#26 / Slow Your Roll
Hey everyone,
What a relief!
On Monday I went to my dermatologist first thing, to see about getting some answers to why I had itchy and painful red spots all over my skin.
Even if I hadn’t gotten answers, it would have been nice just to feel like I was in the hands of a trusted expert, someone who has probably seen something like this before and knows how to evaluate it. And it always feels validating to be listened to. He also had a resident with him, so I knew that they were both forming judgments and deliberating amongst each other.
Basically, they said I was probably experiencing an immune system response from whatever virus I’d had earlier in the week. (Not COVID: I got tested, several times in fact.) Actually, they used the word “freak out,” which is probably not the technical term, but reminded me how little medical science still knows about why the body does a lot of what it does. As someone who already has an autoimmune disorder, I already knew that my immune system doesn’t always behave as it “should,” so it wasn’t surprising, and was pretty much what Ashley had already suggested (she called it a “freak out” too, so maybe it is a technical term).
So that might still seem scary, that we don’t really know what caused it, and that it could happen again without warning. Yet I was already feeling so much better as soon as I left the doctor’s office. Partly from the validation, and partly because I now had a prescription for some oral and topical steroids (and if there is such a thing as a placebo effect that kicks in even before you take a pill, I had that).
And the steroids definitely also started working pretty much immediately. The itch disappeared, and the bumps started recessing into my skin, and after a few days they had faded completely.
I feel like I can’t even communicate what this was like, honestly. I’m still riding it, and I really hope it lasts for a while. (I know pretty soon, though, I’ll start to forget what the itchiness was like, and then, the despair will go; that’s just the nature of adaptation.)
There were two main differences this week. I took everything more slowly. I was supremely unhurried, and I made a point of allowing myself to take extra time for everything, even the small things: especially the small things. Unloading the dishwasher, pouring myself a glass of water, putting on my workout clothes, setting up coffee for the next morning. I tend to rush all of these, and it’s worse when I already feel like I’m behind on the day. But lately, I don’t feel behind on anything. Things will take as long as they need to take. What is really the big deal if I only get five chores done instead of eight in whatever arbitrary amount of time?
The second difference is that I didn’t worry about accomplishing anything, especially creatively. I didn’t feel like I needed to make progress on any project in order to earn my keep on the earth for that day. This was a big change from the weekend: even though it was all I could do to prevent myself from scratching my wounds and driving myself even crazier, I just could not let go of all the stuff I was “supposed” to be getting done. I was distraught about this, and then I worked myself up about getting so distraught, because I knew I didn’t need to, and yet I couldn’t stop myself. Finally, Ashley made me take a Benadryl, and then I literally couldn’t do anything except lay on face. I don’t know if I’ve ever taken a Benadryl during the day before, and that shit knocked me out!
So I don’t know where all that nervous energy and fear went, but for now, it’s definitely gone. I don’t miss it.
Reading
Jennie Egerdie — “Frog and Toad Are Self-Quarantined Friends“
I totally forgot about Frog and Toad! These two pieces (you’ll want to read the follow-up) are so endearing. A little sad, too, because they are about the pandemic, but after reading them I just felt warm inside. Such a simple, clever concept. I’m really jealous.
Douglas Rushkoff — “The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods“
I led off with Frog and Toad because this one is a lot heavier, but it helped me put some things together. The idea is that the promise of technology over the last couple decades has led to a state of affairs in which many of us can afford, both financially and emotionally, to increasingly disengage with the real, physical world, with fewer and fewer consequences (to us). Rushkoff is a technology and media theorist, and he has some number of tech entrepreneur friends who have sought his help to stress-test their contingency plans for the coming apocalypse (whatever it ends up being). They will be off to their Alaskan island chains or their underground bunkers and the rest of us will be left to fix the world. At some point during these strategy sessions, Rushkoff realized that these privileged elite actually want the apocalypse to happen. They’re just waiting for the word, for the day when they can jettison themselves from life as they know it completely, guilt-free.
The pandemic has accelerated this. It’s not just tech billionaires who can afford to hole up at home and subsist entirely on Netflix and Instacart, with a fully remote job, never to breathe on another human again. But such a system relies on “essential workers,” meaning people who don’t have the privilege to opt out. This is unfortunate only if you fall on the wrong side of the dividing line. And that’s where it gets uncomfortable and personal: I know which side I’m on. In terms of lifestyle, I’m closer to the tech billionaire than I am to the Amazon driver. We have a wonderful lifeboat of a home that has kept us afloat during these long months. It’s true that we’re still largely on the wagon from Amazon, but we still get plenty of deliveries. I’m not day trading or spending gobs of time on social media; but I do earn a good living working exclusively from home, because I can.
As always, it seems to me, the lesson is: stay aware, and if an enticing new service or technology feels unsettling or too good to be true, it probably is.
Mood
Belle and Sebastian — “Family Tree“
I always come back to B+S when I need to be soothed. Back in college when I fell head over heels for them, I basically skipped the two albums from their “maligned middle period,” as Stuart Murdoch once called it at a concert I attended. They were exclusively regarded as being inferior, and since I was still new to the indie scene, after a childhood full of outsourcing my taste to pop radio, I didn’t trust myself at all to think otherwise.
This turned out to be a huge gift: while I was busy playing all their other records to death, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant and The Boy With the Arab Strap still feel fresh to me today in a way that the rest (which I still love, of course) never will again.
So when I’m jonesing for Belle, those are the two albums I tend to play these days. And The Life Pursuit, because that one is perfect. OK, and the other ones sometimes, too. What was my point again?
I’ve been feeling blue
And I don’t know what to do
And I never get a thrill
And they threw me out of school
Cause I swore at all the teachers
Because they never teach us
A thing I want to know
We do Chemistry, Biology and Maths
I want Poetry and Music and some laughs
And I don’t think it’s an awful lot to ask
Family Tree - song by Belle & Sebastian | Spotify
Belle & Sebastian · Song · 2000
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Thanks for reading. Please take care, and write back if you can!
Love,
Aaron