Reverse Resolutions ⏪
What if we made lists of what we already did? On how horniness is the better alternative to hustle culture.
A few months ago, I was eating dinner with my friends Nika and Jeremy and my husband, Dayron. Nika, Jeremy, and I got stuck for a while on the topic of How Much People Suck. After Dayron had been silent for about half an hour, Nika asked him, “Dayron, what do you think?” In his very labored English, he delivered the only possible perfect comment on the topic: “I theenk eenside ebrywan ees a leetle hell.” There ended our kvetching session.
Dayron is right. Looking around, it does seem like most people have to try pretty fucking hard just to be OK. And I think that was true even before the world was so overwhelmingly dark.
I dipped into my anti-self optimization culture rant in the Manifesting post but, basically, it goes like this: The you’re-not-good-enough-yet premise does not account for how hard it is just to be alive. It facilitates people setting up a dopamine addiction cycle. Like cigarettes, it creates a need, then fills that need in a cycle, creating the illusion of providing relief or satisfaction. Or it just sets us up to fail and then feel worse about ourselves. It also encourages us to try to exert more control instead of helping people relax into and enjoy the natural chaos of life. It does not seem to make people happier. And, as many people have pointed out, the productivity obsession is capitalist; we should not derive our value from our productivity.
I’m not against goals or hard work, but New Year Resolutions can work against us for a lot of the same reasons.
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