back up on my feet. The middle of the month was full of stressful travel and I ended the month with a week of the flu followed by a few days of pretty serious-feeling depression. I was busy all month too: Busy planning a surprise proposal and engagement party for my best friend (that finally happened on Sunday!); Busy telling people about my idea for the bookstore/cafe I'm working to open, Diogenes Club Books; Busy seeing my friends and going to movies and learning boxing and taking meetings and writing articles. April was very full, and even though a lot of that was exciting and fun, those same things were also stressful and tiring. By the end of the month, I found myself on the verge of tears about 25% of the time.
It didn’t feel like depression, though. Depression always leaves my emotions, well, depressed. I don't feel little moments of happiness and excitement; even stress and anxiety get muted under a dark cloud of nothing when I’m depressed. But I was definitely feeling a ton of excitement and was often very anxious. This was not depression.
I didn't know what was wrong until I was left feeling so frustrated in my car that I just started mindlessly ranting to the empty space as I tried to get home: I felt like I hadn’t done anything for myself in a really long time.
"Haven’t done anything for myself?" I repeated to myself incredulously. I had taken care of myself when I got sick! Telling people about my bookstore, isn’t that inherently for me? Going to the movies has to be for me. Learning boxing is definitely for me!
So why did I feel like I hadn't done anything for myself? For ages?
That's what I wanted to write about today, nearly month after the last time I wrote you all from Boston. Let's talk really quickly about what it means to do stuff for yourself in the modern age of social media and constant connectivity.
As always, if you want to respond, just hit reply! Your message will get to me (and only me). If you like this and think your friends might too, feel free to forward it on.
xx,
Valorie
As a general rule, I'm decently okay about not doing things because I feel societally obligated to do them--I didn't get married straight out of high school or college, for instance, even though those would have been normal and even expected where I grew up. Any activities or traditions or whatever that I partake in, I do because I want to and/or see the purpose and value in for myself.
I write these letters because I want to.
I helped plan a friend's proposal because I wanted to.
I did interviews for articles I haven't been commissioned to write yet because I see the value in having a lot of information before pitching.
I went to Boston because I wanted to see my friends and I saw the value in networking at the big specialty coffee industry expo for my bookstore.
I could go on, but I think you all get the point. Everything I did in April (and the first week of May), I did because I wanted to. All the writing and the travel and the exercise and going to the Renaissance Faire and seeing Avengers: Endgame and helping my friend ring shop and planning the celebration lunch and sending 1000 emails... I did all of that and more because I wanted to. It was exhausting, and all of it was for me.
But almost none of it was for me alone.
All of those things were for someone else, or in service of something else. It wasn’t until I was really struggling last week that I realized that all of those things had an element of pouring out my energy or pouring into other people. Even the things that on the face look completely "for me" didn't feel that way because I was doing a lot of work to make them happen. And maybe finding a time for five people to go to the Renaissance Faire (for instance) doesn't sound like work, but having to plan and communicate and think about one more thing on top of everything else was surprisingly tiring.
And to be perfectly clear: that it involved difficulty doesn't take away from the fact that it was fun! We had a blast! We saw silly performances and lusted after dreamy Medieval costumes and ate ridiculous faire food! It was wonderful! I do not regret going one iota, and wish we could have gone again before the faire finished their run this year.
But of all the amazing things I did in April very little of them fed me spiritually/emotionally. (I did eat plenty.) If you think of "life balance" as being the right ratio of pouring energy out and having energy poured back into you (which is starting to be my working definition) then my life was wildly out of balance. Everything was going out and very little was coming in; by the end of last week, I was trying to pour out from a nearly bone-dry cup. I loved doing all those things, but I didn't notice that they weren't feeding me until it was too late
And that's what makes balance hard for me: I take on more and more because it sounds fun and it's what I want to do, and I forget about the fact that my little introverted heart doesn't find rest at a loud and dirty festival, even if I'm going on a Saturday with people I love.
What surprised me about this realization is that I didn't know that some of it wasn't feeding me. I love movies, so I would think an easy trip to the movies to see Avengers: Endgame would be a classic example of consuming art, being fed by art. But it was both an emotionally draining movie and I spent a lot of it half-consciously noting things to talk/write about later. I didn't end up writing a single word about Endgame on my Tumblr that is (supposedly) about tv and film, but only because I felt like I didn't have anything original to say. It certainly wasn't for lack of trying.
When I caught myself doing this, I realized that I do this in almost every aspect of my life. I thought reading books is just for me, but when I'm reading I'm always in the mode of examining, of noting things I want to write about later. I adopted that mentality in grad school, and now I channel it into writing book reviews. The truth is that I like writing book reviews on Goodreads, but they don't feel entirely for me.
Last week, it dawned on me how much of what I do is for other people's consumption. Even the things that I think are just for me aren't.
When I take away all the things I do that are “for me” but are also for other people—things like writing, which means everything I do that feeds writing: reading and watching movies and traveling, etc—I have almost nothing in my life that’s just for me. I have nearly nothing that I don’t share with other people.
Which is insane. It’s truly wild.
And when I look at a calendar, this isn’t only an April 2019 problem. This is a truly-when-the-fuck-did-I-last-have-a-day-when-I-didn’t-do-something-that-was-with-or-somehow-“for”-someone-else problem. The age of social media and instant connectivity means that for every day of the last x number of years I have been available to other people for whatever they need. It means I’ve been able to post about whatever I wanted. And those things are great and fun, but posting about things makes me feel like my life is performative, and like what I’m doing isn’t only for me—it’s for an audience, too. I love being available to all my friends, but as an introvert I need time away from everyone to rest. Yet I can’t think of a single day in years when some—if not all—of my day was about other people.
I think this is why people say to be careful about monetizing your passions. It’s why Emily McDowell has a whole card about how being an artist means being yourself for a living—which can be so draining.
The only thing I have right now that is truly just for me is boxing. I go because I enjoy it, and I get to learn something new. And while yes, it’s exercise, I haven’t internalized this particular exercise as being something I have to do to fit a societal standard of beauty, which is what I’ve done with literally all other exercises. Boxing, for whatever reason, has wormed its way into my brain as a skill, something that could be useful to protect myself if I needed it to, but which ultimately is a skill I’ll probably never truly “need.”
So I’m going to protect the fuck out of it. I’m never going to write about boxing. I’m not going to let myself monetize it or let it become about someone else. While I will literally pour sweat into it, I’m going to let it be something that figuratively feeds me. Because it’s all I’ve got right now.
And one day next week, I’m turning everything off. I’m going to go do something that I won’t write about it or tell anyone about or let anyone join me on. If I read a book, I’m not going to post about it on Goodreads. If I take a photo I’m not going to post it on Instagram. If something funny happens, I’m going to resist telling anyone about it.
Protect the things that fill you up, that's the only way I think we really can stay whole in this crazy world.
And don't forget to take a break. See y'all on the other side of my "vacation."
xx,
Valorie