#50 - Five Ways I Found Joy Today

Look, it’s tough to remain optimistic in an increasingly fascist society. It really is, I’m not about to try and downplay or sugarcoat that. I want to be honest about the fact that these last three days, it has been harder for me to get out of bed. It is a struggle to clean my dishes when I already hated doing it and now I’m doing it in a world that feels increasingly nihilistic so why do I have to waste time holding the grossest invention of humankind: a sponge?

But! But but but but but, I need joy to survive. I need to empower myself to rest and find things that allow me to deeply relax and reduce my heart rate and quell my anxiety (even if those things are super temporary) so that I can keep going.

So! In the spirit of that, here are the things I’ve done this morning that have brought me pockets and bleep-bloops of joy between the urges to unleash another primal scream!

#1 Yoga

My girl Adriene has been doing a lot of heavy lifting for my anxiety and stress during the entire pandemic, but once again I fortified my resilience for the bullshit ahead today by spending 30 minutes on my mat this morning. The routine of finding a video, rolling out the mat, and taking mindful breaths works (annoyingly) every time. You know how when you have period cramps and people tell you to exercise and it kind of makes you want to punch them in the face—but if you can manage to get moving the walk does usually actually help? That’s how I feel about myself anytime I don’t want to do yoga but make myself do it anyway. And then it works and I have to be slightly annoyed that endorphins really do make people happy (and happy people don’t shoot their husbands).

#2 Lightscapes

I recently installed an LED light panel thingy behind my desktop monitor and got a(nother) new keyboard that has background lights, and I now match the glow of my monitor color to the keyboard color and I vary them based on the mood and moment and it’s great!

A sweet little orange glow for the early morning, a bright acid green for when I was making my bullet journal and starting work for the day, and then blue on blue for the work task about the blue categorized Facilitator Card, Minute Papers. Tech should be fun and cute and this is silly but it really does add some fun levity to my task breaks. I can also see it being really useful as far as time-blocking goes if you’re someone who loves doing that on gcal!

#3 Bread

My local bakery is doing so much in terms of keeping my spirits up. The ladies that work there now know me which makes me feel like I’m part of the community and like I’ve made real strides as far as planting roots where I live (for once) aaaand bread is delicious and they make it every morning and then I spend my day including it in various ways throughout the meals and living like I’m in the french countryside is actually very helpful to my mental state.

I had to get dressed to go outside, I had to interact with people, and I got to acquire a beautiful little baguette. Wins across the board! (Remember to eat, and nourish yourself, and to not give in to the despair or anxiety that can make meals seem futile! Let’s not misapply feeling out of control in our lives to over-controlling our intake of food or calories mkay!)

#4 Intentions

Ugh I know I know but actually writing down three little intentions on a steno pad has made a world of difference in terms of how mindful I can be while at work. Last week I really struggled to concentrate, which led to me beating myself up for lack of concentration (and pushing the work I was meant to be doing onto my future self which is so rude of my past self!) (also the phrase “beatings will continue until morale improves” is the best counteraction to my strong instinct of shaming myself so if you haven’t heard it before, I hope it’s helpful for you too). So I took matters back into my own hands and started applying mindfulness before and during work (it’s so annoying when shit like that works). Which meant filling out the week’s Notion page correctly, writing my tasks in a bullet journal so that I could literally feel what I had to do, and then writing myself grounding sentences of intentionality and outcomes that I kept right in front of me so that I didn’t have to remind myself of anything, I could just remember.

And like, gratitude journaling makes me physically recoil, so I thought this would too. But I don’t have to be saccharine or overly optimistic! One of my intentions last week was “get it done now, don’t push it to later” and that was weirdly helpful anytime I wanted to skip a task! It just immediately reminded me that I had to get it done at some point and I was just setting future me up with more tasks, and that’s like so unfair to future me.

#5 Plans

Helping someone make a plan to go vote before work tomorrow, getting over how cheesy it feels to offer that planning process on Instagram because I know that people have shame over their lack of voting records and I just want to tell them that it’s okay and tomorrow is a perfect time to start voting!! And that voting isn’t scary or hard, and it’s okay to have questions, and if someone makes a plan to go vote they’re like 99% more likely to actually vote so I will help them make that plan!!

And sending stupid texts, making plans for after work, being silly, and sharing podcasts and tweets that brought me hope for what is to come. Listening to the WNYC radio show that Marel sent me because Elie Mystal makes me believe that a better future is possible.

It’s empowering to have plans (and that’s not just the Virgo in me speaking)!

(Also, other things that helped me get through this weekend: smoking weed, watching comedy specials, playing Stardew Valley, petting my cats, cleaning my fridge, blasting the AC and just sitting in front of it, journaling, and eating Taco Bell!)

I won’t let them take my optimism away. They don’t get to destroy my joy, my hope, my future. It’s mine and I will claw it back from their shriveled illegitimate unelected little hands. There are so many people who have fought this fight and can help me fight it better, and I am seeking them out and assessing what I can contribute consistently to those people and organizations.

We can and we will and we must go forward. Pausing and finding moments of elation amongst the misery. The other side wants us to feel defeated, and I will not allow them to be emboldened in their wrongness.

My life is mine. My body is mine. My choices are mine to make. And I choose joy and connection and hope.