If only we could choose our coping mechanisms

a girl can dream

This week, while lying in bed not wanting to get up, I realized that until 2022 I have never felt the sheets to be so entrancing, the bed so comfortable, the comforter such a viable cocoon. My body feels leaden when faced with the day. Omicron, the country on the verge of a civil war, climate change. You know the drill. It’s not that my life is bad, far from it. I look at a beautiful sunrise and snap a picture out of habit, I make breakfast for my sister and me, I sit down at the computer and get to work. I don’t think how strange it is that I’ve lived in four places in two years or mourn my unpredictable life. That was the work of 2021. Last year I approached like a strange gift: near complete isolation to reform, process, and get rid of bad habits. I took three months off drinking and signed up for as many writing workshops as I could. I practiced setting better boundaries and tried not to approach relationships like I was playing both sides of the chess board.

But where last year Dry January felt like taking advantage, this year it feels like punishment. And the workshops that filled so much time alongside freelance work now feel like a distraction from the difficult work of finishing my novel. So I’m skipping all of it, along with any sort of resolution that verges on self-improvement. The only thing I’m resolving is to be kinder to myself.

Another element of the sheets-so-comfy mode is that I feel like I don’t remember what productivity feels like. How do you finish a book? How do you write a coherent narrative? How do you have smart, analytical thoughts and string them into an essay? How do you do it many times, rather than just once? I’m not sure that productivity is even a real thing, but perhaps just a capitalist tool that we’ve all internalized. And then, I’ll open my inbox, and find another beautifully written several-thousand-word newsletter from a favorite writer and wonder “how does he do it?”

Finally, I stopped asking that question. His coping mechanism must be working. Where I find myself choosing the double binge, he must turn towards reading more, analyzing better, and producing producing producing. I brought this up with my therapist, the way I used to use work to avoid my life, and how I wish I could trade this lethargy for a manic enthusiasm for getting things done. Much as I’ve tried, though, I cannot choose to become a workaholic again anymore than I can pretend my coping mechanism is exercise or eating healthy. These are things I do because I want to take care of myself, not because I’m running from something. I’m sure there are people who wish they knew the fluff of the couch as well as I do, just as I long for their prolific outputs.

But I’m not good because I’m productive. I’m just good because we are all good. And believe me when I say that I’m telling myself this more than I’m telling anyone else: The worth of a person isn’t how many books they publish, or smart, long newsletters they send out, or essays they successfully pitch to the New Yorker.

I think many other people might be feeling this way, too: smothered by staying afloat readjusting when a Covid case meant isolating alone during the holidays or now means something seemingly “trivial” like cancelling a plan with an old friend that was finally going to happen. We’re all burned out, and so is the planet. Productivity is not the right metric for me anymore. Maybe, then the mark of a good day is taking selfies with my sister’s dog and cooking a big pot of lamb meatball soup. What I do know is that I need my coping mechanisms a lot less when I stop asking for an unreasonable output.