Seen and Heard In The Neighborhood

Note #5: Winter Break Announcement

Photo by Fabrice Villard

This is my last post for 2022. I’m taking a winter break, because . . .

The last six years have been hard. The last three have been really, really hard.

At the end of 2020, it felt like nobody had a personal best and we were drowning in grief, but we had also adjusted our standards and, in many ways, leaned in with each other. By the time we got to the end of 2021, it seemed to me that most of us were trying to make peace with a very confrontational “loss of control” feeling and learning to be okay with very low bar “kept the car on the road” type wins. I wrote about those years in more detail on Instagram: here and here.

As we’re coming to the end of 2022, what I sense most strongly and want to openly recognize here is . . . exhaustion.

The last three years have been really, really hard.

The Dialectic

In Monday’s note, I said we all had to strengthen our tolerance for being uncomfortable if we want our society to improve. That we had to practice becoming “unfuckwithable” for the care and protection of our communities. Like Rosa Parks or John Brown.

But, if there’s one thing that’s really been driven home for me over the last six years, it’s embracing the dialectic. The dialectic, in psychology, is broadly about recognizing that two opposite things can be true at the same time. We can be in a moment that requires us to become unfuckwithable, able to tolerate a great deal of discomfort on the way to making our society better, AND (the “and” is super important in dialectics) we can be deeply exhausted.

My number one value is authenticity. I want to be true to myself and I want to be honest with all of you, my neighbors. I want to be real, even when it’s not cheerful. As we close out this year, that means acknowledging the exhaustion.

On Exhaustion

Here’s the thing about the exhaustion:

• It’s valid. The last three years have been really, really hard. What’s more, is that we limped into 2022 with all the grief and loss of control from 2020 and 2021. As I noted last Thursday, we’re limping out of 2022, every single one of us, broken-hearted. Our exhaustion is compounding.

• It’s not just your perception or mine. Based on averages, I’m middle-aged. The mid-life transition can be a notoriously bumpy patch, with both child-rearing and aging parent concerns to attend to, plus the physical body is changing (hello, perimenopause) and we’ve hit peak earning potential (As my grandma would say, “Better make hay while the sun shines.”). Damn. All of that sounds exhausting.
  
  Turns out that younger people and older people are also feeling exhausted. My daughter and her friends have barely begun their adult lives and they reiterate constantly how worn down they already feel. Older family members, some with 80+ years under their belts, have stopped varnishing everything with optimism, acknowledging they’ve also never felt so worn down. My sample size isn’t limited to my own family either. Have you been on the internet lately? Declarations of exhaustion abound.

• Oppressive systems function through exhaustion. Sara Ahmed, a feminist writer and independent scholar I came across last summer, says, “So much power and violence works through exhaustion: the exhaustion of people’s capacities to resist; the exhaustion of people’s capacities to live their lives on their own terms; the exhaustion of having to navigate systems that are designed to make it harder to get what you need.”
  
  Systems designed to make it harder to get what you need? Our healthcare system comes to mind or how about the nurses, teachers, baristas, and railroad workers forced to strike for things as basic as A sick day (during a fucking pandemic), or what about the way we’re told a majority in our government isn’t adequate and we need to vote harder for a supermajority and meanwhile, in no one’s best interest, our Supreme Court just wipes away our rights anyway.

• “Boundaries” aren’t the problem. Dudez, our capacities to function well aren’t this low because the entire planet is bad at boundaries. My goodness though, that is some sneaky snake propaganda helping deflect from the real issue.

We’re exhausted because we need each other. We’re trying to do all this shit individually that’s supposed to be accomplished by a whole community. Community care IS self-care.

Taking A Break

Beyond a commitment to authenticity and announcing my own winter break, the reason I wrote about this sense of collective exhaustion today was to encourage you to take a break too.

By “break” I mean, of course, taking as many actual days off work as you can, but more specifically I mean unplugging from the noise, focusing narrowly on your most important relationships . . . taking a chance on joy. These are the things that will actually restore us.

Personally, even though I know what will be restorative, I’m nervous that taking a beat might mean nobody is here when I get back. The online world is merciless with the pressure to churn out something, anything, daily. It feels vulnerable to admit that I need to pause and am afraid of pausing, but writing under threat isn’t a great creative space, and I also don’t think I’m alone in my anxiety.

Paradoxically, at this point in our exhaustion, taking a break probably feels like a risk for all of us. Will we find the resolve to start again? Will we pay for a momentary lapse in hyper-vigilance (perhaps while trying to enjoy a cup of coffee with a loved one)? And stretching out to touch joy? Scary. Truly.

Recently I told my best friend, “All my joy is foreboding. Is there even another kind?” And that’s the dialectic, isn’t it? We can’t know about joy without also knowing about misery. Without also enduring, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, the hard years.

And the last three years have been really, really hard, Neighbors. We’re exhausted. I’m proud of us for risking rest, vulnerably seeking connection, and even seeking joy, despite the foreboding, because this kind of exhaustion is only cured communally.

I’ll see you in 2023, but I hope until then you’ll let me know if this not cheerful, but absolutely real note resonated. Wishing you all restoration.