I Am Pleased to Announce That I Am Once Again in Decline

 I told you I'd get here. 

While I have retained many of the healthy habits that I began this past fall, I appear to have reached my Job era - everything is failing and my skin is terrible. 

While I'm describing my many failures, I would also like to add that I hate menstruating. I really don't have any right to - I don't experience debilitating pain or heavy bleeding or suicidal thoughts and I know that a lot of people deal with those. I'm not incapacitated by my period but it still rules over me in ways that I find incredibly embarrassing. My mood and work ethic are directly tied to my cycle and I know with complete regularity that I am at the height of my energy two weeks before my period and then feel like my life is falling apart the week before it starts. The moments where I have truly felt like lying down and dying have invariably been followed by my period the next day. 

I hate that I am this unable to control my own body. I feel like a complete failure as a feminist to know that I actually am unstable in my pre-menstrual period and that I fulfil every sexist stereotype of a hysterical woman ruled by hormones. Even if something like a better diet and more exercise would alleviate my symptoms I resent the idea that I would even have to do that much to get my body under control. 

When I wrote about no longer hating myself I wrote about how it was necessary to give up that sense of rational mastery over my own willpower and embrace that good habits come from years of fine-tuning your autopilot. You cannot just get up and will yourself to do what you need to do and instead must set yourself up for success with banal things like eating regularly and laying out your clothes the night before. And while I certainly believe all that I still hate that I can't just get up and will myself to do all my tasks in one day - that I cannot make myself do anything that my body does not want to do. 

I Regret to Inform You That My Life Has Improved

I really do. 

I've long since abandoned this blog and that's mostly because I'm bad at time management. I have a lot of trouble setting goals and maintaining the discipline to accomplish those goals so I just don't get things done without someone else telling me what to do and when. I don't have blogging in my heart and I'm sure I'll make an abandon a few more in my time. 

However, there is another reason. 

This was a rage blog created in my general frustration towards grad school. I am still mad at grad school much of the time but I have also been taking better care of myself so the rage is felt much less keenly. I am getting things done without staying up all night and I can meet deadlines without crying. It's only September so I'm sure that all this rest and time management will fall apart by Reading Week, but for now I'm keeping my head higher above water than usual. 

And I hate how I got here because it was all rather obvious. 

I refuse to read self-help literature and I generally cringe at any kind of helpful advice about overcoming stress and difficulty focusing. I think that it's all a big distraction to keep us from improving our lives in more fundamental ways like demanding better working conditions or a safety net for the vulnerable and a lot of it descends into a kind of religious self-absorption - that salvation is obtained once I have abstained from the distractions of life and embrace the dignity of endless Instagramable toil. That if I work hard enough I will ascend to being a Productive Person. Part of me is suspicious of all this because I actually am religious and tend to know a bad sermon when I hear one. I do think that a lot of self-help is about empowering individuals to the exclusion of collective solutions to life's problems and telling people to work harder and self-improve all the time is a great way to sell stuff. 

And yet. 

At the start of this semester (which is only about 20 days old so get ready for a November post titled "I am pleased to inform you that I am once again in decline) I decided to take some of that insipid internet advice - that I would wake up early, exercise, drink water, and not take my computer to bed. I have followed through with this and now have a morning routine of getting up at 6:50am, using my bike for 15 minutes, doing yoga for 10-12 minutes, having a coffee, taking a shower, and writing in my dissertation diary. I am indeed less stressed, better able to manage my time, and generally better able to gain reasonable perspective about my life and its direction. And I hate it. 

Part of my hates this because it seems too easy. I mean it's not easy, it's taken months to work up to an early (and 6:50 isn't really all that early) wake-up time and over a year to get into a consistent and frequent cleaning routine. I have long fantasized about having ADHD or a serious vitamin deficiency in the hopes that one day a doctor would give me magical pills and I would become effortlessly productive and happy all the time. This is an unbelievably juvenile thing to day dream about but a mystical diagnosis always seemed like such an easy way to fix my life - and have an excuse for all my prior laziness. 

And the prior laziness is really the issue. I hate that I could have just done all this years ago. That I could have been considerably less depressed in that miserable first year of the PhD had I just committed to getting up and getting moving in the morning instead of after 11am. I feel like time was wasted but that's also a very capitalist way of thinking about things - that efficiency was lost to my own human frailty. In actuality, I just don't think that I was ready for that level of self-discipline and care before this point in my life. I just had not matured to the point where I could calm myself down and realize that I could just do the dishes and go back to work later rather than fret so much about my reading time that I ended up doing neither. Everything was so much more overwhelming even a couple years ago and I wasn't in a place where I could manage the maintenance cycle of balancing work and the self-care of eating well and cleaning my home. 

And the thing is, the discipline I have now required less control, not more. I used to become very angry at myself for not having enough willpower - that I couldn't just do things when I wanted to. That I couldn't just stay up all night reading or write for a full 8 hours straight. This past spring I failed once again to obtain a SSHRC grant and I had to admit that this was kind of the end of the road. I didn't need the money but I did need the prestige and now that I was officially a second- or third-rate scholar with no ability to prove that I'm an asset to an academic department. I had to let the dream of an academic career go. I will not get a professorship no matter how much harder I work and I'll... live. Letting that go didn't kill me and if anything I'm liberated by the knowledge that mediocrity doesn't end your life. I will find work and I will carry on because life keeps going and no amount of late night study will stop time from marching on. 

Now that I know that I don't have to be a Super Special Worker Bee to carry on and be happy I leave a lot of things up to habit. I don't will myself to wake up in the morning and be productive- I put my phone in the bathroom and once I go turn the alarm off the automated coffee machine has brewed so I might as well go down the stairs. And my bike is downstairs and it's cold so I might as well paddle around for a bit. Then my legs are sore so why not do a little yoga. Then I might as well shower because my clothes are already laid out from the night before and then once all that's done I'm not sleepy anymore so why not do some writing? And now that I've done all that I guess I'm not a complete failure so I can probably send some emails without people thinking that I'm too useless to talk to. 

I don't psych myself up for any of that, it just happens because they're habits, and they're habits because I did a little bit of work to make a routine everyday for months and months. I hate that my life has improved because the improvement required steady, banal work over time. I did not do anything special or interesting - I just plodded along in my quarantine while gradually deciding that I should probably just relax and embrace the fact that it's not that deep. That I'm just some rando like everyone else. Maybe I'll do something cool one day, but there's no rush to get there. 

This is still a very self-indulgent blog and I'm glad that I can write this out here where no one will ever see it. This is a space to be entirely selfish about my shallow little insights while remaining well out of sight. Since I'm on the (still fairly tenuous) path of self-improvement hopefully I'll get in the habit of thinking of others as much as I think of myself. Self-hatred is a very narcissistic place and now that I'm letting a lot of that go I hope I can progress from self-acceptance to something more outwardly useful.  

I Am Also Over Burnout

And again, not personally, I'm sure I'll be exhausted until the day I die. But much like imposter syndrome, I feel like burnout has become one of those panacea phrases of neoliberalism where we're treating the symptom and not the disease. 

Every day I see another Reddit thread, Facebook post, TikTok, tweet, or even full news article about burnout and how to deal with it. Everyone is giving more than they receive and the answer is always...mindfulness? Deep breathing? A gratitude journal? You'll have to excuse my indignation but burnout doesn't put me in a grateful mood and journaling is just one more task for the endless to-do list. 

I refuse to accept this notion that burnout is a personal failure. And we do think of burnout as failure - don't be deceived by all the shiny mental health awareness posts and helpful little emails from your employer. Your school and workplace don't give a rat's ass about your wellbeing, they just don't want to be liable for your suicide - or worse yet your budding desire to unionize. 

I've recently entered a stage of burnout (or rather what I assume is burnout) where I don't even feel tired - I'm just numb. I don't feel especially stressed or motivated. I'm just sort of stuck in a state of heavy boredom. I don't even want to do fun things like play video games or do my makeup. I don't even want to sleep. I just want to sit here and wait. I'm not even sure what I'm waiting for. Freedom? Punishment? Death? It's like an endless restlessness that nothing can resolve. 

The issue is that no amount of rest will really resolve anything because the work never goes away. A day off just means twice as many emails tomorrow. The longer you're away the more the guilt and dread build up because you know that you'll have to work twice as hard once you're back. 

I don't want to resolve my burnout, I want capitalism to end so I can be free. That's how I feel on days when I don't want to die anyway. 

Approaching the Anniversary

 My lily plant is flowering again. 

It was flowering when the pandemic started and it produced 6 blooms last March. That's the most it's ever had and they reached their full glory in early May. Mid-February feels early for it to produce flowers but time doesn't really mean anything anymore. 

Out of all the ways to measure the passage of time, this one feels oddly poignant to me. The plant only flowers once a year so the buds remind me of last spring. It's gone through an entire life cycle. The beginning of the pandemic feels like both yesterday and eons ago. Staying indoors all day everyday used to seem novel - it was like we were on pause just waiting for things to happen. The pandemic was all-consuming and no one could talk about anything else. Now it's just background noise. 

The unity we once shared in making sourdough and feeling bored at home have all given way to business as usual. I don't make my daily sticky notes or write languidly in my diary anymore because I'm back to writing papers and proposal and lesson plans. There's no more sympathy for playing Animal Crossing all day and I've even stopped resisting the pressure to be productive. I get up at 8am everyday, have a coffee and tool around on the computer, shower at 10am and then get to work. I know that sounds leisurely (and it is) but I used to wake up at 10 and not consume anything until I was on the brink of a depressive episode. 

It's been nearly a year (we're just under a month away from March 13th) and I'm not sure if I've changed completely or not at all. This time last year I had no sleep schedule, never remembered to set the timer on the coffee pot, cleaned sporadically, and could barely cook. Now I do all these things consistently and automatically. I write to do lists and actually get them done. I do some modest meal prepping a few times a week. Will I keep these habits once the lockdown lifts or will the added dynamic of leaving the apartment destroy my careful routines? Am I only good at domestic life when I'm literally trapped at home?

Will all this diligent self-discipline crumble when I realize that I've actually just traded social skills for home care skills? When I go to a restaurant for the first time and feel the weight of my inability to cope with a social situation. When a stranger asks me a question and I don't know what to do next? Will I be nervous and reclusive after all this or will I become belligerently social? Will I want to make up for lost time in an endless drunken party?

I have no idea how I'll carry myself once I have to face the world in person. I already have bizarre personal aesthetics in here. Most of the week I wear the same three sweaters and pairs of sweat pants. Some times I can't even muster up the strength to put on leggings - they just feel too restrictive. But then on Fridays (my teaching days) I have An Outfit. I'll put on real tights and a dress. I'll pick out earrings the night before and wear eyeshadow with nice mascara. I make sure my nails are painted and do my full skincare routine. All for students who probably tune in from bed. When this is all over, will I revel in dressing up or stay in the listless rut of shapeless sweaters and elastic waistbands? I have no idea. 

I know that a lot of this is meaningless introspection - whether I go back to wearing control-top nylons or not does not matter. But it does speak to how small my world has become and how little I can control. So much just happens to me - it's beyond the bounds of what I can even conceptualize as possible. At least earrings and eyeshadow are under my sway. Sometimes. 

The plant will flower and seed and the virus will ebb and flow. I'll be in here trying to get by without much insight into what comes next. 

I Think I'm Over Imposter Syndrome

I mean not personally - I intend to hate myself until the day I die - but I'm ready to stop talking about imposter syndrome on a professional level. 

I'm a grad student (hence the endless melancholy) and I hear about imposter syndrome a lot from my department, my peers, and even my supervisor. Imposter syndrome is the lurking feeling that you aren't actually as smart and capable as you've been led to believe and soon someone will come and expose you as a fraud. Graduate students, especially minoritized and first-generation students, feel this all the time since we're often the first of our kind in a given space and there is immense pressure to not fuck it up lest we prove that people like us really are less capable. People with impostor syndrome feel that their success is not earned, their capabilities overstated, and their spectacular failure inevitable. It can be a paralyzing issue where people become so afraid of being "found out" that they cannot make another move. 

Imposter syndrome comes up everywhere from memes to serious orientation seminars and it's increasingly hard for me to see the term meaning anything. In fact, one of the grad student meme accounts I follow just posted about meta-imposter syndrome where you feel like an imposter because all the capable people around you keep feeling like imposters so clearly you and your inadequacy must be the real imposter. 

Over the past few years this idea has been expanding to the point where every negative feeling felt in graduate school is a matter of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is so prevalent that I'm often left to wonder if I have anywhere else to store my bad feelings. What if I'm actually just a fuck up sometimes and I should feel bad? What exactly does a student without imposter syndrome look like? Are they well-fed, well-rested, and comfortably shitting out papers? Or are they supposed to take on a kind of Moby Dick aesthetic where they are driven to their own destruction by their singular area of research? If I'm not supposed to feel like an imposter then what should I feel like? 

In many ways, I get it. It's reassuring to know that other smart people feel doubt and insecurity. There is a lot of comfort in knowing that other people have ridiculous spirals where they think that a rough class or a rejected paper will somehow lead to destitution. It's also nice when a university can acknowledge that graduate students have feelings and that we aren't just expendable little labour bots. 

But if everyone has imposter syndrome then it clearly isn't a matter of personal deficiency or disorder - it's systemic. And we already knew that it was systemic because the term was coined to describe the ways that gender and racial minorities often feel like they'll be found out as the "affirmative action hire" or perhaps the "token" woman or trans person. First-generation grad students are also made to feel inadequate and out of place because they aren't as familiar with all the clandestine etiquette of academia. But I struggle to see this as a solely internal struggle. For a lot of students, there is in fact someone who wants to "expose" them because their racism, sexism, or classism has led them to believe that some people really are just token entries to fill diversity quotas. Graduate school is an increasingly competitive space where limited spots lead to even more limited jobs. The fear and anxiety aren't just maladjusted reactions to this reality. It's not always all in my head. 

And this is all intentional. An exclusionary system is making people feel excluded and it is, therefore, right to feel excluded and out of place - this is not an anxious overreaction. "Gaslighting" is an incredibly overused term and while I think it means "the process by which someone convinces you that you've lost your grip on reality" I'm not quite sure anymore. But what I am sure of is that it's incredibly convenient for an institution like a university to look out on disabled and BIPOC students and say "Of course we want you here, you feel out of place because of imposter syndrome. You put those ideas in your own head, We haven't been trying to push you out - you made that up all on your own."

By talking about imposter syndrome over and over we are not actually helping anyone - we're telling them to get their feelings in order. A syndrome is a personal trouble and not a public issue so it is left up to individual solutions. We feel bad because we're meant to feel bad. If we felt good we might start asking for pesky things like unions and enough money to eat. 

Of course, some of it is a lot pettier than that. If anything, all this talk of impostor syndrome is just a slightly classier way to have a pissing contest. If everyone is talking on and on about how they have all these accomplishments and work 26 hours a day and still feel like they aren't enough then they're really just humble bragging - they're taking on an air of self-deprecation in order to enumerate all the brilliant things they've done without looking like an ass. Similarly, if your department sits you down on the first day of classes and tells you that imposter syndrome and overwork are common problems then what they're really saying is that everyone is working harder than you. If people feel empty and insecure about their big publications and major grants then you should feel like actual shit for what little you've managed to achieve. 

The university wants us to be happy enough to not kill ourselves (that's bad press after all) but they still want productivity to increase. We are made to feel that we should be research machines and when we can't live up to this impossible ideal we are the problem. We need time management strategies and workshops and counselling and Xanax. The onus is always on the shaken student and never the shaking institution. 

Please Do Not Buy Feminine Wash at The Dollar Store

Now there's a title. 

So I've been watching these TikTok compilations on YouTube because they're actually a good source of cleaning inspiration. There are lots of videos of people organizing the fridge, cleaning the stove, scrubbing the bathroom, etc. and every once in a while someone even has a useful tip. This desire to keep my apartment clean has led me into a series of algorithm directed rabbit holes that venture down into the world of cleaning culture. There are videos on every platform that talk about cleaning from an entertaining, educational, and even therapeutic way. 

The internet is all about spectacle and some of these aforementioned cleaning videos veer into a kind of excess that is both fascinating and concerning. There's an infamous TikTok video (which rumour asserts has been banned from the platform) of someone using at least four different chemicals to clean a toilet. This is not only wasteful but also has some serious potential to gas you to death. The cardinal rule of cleaning is that you don't mix cleaner types and there's rarely any need for more than one cleaner on a given surface anyway. A regular bottle of that blue gel-bleach works just fine and there's no need to risk making a chemical weapon to keep your bathroom in order. There's another unfortunate video of two young women cleaning up after an especially messy roommate. They have to clean his mold ridden room before a new roommate can move in and they resort to mixing bleach and vinegar to get the job done. They don't seem to have hurt themselves but chlorine gas can really fuck you up. 

But you're not here to read about household cleaning, you're here to read about vagina cleaning. I mean I'm going to connect the two, but let me keep things moving. 

The cleaning compilations eventually led to Dollar Tree haul videos where people show off all the random crap they just purchased at their local dollar store variant. Some of these videos are helpful tricks on how to get the most out of cheap products when you're on a budget, but most are just people buying in excess for the sake of content. As much as the conspicuous consumption is hard to watch, there is a kind of second-hand dopamine rush to be gained from watching someone bring home new shiny things. Well, there is until you see something completely asinine - why would you need a special devilled egg tray? Just use a plate. 

Where this starts to get really worrying is the beauty and skin care hauls from the Dollar Store. Not because cheap makeup and lotions are poisonous - most are just fine - but because not one, but several of these videos recommend buying feminine wash and wipes. Apparently you can get a great discount on a packet of perfumed wipes to make your genitals smell like coconuts or forest fruits if you head on down to the local 99c store. 

If you have a vagina you really just need to leave it alone. Unless that soap is some kind of prescription keep it out of there. Nothing should be going inside and even the vulva just needs a gentle once-over with regular mild soap. The vagina is home to its own happy little ecosystem and it doesn't need anything scented to help it along. I hate that we still live in a world where we are made to feel that women's bodies have an inherently offensive odour that can only be cured with more consumerism. 

These videos all have comments where someone warns that douching and scented wipes are not necessary or good for your bits but these comments all have replies from people who claim that they wash all the time but still stink. This is either a) shame imposed by the patriarchy, or b) a recurrent yeast infection from driving all the good bacteria away. Even if you're menstruating you shouldn't be scrubbing around with perfumed wipes, soaps, or even panty-liners.

Additionally, while I'm in the mood to be outraged, there was another video where a girl expressed her delight at finding a mini razor small enough to keep in her purse. Not her travel bag. Her purse. Like she's going to need it on the train or something. Are we expected to shave midday now? The pandemic has caused most of us to forget that shaving is even a concept but were we expected to be that hairless in the time before? Should I have been nervously excusing myself from dinner to get rid of the 5 o'clock shadow on my legs? 

The thing is, these aren't beauty rituals - they're cleaning rituals. These videos also aren't just about individual hygiene proclivities, but insight into the idea that women's bodies require constant specialized cleaning with special products. We are uniquely unclean as women and we had better reign ourselves in and keep our bodies under control. We should keep consuming product after product not just to be pretty, but to just be regularly and boringly clean. We have to get rid of the hair and the wrinkles and the odours and the discharge just to be acceptable to men who don't even wash their asses. The exhaustion of it all. 

As a white cis woman, I won't veer too far out of my lane here, but the idea that women are just kinda ~gross~ seems to extend across to my comrades both trans and cis and any race or class. Of course, I'm probably seen as less gross than people who are far more marginalized by white supremacy. Notions of uncleanliness, contamination, and degeneration are some of the key tools of racism - that's what eugenics are all about. I can't get mad at the videos that recommend dollar store cleaning wipes for your bits because many people face very real consequences for not being perfectly pristine at all times. Women are shamed and even subjected to violence for not living up to these standards. The women and girls who make these videos aren't con-artists working on behalf of Big Douche - they're just trying to help each other out. 

The other point of concern for me is that way that consumption and cleaning are tied to adulthood. That you prove your maturity but having a kind of hygienic mastery over both your internal and external space. I'm sure that passing tips and hacks on to others is an efficient way to prove that you have this kind of mastery. I'm sure that telling people not to buy those Dollar Tree wipes serves the same purpose. 

I'm just tired. I'm tired of the ways that my body is made into a public project over and over again.  I'm tired of the ways that no one - not even other women - will leave us and our bodies alone. 

I Can't Dress My Way Out of This

What are new years resolutions to grad students? What are my options? Write more? Read more? Publish more? Burn my heart out and become a research machine? All we have to give ourselves are admonishments to work more and produce more. So, in my defeat, I decided to sign up for one of those academic support websites because my supervisor offered to pay for it. 

Some of it seems all well and good - support forums, writing workshops, daily check-ins. All harmless if a little banal. Well, it looked that way until I ventured into one of those listicles about how to survive academic life from grad school to tenure. 

I've read hundreds of these. They're on Reddit and Facebook, they're on blogs, they've been written out as Medium articles, and they're even passed around in academic writing groups. I, like everyone else, consume them knowing they don't do any good. They're just survivor-bias dolled up to look like a viable path to jobs that don't exist anymore. Every one of them is the same even though they like to take on different characters - you have the bootstrap guy with rich parents, the follow-your-passions guy who was tenured in 1962, and the you-come-first-self-care lady who wants to sell you a book. 

The list I found on my pricey little writing site was essentially the first type and these are always especially rich when they're written by women. Oh you've never taken a personal day Jan? Good for you for evading the care burden foisted onto the rest of your female peers. I'm sure you've worked so much harder than the rest of us. This list was nothing special, but it had a line that made the whole project of academic self-help turn from generally boring to actively mocking for me. The eighth bullet point advised me with: "Don't start dressing either like a character out of Kafka or a like a hooker."

And you know what? Fuck it. 

That's all it is in the end for women isn't it? Aesthetics. Sexual aesthetics. This site appears to be made up almost entirely of women and here we are giving each other tips for surviving a system we did not make and it all boils right back down to whether or not we're just whores in the end. This was a recommendation for what to do after you earn tenure. You can be a tenured professor and you are still at risk of looking like a hooker and nothing else. It all just dissolves away if someone sees you as sexually promiscuous. Have we really come a long way at all, babies?

This is not to mention the umbrage I take at the idea that hookers are somehow antithetical to education. Are there no knowledgeable hookers? Can women not have both a sexuality and something else to do or are our sex lives still that all-consuming? Here were are selling our intellect and our personal time for barely a living wage and we're going to pretend we're better than sex workers? As if capitalism doesn't make whores of us all? I imagine I could learn far more far better from a hooker than any uptight ~professional~ who doesn't have the courage to realize that we've always already been seen. That modest skirt suit won't save you from anything and nor should it. We shouldn't have to put up such a feeble defense against the students and faculty that harass us. They hate us already and buttoning your blouse won't change their mind. 

If the whole thing is really this fragile can I even avoid being mistaken for a hooker? If it's already a binary between depressive caricature and prostitute does it actually matter how I dress? Why is any of this my fault? Do you really expect me to be so naïve as to think I can dress my way out from under the patriarchy?

And you know what? I am naïve. I really thought that hanging around academia was the best way to live out a feminist life. A place where I could teach and write for the movement. I've been a fool to think that this world was any less damned than the next. This is just one more place where women line up to spit on each other and then convince themselves that it's for our own good. 

Any woman who advises another not to dress like a whore is deluding herself - the world already sees us that way and no amount of respectability will make it go away. Call me defeatist and call me bitter, but I refuse to buy misogyny sold to me as power or safety. 

Dress how you want and let the whole thing burn.