to be clear your september reinvention does not need to be "productive" as defined by The Man
Two more links around the ~September reinvention~ train of thought we got going yesterday: the first is this blog post from a longtime fave personal finance blog, Bitches Get Riches, that deftly picks apart what exactly irritates us most about the kind of poorly-done “productivity porn” you’ve probably been sand-blasted with (you might even count my yesterday newsletter in that category lol) — and reminds us, if you’re stressing about not journalling correctly or making bread correctly or generally “not pandemicking correctly,” that it all comes down to this, really:
When and if all of this is over, your contribution to society will be judged on just two factors: 1) Did you avoid spreading the virus? and 2) Were you kind to others? That’s it. That’s all you need to get done. Everything else is homemade artisanal gravy.
But! If you are in the mood for said gravy, then I recommend the Writers on Writing (And Not Writing) interview series that Man Repeller is doing; the first one with Mary H.K. Choi is my favorite because of this quote — god, that image of all of us having little COVID antennae is perfect:
Hustle culture isn’t the wave anymore. Not by a long shot. Now it’s discernment and shrewd allocation of resources and boundaries galore. Energy is finite. It’s a somatically real and depleting thing to keep one eye on the election and another little antenna honed on a literal global plague.
Anyway. I realize I’m throwing a lot of cognitive dissonance at you today, but that’s ‘cause this newsletter contains multitudes and so do you!!