self-surveillance
"When I went back to working in an office after years of not, I could suddenly see the particular brand of crazy my former compatriots in freelancing exhibited, revealed in high definition. Their obsessive Facebook status updates, their public declarations about how much or how little they’d written that day or how their writing was going, the kind of super-involved tweeting that you only see in people who are either trapped at desk jobs where there’s too little for them to do or in freelancers desperate to avoid the work they’ve assigned themselves."
I think about this now three year old Emily Magazine post often. I thought about it before I became a freelancer, when I looked on it as a warning against what I did not want to let myself become, and I think about it even more now that I have, inevitably, become her. I had one of those weeks last week where you just really need someone to hold your face in their hands and say you're good enough you're good enough you're good enough until you're exhausted enough to believe them, but no one was available to do that and it probably wouldn't have worked anyway so instead I posted a lot of self-deprecating jokes on Twitter and flattering selfies everywhere else, which culminated in this:
(He did, and like everything else I tried, it didn't really help.)
Anyway what I've also been thinking about is how specifically the habits of mind required by freelancing are related to and encouraging of regular-to-compulsive social media production. When you are constantly surveying your own interior landscape and everything around you asking is this a story and, even more critically, how and where can I sell it, well, is this a tweet, is this a Snapchat, is this an Instagram feels somehow both like an extension of that work and also a relief from it. You're "making something" of yourself, your life and your day, even if that "something" is necessarily ephemeral, and redeemable only for clicks and likes and the attendant sugar rush of affirmation. (I somehow never remember the expect the crash of the quiet that follows.)
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There are other things in that post I should talk about, probably. How I spent two and a half years convinced that I was a person who could work full time and write books and maintain a yoga practice and cook for herself and see her friends and be there for everyone who needed her always, without hesitation without interruption, as they say in Bikram, but you know how that story ends already: broken brain, Xanax. I wanted to be the exception because I wanted to be exceptional, of course. Who doesn't?
The problem was, nothing I did ever really felt like enough to qualify, so I set up a rubric and told myself if I could meet it every day forever I was allowed to call myself a success even if I didn't feel like one.
Let me tell you, calling yourself a success even when you don't feel like one doesn't feel like shit. It strips the word and your own feelings of their legitimacy; you learn not to trust yourself, or language, or anyone, or anything that isn't making something, doing more. That, at least, is a measurable truth: I wrote two thousand words, I wrote tweets people thought were funny, I made my face look nice in a picture. I made something of myself, and other people consumed it and were satisfied by it. So there. I earned my spot on earth today.
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Is this the part where I'm supposed to end it on a high note? It is, isn't it. Well, fuck, because I don't have one. I have a book deadline and a freelance piece due this week and I'm excited about both of them; I made all of my summer travel plans last week and I'm looking forward to train trips, plane rides, a sound bath, two weddings. I've managed to shake the dread that threatened to suffocate me that first week of freedom, mostly. I've figured out how to enjoy my life again. The next step is learning to believe I deserve to do that, apparently, whether or not I'm being productive, whether or not everything I produce is a success. I have no desire to do this, but I'm pretty sure that I have to start taking my own dumb exhausted exhausting face between my own shaky hands and saying you're good enough you're good enough you're good enough until I figure out that it's true. I'm pretty sure that's the next step.
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There isn't any book news, but I did write a piece for Elle's website about how watching UnREAL turned me into a Bachelor/ette fan. If you're looking for more things to keep you occupied at your desk job or from whatever work you've assigned yourself, I'd recommend the following Tinyletters:
Catherine Nicholas' Can I Live? is essential on the subject of the Kardashians, even and actually especially if you don't think there's any essential writing to be done on the subject.
Ruth Curry's Coffee & TV is sort of like reading an old-school blog that was actually about what someone did, read, ate and drank that day, which maybe doesn't sound like a recommendation but is one of my favorite forms of writing because it's hard to do well-- make interesting-- and so very specifically satisfying when someone pulls it off.
Speaking of which, Marian Bull's Mess Hall is one of the few pieces of food writing I'm willing to read anymore.
Actually writing this list is making me realize what a curmudgeon I am because next up is Carrie Ann Frye's Black Cardigan. I usually hate writing advice but I really love hers!
And finally, Kate Hart's Shine Along which covers, in her own words, "intersectional feminism, arts, crafts, living with chronic &/or mental illness, history of all sorts, tribal sovereignty, treehouses, travel, mountains, music, photography, witches, bitches, sewing stitches-- and of course, books, especially those written by and about women." I mean, duh.
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