This is the Weekly Dingus, where we laugh about someone or something that has made the world just a little bit worse this week. Sometimes its a boat in a canal. Sometimes it is milk. Sometimes it is Josh Hawley. But it’s not ever Jonathan Franzen. If you love this newsletter and look forward to it, if you love this newsletter more than you love most people, consider becoming a paid subscriber. If that’s not in the cards for you right now. Then share this with anyone in your life who loves a drink and loves to laugh. Or an enemy.
This week, as America experienced climate disasters, overwhelmed hospitals, and the swelling panic of a new strain of COVID, the geniuses at the New York Times knew exactly what to do: give America some self-help tips. These tips include having friends, being optimistic, and “interrupting the stress cycle”?
Which, thanks, NYT, I literally never thought about just being less stressed. Thank you for the helpful tip.
That’s right. That rising panic you feel? That frustration? That sleeplessness? It’s definitely not because society is collapsing, and if you don’t get COVID, you might get crushed in a December tornado. It’s because you didn’t do enough yoga.
I mean, sure, 800,000 people are dead and voting rights are being rolled back and so is Roe v. Wade. But have you checked your thyroid?
After all, you should never let an apocalypse stop you from feeling good about yourself.
Last week, I jokingly tweeted that I’d been eating healthy and not drinking but was still feeling terrible. And many of the helpful humans of the internet thought they’d tell me I was pre-menopausal, and oh, maybe I should eat some more vegetables or try a diet?
The only reason I didn’t break the internet in half with my bare hands was because I had to go to my kids’ Christmas concert, which was held in a packed church, where I was one of the only people wearing a mask. But sure, I’ll have my hormones checked, you absolute dinguses.
This isn’t new logic. I remember early in lockdown when a local life coach posted on Facebook, encouraging people to share all the important self-growth they were experiencing. Or the editor who kept inserting the line “the silver lining of the pandemic” into an op-ed I was writing, until I literally sent an email that said if that line stayed in the column, I’d refuse to let them publish it.
Kate Bowler recently noted on her podcast that the harder people’s lives get, the more they are fed endless streams of hyperagency. It’s easier to pathologize individualism than it is to focus on the structural issues. Just work harder. Just lean in. Just drink more water. As if that is gonna solve anything?
Listen, has it occurred to anyone that if you are looking around at a country with over 800,000 people dead, and you think, “I’m living my best life!” then you might actually be an asshole?
I am not suggesting we all walk around miserable. It’s, of course, good and necessary to find joy, happiness, and meaning in dark times. Feminist writer and activist bell hooks died this week, and she wrote often about how love and desire and joy could be radical affirming acts, especially in the face of discrimination and marginalization and trauma. In her essay, “Love as the Practice of Freedom,” which I re-read this past weekend in preparation for a night class I’ve been taking, hooks wrote:
Often, then, the longing is not for a collective transformation of society, an end to politics of dominations, but rather simply for an end to what we feel is hurting us. This is why we desperately need an ethic of love to intervene in our self centered longing for change. Fundamentally, if we are only committed to an improvement in that politic of domination that we feel leads directly to our individual exploitation or oppression, we not only remain attached to the status quo but act in complicity with it, nurturing and maintaining those very systems of domination. Until we are all able to accept the interlocking, interdependent nature of systems of domination and recognize specific ways each system is maintained, we will continue to act in ways that undermine our individual quest for freedom and collective liberation struggle.
Love is good. Joy is powerful. But finding those things is different from a capitalist solution that suggests, “Have you tried essential oils?” Or buy this fuzzy sweater or just go to a psychiatrist. You can’t treat the trauma until the traumatic event has ceased. And the traumatic event hasn’t stopped. Not by a long shot. People are still dying. We are all living in a place of trauma compounded by disaster, whether we choose to see it or not.
I understand this is service journalism. I’ve written this kind of story myself one too many times. And thankfully, I do not have to do this anymore. But, I get it. Self-help and quick answers feel better than radically rethinking how we see ourselves and our society. But there is no girl-bossing our way out of this one.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s this kind of hyper-individualistic, self-help kind of thinking that got us to this bad place. And maybe pathologizing resilience is a way of blaming individuals for problems created by a complete societal breakdown.
Listen, has it occurred to anyone that if you are looking around at a country with over 800,000 people dead, and you think, “I’m living my best life!” then you might actually be an asshole?
And also, it’s fine to feel bad, which in fairness to the NYT, is one of the hip tips (which is also hilarious). In fact, all of this should make us feel bad. But rather than fix those feelings, maybe we need to sit in the discomfort, share in the pain. Maybe living your worst life is the only way to live with radical honesty and empathy. Maybe it’s okay to crack up. Fall apart. Break wide open. Maybe our mental state should not be healthy. Maybe everything is hard and sloppy all at once. Maybe it’s all too much, but we continue on. We mock a dingus. We laugh a little. We share a drink. We find a way.
Too hard? Okay. Try some essential oils. That should do it.
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What I Am Reading:
What did I read this week? I don’t know? Honestly. I HAVE NO IDEA. I know I’m in the middle of reading the book Lying by Lauren Slater. And I read Ed Yong on Omicron.
And I wrote this.
What I Am Drinking:
It’s hot toddy season! I make my hot toddies with tea, lemon, honey, and a splash of whiskey.
But toddies are infinitely adaptable. You can make them with gin. If you don’t have lemon, you can use limes, oranges, or even apple cider. Basically, I think they need something hot, something sweet, a citrus, and a booze.
Also, here is a good story:
My kids and I do a daily advent calendar in December. I hide little presents all over the house, and they open up the advent calendar and get a little riddle to help them find the present. When they were little, I made treasure maps. I love this tradition even though it’s a lot of work. The joy, of course, is in the finding. And as they get older, it's fun trying to stump them. This year, their intelligence grew tenfold from last year. As a result, I’ve been scrambling to stump them. I know all parents think this, but my kids are so smart, it’s actually starting to terrify me. Playing chess with my 8-year-old son actually hurts my brain. I haven’t won a game in the past four months. And I had to explain doomsday cults to my 10-year-old the other day.
So, the other day, I gave myself a mulligan and just hid some boxes of jelly bellies in the Christmas tree and the clue was: “Look in the Christmas tree.”
They found them immediately. My daughter came up to me and looked me dead in the eye and said, “You really aren’t trying today, are you?” And I said, “Nope!”
Anyway, I wrote this last year.
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Thank you so much for this. I finally acknowledged it as grief. For me, self-care is kicking loose from the pressure to market! network! optimize your social media presence! engage! my business. I deal with clients in dire straits. The last thing I want is another email telling my how to MAXIMIZE YOUR PROFITS!
Hey, NYT, ya know what I do for self-care? I give cash to those poor souls holding up cardboard signs. I give money to the food bank. Donate bits of money anonymously. It's the best I can do right now.
the last two years when i have gone in for my medicare 'wellness' visit, there are a lot of questions to fill out about whether or not i might be depressed. what i keep trying to tell my doctor is that no, i'm not depressed; i'm grieving. grief is an appropriate response to all that is happening now and that grief just keeps growing. (please see diana's excellent comment below.)