I’ve been drinking more water than usual, filling up my 660ml olive green Hydro Flask with fridge-cold water at least three times a day. I keep it in my eye line, or I hold it when I’m walking, just so I remember to hydrate.
The other day I walked out of the grocery store with an arm full of green: cucumber, avocado, spinach, green beans. I had grand plans of daily morning smoothies and only eating alkaline vegetables, whatever that meant. I’d been advised to stay away from spicy and acidic foods. A Google search revealed to me that almost everything has acid in it. I was fearful of what I should eat.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot more about what is good for me. It’s coincided with an obsession with ‘feeling my age’. And ‘not feeling 100%’, which I parrot to almost everyone I encounter at least once a month since I had COVID for the first time last year. I feel weaker. Both in mind and body. It’s hardly a novel idea to admit that wellness is a largely patriarchal, capitalist concept, marketed to women so they’ll continue to consume, whether it’s a self-care kit or an alcohol free spirit. I drop a £40 jar of adaptogens that will make me feel “calm, receptive and ‘aligned’ into my virtual basket. Click.
Whilst we were on holiday, my friend told me about the difference between hard and soft fascinations. We had been discussing our intrinsic inability to ‘rest’, as varying versions of Type A personalities, where every moment must be planned and educational. Apart from when I’m sleeping, I am always overthinking. Trying to recall an article about cryptocurrency, or find a podcast that will further my understanding of the human condition, or simply watching a tv programme whilst also chasing invoices or replying to emails I should have replied to weeks ago. Anyway, these are all considered ‘hard’ fascinations. Activities that require your brain to switch on and concentrate. Even listening to music or watching a terrible tv show count, despite me believing I was resting and being very passive whilst putting on episode after episode, escaping into another world.
Soft fascination can be defined as attention held by a less active or stimulating activity that provides the opportunity to reflect and introspect. Soft fascination involves reflection and allows sense-making, contrary to hard fascination, which is focused on tasks, entertainment, and reducing boredom. The idea behind soft fascination is that our minds require moments of downtime when our attention is softly focused (for instance, during meditation or spending time outdoors) rather than intensely focused while draining mental energy, such as working hard to meet a deadline or vigorously exercising.
Soft fascinations that I know are good for me, personally, include: swimming in natural bodies of water. Going for a walk in the woods. Watching the clouds move across the sky. All very typical, clichéd pastoral pastimes. I know you don’t need to be doing these all the time in order for your brain to be rested. I’ll swim for 20 minutes and feel good. I’ll walk through the woods for half an hour and feel good. I’ll stare at the clouds for five minutes and feel good. Yet there are times when arriving at these moments feel impossible.
I woke up this morning determined to go for a swim at the ponds, but I was sleepy and the thought of getting on a bus and travelling for 45 minutes didn’t appeal, so I stayed in bed a bit longer. Maybe that was good for me though, I reason with myself. It’s better to rest when you’re feeling tired than to force yourself into doing something just for the sake of it being ‘good for you’, right? I remember something I’d listened to about how millennials were constantly trying to avoid anything that felt ‘challenging’, babying ourselves into not replying to a text for fear of it stripping us of energy, or taking a personal day because work felt hard. I had always felt attacked by this sentiment, because it’s true. I often feel like a massive baby, evading real life and lazily slipping away from anything difficult.
There are a lot of opinions on what is good for you: Rest your body so you can restore yourself and continue to grind! Pain is good for you to show you what real life is! Cooking is good for you to connect you to your food! Going out for a meal is good for you (and the economy!) because you deserve to treat yourself! Eating carbs is good for you because fuck anyone telling you what you can and can’t eat! Eating vegetables is actually good for you because your body needs vitamins! Eat alkaline foods, drink water, don’t drink too much, don’t smoke because it might make your HPV worse, avoid acidic foods, avoid spicy foods, eat fat, fast but only intermittently! Read the news to be more aware, but don’t spend your life scrolling on your phone! Delete Instagram but also post so people know you’re alive! Say no to plans if you’re burnt out but don’t make your friends feel like you’re ignoring them! Create boundaries but it’s also ok to let them down!
Welcome to a chaotic slice of my brain right now. It’s hard to bridge the gap between what is actually good for you (what makes you feel good, in the moment, not as a blanket statement), and what people tell you is good for you (broad, sweeping generalisations; ways to further a capitalist agenda; things that work for certain people but not for others). Perhaps I’ve been fed a lie that things that are good for you are not always fun: exercising, taking responsibility, saying no to a third glass of wine, setting boundaries, saying no to people, sometimes saying yes to things you don’t want to do. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have this babying self-care movement which says that you should only do things that make you feel good, and fuck all the rest. I suppose the frustrations arise when we do the things we think are meant to make us feel good (let’s say, drink water) but don’t solve the problem (a headache that persists). I eat healthily to make my body stop aching but it doesn’t work. I wallow and work through my heartbreak yet I still lie awake thinking about the empty space next to me. What these two examples have in common is that they’re reactive, not preventative. A small revelation.
Yesterday I cooked three meals in the kitchen. Two were pretty much the same: butterbeans, breadcrumbs, avocado, egg. The other was a comforting rice bowl with panko-crusted tofu that I’d actually taken the time to do ‘properly’. A meal I made because it had alkaline properties and felt whole and good and fit within that slippery definition of ‘healthy’, and I thought might absolve me of this terrible throat ulcer I’m experiencing (it didn’t, but it did taste quite nice).
Before then, I thought about going out for groceries approximately four times, getting dressed and undressed twice, before I stepped out and walked 20 minutes to pick up some vegetables and eat a mint Happy Endings ice-cream sandwich as I walked down Upper Street. I couldn’t tell if it was good for me to be out in the sun, away from my flat – where I can so easily hole up in for days at a time, wistful and longing for the first flourish of lockdown, when I had an excuse to constantly be alone – or whether it would have been better for me to stay home and rest, considering my head was pounding and my throat was not feeling much better. I wanted someone to tell me to rest. I wanted someone tell me to walk. I suddenly felt so very tired of having to make decisions for myself (i.e. be an adult) and actually felt a sudden need to be patronised and told whether what I was doing – who I am – was good or not. Another cliché, I know.
I read a George Saunders newsletter that answers a question about whether it’s ‘ok’ to take a break from writing. “One skill we can develop is to differentiate between an empty well that needs refilling and…avoidance,” he writes. “In truth, one of the most important skills for an artist is this distinguishing between the different, subtle mind-states she finds herself in - which to trust, which to disregard?” We are constantly evaluating. Interrogating what’s good for us. But do we ever know?