Hello my dear friends,
I’ve been trying to write this post for a while now. I sit down in front of my laptop, the blinking cursor of the blank doc stares back at me and it is a stark reminder that I’ve not been able to form a single, cohesive thought for weeks now.
Today I decided to just sit and get through this writing slump. Honestly, I’ve been having a life slump/health slump/work slump/creative slump. 2020 has just been such a huge shit show. For the first three months of the pandemic, I was coping well. Even as New York became a virus hotspot and ambulances whirred past my house every hour, I was baking banana bread, downloading tiktok, learning to draw, participating in zoom happy hours. My graduation commencement got postponed indefinitely, my parents cancelled their plans to visit me, potential job offers post graduation were withdrawn, NY state implemented a strict stay-at-home order (which meant that you can only leave your house for groceries, pharmacy and emergencies)- but I was still ~fine~. As America was confronted with a much required racial reckoning, my mental health was slowly crumbling. The news cycle this entire year has been insane. Every time I read/watch the news, my blood pressure and heart rate and anxiety levels increase tremendously. I want to keep up with the happenings of the world, but it’s too much toxicity and negativity for my brain.
Everyone is struggling (except the top one percent, who frankly need to start paying their fucking taxes!), we are all grieving over the loss of our pre-covid lives and the challenges of adapting to our "new normal." For me, sometime around June end- July beginning, things started to take a real toll on my mental health. I was missing my family, I was dealing with a volatile immigration situation, my post-grad plans were upended. Plus, I’m a definitive extrovert. The six month long pandemic induced stay-at-home is diametrically opposite to things that fuel me- going out, meeting people, wandering. I’m not a home-body. Staying inside makes me feel physically constricted. And in early September, a few days after my birthday, my physical health caught up with my crumbling mental health…and came crashing down.
What followed was weeks of hospital visits, medical tests, medications and navigating the American Healthcare System (AHS). I’m doing much better now. But, I’m scarred and traumatized by how it is so incredibly difficult to get proper treatment in the US. It took me weeks to even get an appointment with a doctor. The whole time, there were just so many hoops to jump and logistics to figure out. Here I am, sick and tired and uncomfortable, and I just wanted to get better. But nooooo..first I have to figure out if the hospital near my house accepts my health insurance. And then realizing the basic health insurance doesn’t cover my treatment, start freaking out because without insurance, it is an absurdly insane amount of money. They don’t even properly diagnose what’s happening in my body. It took a phone call with a doctor in India to get me on the right track. So basically, the goal of AHS is to take all your money while trying as little as possible to actually cure your illness. (the fact that the acronym AHS could also be American Horror Story seems like a forewarning, honestly). I find it hilarious that September is PCOS Awareness Month and in September, my PCOS worsened so much. The irony is not lost on me.
Anyway, with the pandemic, the economic recession, the trump administration, the US election, my wobbly health and just generally ~widely gestures at everything~ 2020 has been a lot.
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One of the things you begin to hear from every corner- doctors, friends, family - when you fall sick is “hey, take care of yourself.” And it got me thinking how "taking care of the self" has slowly morphed into the millennial-friendly "self-care." Self care is now a five hundred billion dollar industry! Adults are burnt-out and anxious and more than ever, eager to throw their hard-earned money on wellness.
In early 2019, an article in Buzzfeed titled "How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation" went heavily viral and was widely shared. The article resonated with thousands of people. Here’s a direct quote from the article.
That realization recast my recent struggles: Why can’t I get this mundane stuff done? Because I’m burned out. Why am I burned out? Because I’ve internalized the idea that I should be working all the time. Why have I internalized that idea? Because everything and everyone in my life has reinforced it — explicitly and implicitly — since I was young. Life has always been hard, but many millennials are unequipped to deal with the particular ways in which it’s become hard for us.
Navigating the inner self has always been tough but only now has a movement sprung up to actively try and circumvent our desire to understand ourselves and our minds. It’s tempting to think that self-optimization will solve our challenges, many of which is the result of consumer capitalism and the culture of relentless productivity we live in, that is only heightened by the Information Age. Since the Industrial Age, workers’ fought hard for labor rights- factory owner’s refused to treat workers as human beings and withheld sick leaves optimizing for production instead. There was constant surveillance on workers to ensure that workers spent every second on the factory floor being productive. A modern version of this is the overuse of Slack and other such apps to monitor employees’ performance. As more jobs are becoming automated and as economic recessions become commonplace, employees are scrambling to prove they are indispensable. Often refusing to use up their relegated sick days, working weekends, and sometimes even answering work emails and taking work calls during vacations.
The pandemic and subsequent work-from-home has only worked towards blurring the work-life balance. People are now working harder than ever, in a turbulent economy, desperate to cling onto their jobs. There is no demarcation between when work begins and work ends. Bosses have found a way into their employees’ homes demanding they respond immediately because if you are at home, you are available to work.
The wellness and self care industry is insane, and has fully capitalized on this burnout and anxiety crises. Everyone I know, online and offline, is on some wellness train. This could be journaling, anti-depressants, facemasks, bubble baths, going off sugar, going off Instagram, deleting dating apps. The need to channel the stress of our lives and take back control can manifest itself in many different ways.
Self care is a goddamn privilege. It requires time and money. It requires the ability to afford and access the services that allow you to take time off and relax. The way I look at it, CEOs know that labor is replaceable and they choose to ~take care of themselves~ while their staff is working overtime, sometimes through illness to even be able to afford medication.
The meteoric rise of mental health accounts on Instagram has started the necessary conversation towards understanding our inner selves, however, I think that the overuse of millennial pink and insta friendly fonts to dissipate the messaging will dilute the seriousness of mental health struggles in our society. Gwyneth Paltrow and goop have almost made it seem like self care is the missing puzzle from the lives of millennials. If we just somehow manage to incorporate selfcare in our routine, we would gain maximum contentment, right?
Toxic positivity and self-optimization as promoted by the wellness industry is perhaps causing us more harm. Self care is often promoted as the solution to mental health challenges, most of which cannot be solved by face masks and bubble baths. Our collective traumas are the result of years of inter-generational and systemic structures i.e. capitalism, patriarchy, racism, caste, etc., which skew the benefits for a few at the cost of the many.
Frankly in 2020, protesting for Black Lives Matter is a better act of selfcare than a bubble bath. When access to time and money to ‘rest’ and ‘relax’ is a privilege and when self care is so expensive, there is gatekeeping, it becomes political and to demand equal pay, to fight systems of oppression and to challenge the status quo become acts of self care.
For me, the moment you say there is a industry working to accelerate and optimize “caring for the self”, I’m skeptical. There is an inherent vested interest for the company that is telling me to ~unwind~, self care has become commercialized and commodified and become, essentially, a product of capitalism. Which is interesting because self care technically is to take a break from capitalism and the many ways we are bound to it.
A new term that I’ve discovered recently- Eco anxiety. The terrifying, constant doom thinking and worrying about the impending End Of The World as a result of the changing climate around us. The current US election is giving everyone around me sleepless nights. Everyday we are confronted by new and dangerous threats to our livelihoods. Can essential oils and CBT really help when the inevitability of democracy and human rights lies on the line?
This crisis is hitting young people the hardest. Late Gen-Z and early millennials are either entering the work force or developing their careers. Finding work during an economic crisis is hard but especially when it’s in the middle of a pandemic full of layoffs. An entire generation is dealing with the consequences of it and we don’t even fully know the extent of the impact all ~this~ is going to have on us in the long term. So, the real public secret is: We are all anxious. And it is a direct result of capitalism and consumption culture. In 2014, an article called We Are All Anxious was published by Plan C. It is probably the most concise explanation I have found on this.
Basically, every wave of capitalism was followed by a dominant adverse affect. Post-war, people were miserable. They were weary and depressed from the world war. In the Eighties, people were bored. Everyone was going to work, earning a living, coming back home to domestic obligations and that was it. Now, people are anxious. We live in a time of constant surveillance. We are monitored by the state, our phones are (allegedly) tapped, Big Tech via algorithms are influencing our behavior, we are (largely) curating our lives for social media. We have too much brain stimulation, we are never just still. And it is driving us nuts!
Even now, as I’m writing this, I have a tab open playing music. On another tab, I have my email open. I also have twitter open on a third tab. I’m constantly shuttling between all of them. How is my brain even keeping up.
We have no autonomy on our lives, dictated largely by social media and modern work culture. We feel we are constantly watched, constantly performing. Your boss can send you an email at 10pm, and even though you’re not technically required to reply, you know it’d be better for your career if you do. You see all your mutual friends on Instagram attending that party and even though you really want to stay at home, you force yourself to get dressed and show up at that party. Hashtag FOMO amirite.
The self care/wellness industry in my opinion, perpetuates the very system that is making us anxious in the first place. Which means that taking care of yourself in today’s world is a rebellious act. Taking time off work to rest is seen as disruptive. Evading advertising-consumption culture by not buying anything for a year or practicing minimalism is seen as revolutionary. The time and effort required to guard the self against structural oppression is not afforded to those who are struggling with caste issues, fighting white supremacy or living in poverty.
What happens when buying candles to light your room is not a #SelfCareSaturday ritual but a necessity because you cannot afford electricity?
Most self-help books are written by white, male authors who were given the birth lottery and have no idea of the structural oppression that evades self-care for people that need it the most.
I have only began taking care of myself and trying desperately to preserve my selfhood from the structural systems that threaten it. But, I know that selfcare and the Instagram wellness aesthetic is not going to help me get there.
Gifts from The Internet
Businessweek’s Computer-generated influencers are making more money than ever is scary. Basically, using AI and deep-fake companies are creating influencers that are 100% fake and also 100% controllable. The pandemic has made it difficult for real humans to be at events and promote stuff. No problem for the digitally made influencer because she’s not real.
I, obviously, felt shattered on learning of RBG’s passing. And also felt very angry and helpless at the way Mr. Orange Head scrambled to fill her Supreme Court seat. The week after RBG’s death, many articles swarmed the internet but this Vogue article profiling her husband, Marty and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s love story and marriage warmed my heart. Even though they were both lawyers and RBG was famously killing it in their shared profession, Marty supported his wife. And took a more active role in taking care of the house. The article is essentially a deep dive into how the pivotal glass ceiling most women need to break is their marriage.
Caitlin Moran writes in her new book, More Than a Woman. “All too often women are marrying their glass ceilings.” By this metric, one can understand at least part of why Ginsburg said that meeting Marty was “by far the most fortunate thing that ever happened to me.”
India has dropped to the 51st position on a Democracy Index. Yeah, no biggie. Super chill. According to the Swaddle:
Due to a severe shrinking of the space for a free, fair and independent media, civil society and political opposition, India’s current nationalist and intolerant political climate signals the death of the world’s so-called biggest democracy, according to the annual Democracy report by Sweden-based V-Dem, an independent research institute that measures the rise of autocratic regimes, and the resistance against them, in the world.
So yeah, democracy at threat and almost non-existent COVID strategy and upcoming annual smog season, it is great time to be alive in mera bharat mahan.
This article by Prayaag Akbar about Delhi in the 90s made me feel all kinds of fuzzy and nice. While reading this, I took a momentary break from reality and pretended that for a hot minute, everything was fine and I was in Delhi during a random summer day, enjoying Kwality ice cream from the cart.
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