Hi friends this is a little reminder to charge your phone, take your meds, drink enough water, get enough sleep, and listen to lots of music!! Your well-being and happiness is of utmost importance and I hope you take time to take care of yourself.

Don’t think too big. Think small. Think book releases and movie premiers and album drops. Think the first really warm day of spring when the grass is finally green and you can see the sky and hear the birds. Think swimming in a still-cold ocean. Think sand slipping between your fingers. Hands in the dirt. The smell of lilacs or roses or whatever tickles your fancy. Think about that weird rush of excitement you get when you see a hummingbird or a wild bunny. Think the moment when you realize your nose isn’t stuffed anymore and you can breathe again. Think as small as you can. Make life as small and managable as possible. It’s okay to go day by day or hour by hour or even minute by minute if you need to. It’s okay to take tiny chunks. Build up your tolerance. Let yourself grow. It’s okay.

sometimes your reason for living can be the stupidest little thing. like “i don’t want my pet to get sad because they miss me” or “i want to know how this television show ends.” and sometimes, that’s enough.

here’s the deal with self care, for me:

pleasure, in the fun late-capitalism hellhole of present-day america, is treated like a luxury.  it’s expensive.  it’s frivolous.  it’s guilty.  if we want to eat ice cream out of the carton and be socially acceptable at the same time, we’d better have earned that ice cream.  maybe by like running a marathon or getting dumped by an asshole.  if we’re going to duck into the corner store and buy fresh flowers, it’s because we’ve had a hard week, not because flowers are nice.  we can take a day off work, but only if we’re sick.  we have to suffer before we’re allowed extra kindness.

in this equation pleasure is optional (irresponsible, even), except when it’s a balm for suffering.

however!  we need pleasure to live.  a life without nice feelings in it is like a diet with no vitamins in it.  it’ll make you sick and eventually it’ll kill you.  we know this because people with depression stop feeling pleasure, and they often kill themselves.  left untreated, depression is a fatal disease.

pleasure is not optional.  pleasure is not a luxury.  without it, we die.  that is literally the opposite of a luxury.

because pleasure is treated like a luxury, and priced accordingly, it is fucking hard to get.  it’s hard to take time to relax and see loved ones when corporations aren’t required to offer paid vacation.  it’s hard to buy that special face scrub or art print or pretty yarn when it costs $35 and student loans are breathing down your neck.  so pleasure gets saved up for when things are really bad.  pleasure gets budgeted.  pleasure, once again, becomes something we have to earn by abstaining and hurting and gritting our teeth.

do this to people long enough and pleasure becomes potently associated with guilt.  this thing we need desperately to stay alive is suddenly something we can’t seek out without looking over our shoulder and wondering if we’re allowed to have it.

that’s why it’s so important that we talk about self care, and tell ourselves and each other that it is okay to do things that feel good.  it is necessary to do things that feel good.  we have to uncouple suffering and pleasure, because the idea that we have to earn feeling good by first feeling bad is monstrous and wrong.

take care of yourselves, darlings.  don’t feel bad about it.

sometimes i’m like “why am i still here” but then i realize that i’m often the only person who is around to take bad-to-eat stuff out of my dog’s mouth and i think there’s this sort of western idea of “if youre not CEO youre nothing special” but my dog is still alive bc of me and i’m still alive bc of other people so maybe i’m just here to pet cats and wear sweaters and help people take the glass out of their mouth. you know? maybe i won’t be CEO but maybe i’ll be able to help somebody afford their trip home. and i think that’s pretty okay, you know?