Things I Like
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But the paradox and masochism of busyness is also laid bare: the study found that while people aspire to be more like a busy person, they also con- sider the busy person to be less happy. An obsession with busyness also taints how people spend what little leisure time they have, Bellezza said, by wanting leisure to accomplish as much as possible in as little time as possible—called “productivity orientation.”
I've written on this site about my disdain for the word busy and people wanting to be busy all the time and this article really nails how much it's a signal to others that you're important as well as a privilege to bemoan how busy you are.
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This post-pandemic summer is evidently expected to be one long orgiastic reunion, after which, once that’s out of our system, it’s back to work, back to school, to what we used to call “normal.” And if the pandemic had ended, say, last June, after a couple months of lockdown, we probably would’ve returned to our lives with relief and jubilation. But after a year in isolation, I, at least, have gotten acclimated to a different existence—quieter, calmer, and almost entirely devoid of bullshit. If you’d told me in March 2020 that quarantine would last more than a year, I would have been appalled; I can’t imagine how I would’ve reacted if you’d told me, once it ended, I would miss it.
I've been every so slowly getting out and about and being around people. But I'm not gonna lie, I enjoy a quiet, slow life, and so I'm being careful and choosy about what I do. Being busy isn't that great, having time to be thoughtful is so much better and I'm hoping to find a good balance as we "open up."
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But this rosy story about how alcohol made more friendships and advanced civilization comes with two enormous asterisks: All of that was before the advent of liquor, and before humans started regularly drinking alone.
I probably think about alcohol too much, but it's been a problem in my family and so I constantly evaulate what my relationship to it is. I found this to be one of the best articles I've read in a long time, the history is fascinating and I'll be reading the book Julian references, but I also found the difference between Americans and much of the rest of the world fascinating: we drink alone.
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Questions like, “Who’s got the power?” “Who has the money?” You could figure out a dynamic — who was profiting, who was being oppressed. That doesn’t really work anymore, or at least I don’t have the skills to apply that analysis because it’s much more complicated and crazy. I feel like people have just really lost their minds.
I've read both of Bechdel's previous books and want to read her new one, I love her style of writing and drawing, but I was mostly drawn to this interview because of the way in which she talks about how the world has changed over the course of her career. And I completely relate to the above quote. How do things work these days is incredibly opaque and difficult to figure out.
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So much of what I’ve wanted is to get past the wobbling stage in my writing, to get to that point where the book has momentum. Part of that is realizing that I “can’t write the good sentences without writing the bad sentences first.” Or, as Jessica Brody suggests, realizing that writer’s block is actually perfectionist’s block. (This blew my mind.) It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about. It’s that I have to accept and contend with the fear of being bad.
I absolutely loved the idea of the wobbly state and it could apply to so much more than just writing (for me it's drawing and sewing).
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The internal struggle doesn’t make things any easier. How do I learn to get along with others when it seems I can hardly get along with myself? How do any of us, as we emerge into this post-COVID world, which feels in so many ways like an ushering into a gathering inferno? Things aren’t going to be the same. They can’t be.
I loved some of the quotes in this piece as well as La Tray's vulnerability and honesty. It's a weird time right now, how to do we come out of our shells? I read another piece today that talked about maybe not wanting to totally come back out and I relate to that so very much.
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When we scale up the individual to a body politic, it is the private sphere that’s crucial for our capacity for democracy and self-determination. As individuals, we need privacy to figure out who we are when we’re no longer performing the self. As a collective, we have to be able to distinguish who we are as individuals hidden from the norms and pressures of the group in order to reason clearly about how we want to shape the group.
I'm currently reading a book on lost cities and the transition humans made from being nomadic tribes to living together in large cities and reading this piece on privacy at the same time has some thoughts percolating in my head, thoughts about how we're meant to live and how we actually live, and more that I don't even have words for yet. But I've now subscribed to this blog, feels like some good writing and thinking happening here.
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Monet gave the paintings that hang in the Orangerie to the French state after the tragedy of the first world war. A century on, Hockney has shown again that painting nature is a resonant response to a great crisis.
I really wish I could see this show, but I'd also settle for the catalog book with wonderful pictures of the work.
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Take a few minutes and watch a relaxing video of a many in his 80s paging through his sketchbook. I loved every minute of this and have watched it a few times. It probably helps that Hockney is my favorite living artist, his use of color and line quality are so amazing to me. And he's still producing so much work.
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Placing these lands under collective Native control would be good not just for Natives, but for the parks as well. In addition to our deep and abiding reverence for wild spaces, tribes have a long history of administering to widely dispersed holdings and dealing with layers of bureaucracy.
This idea is a very good one and should be taken seriously, for the Tribes as well as for the health of the parks.
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Workers, moreover, tend to be pretty good at equipping themselves with in-demand skills when they have the resources to invest in themselves and when companies are hiring. The problem lies not with American workers, but with American jobs and American policy infrastructure. Too many jobs pay too little. They’re too dangerous. They offer too few benefits. They offer no union representation. They are inaccessible to millions of Americans who are pushed out of the labor market by illness, disability, poverty, the arrival of young children, or discrimination.
I hate the way we categorize jobs and it starts so early when we push high school students to think about what they want their "career" to be. We need folks to do all sorts of jobs and all of them can and should be good jobs, it's our choice to say that they aren't all good jobs.
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The forest gardens were filled with plants that benefited humans, but they also continue to provide food for birds, bears, and insect pollinators, even after 150 years of neglect. It’s evidence that human impact on the environment can have long-lasting positive effects.
I loved learning about this, a short article, but such an interesting thing to think about.
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As Field perceptively notes in her piece, “conspiracism…has the allure of the radical and of the forbidden”—conspiracism, like its cousin despair, is attractive—it makes one feel special. It is romanticism without the romance. As such, the politics of cultural despair has temptations for people in all social conditions.
Wow, this piece puts into words so well things I've been trying to put my finger lately.
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It seems to me that the reason that so many of us feel like we’re languishing is that we are trying to flourish in terrible conditions. It is spring outside — or the “unlocking” season — but it is still “Winter in America,” and, as any gardener knows, if you try to wake a plant out of dormancy too soon, it will wither, and maybe die.
I really like the way Kleon turns the idea of languishing into dormancy, which I much prefer as well.
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You don’t need a yard or a big house — people all over the world dry clothes on tiny high-rise balconies or in windows.
I've been hang drying most of my laundry most of my adult life. It started with a foldable rack in college and using the shower curtain rod, then I got a house and got more racks, then we got a house with a basement where we could put actual clothes lines, and now we're in a house and back to using three racks. And I've been able to manage it no matter what size my living space was. A small thing, but for some reason people are always surprised to learn this is possible.