Care a lot
Recently, a straight white guy tried to mansplain threading and bikini waxes to me. I smiled and wandered away. No, actually, I’m not sure about the smile. It might have been a scowl. Difficult to say. I’ve never had much of a poker face and my days of tolerating the senseless monologues of idiotic men are over.
A few days earlier, at the park a different white man had asked where my accent was from. I could have said Ontario. Or Japan. Instead, I channelled Lucille Bluth (RIP), called my puppy, and walked away.
We are living in a liminal time, still in a pandemic but partially vaxxed. Like hibernating animals, gradually, sleepily, returning into the world. I don’t know about you but I’m finding the transition strange. Small talk is a forgotten language. I’m happy to see friends but interacting at length with acquaintances is a bridge too far. And navigating awkward or infuriating conversations? That’s a core competency I’ve lost. I propose this is for the best. Why did we waste so much time and energy frantically searching for the verbal off-ramp in nightmare conversations with people we’d never met before and please god would never meet again, when all the while we could have been at home in soft pants re-watching Spaced?
Let’s leave politeness behind in the beforetimes. Politeness is toxic waste anyway - gaslighting and/ or misogyny and/or racism poorly concealed in the guise of civility.
“It is the summer of caring a lot but not giving any fucks,” says writer Lyz Lenz. AMEN. For me 2021 is shaping up to be this kind of year: lots of care, zero fucks given. Last year, I worked a lot. Too much. Because it turns out the only holidays I take involve planes and since all my trips were cancelled, I just kept thoughtlessly working. And then it was the end of December and I hadn’t taken a break beyond the 10 days I was in Ontario and I was furious. Sometimes burn out manifests as rage. This year my resolutions were: 1. get a puppy and 2. work less. The two are incredibly compatible.
Yeah, I like money. But I’m also a writer and a lot of the work I was doing was unpaid or underpaid. This year, I’m focusing my energy on work I care a lot about. Some of this is mentorship. Some of it is volunteer. A lot is my actual work: writing. For the rest I’m being strategic, saying no quite a bit more than yes.
I used to feel bad (okay, I still do sometimes) turning down requests. Which is illogical. Feeling bad about not wanting to do something is akin to politeness: a waste of energy. Heading into the after times I want to give zero fucks about the silliness that doesn’t matter and care a lot about the things and people that do.
