This past week was rough. If you follow my writing, you know I had a hearing with the Secretary of State regarding my driver’s license last Tuesday. Long story short, I don’t think it went well at all. I do not have high hopes. I’m preparing myself for bad news and a period of grief. I’ll share more about it after I’ve processed it fully.
Until then, I want to talk about how difficult it is to show up for life while experiencing emotional turbulence beneath the surface. It doesn’t feel natural to stuff everything down and perform. It doesn’t feel natural to go-go-go instead of feel-feel-feel.
Last year at this time, I was working at a local coffee shop. More than half of my coworkers were high school kids looking to squeeze part-time hours into their already busy schedules. What I noticed most about these kids is that they were constantly on the go. The more they crammed into their days, the more praise they received.
During the week, they were expected to go to school from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., have sports practice until 5 p.m., work a four-hour shift, do homework, sleep a few hours, and repeat the next day. Somehow, their weekends were even more jam-packed than their weekdays. They were just kids. And yet, they were being indoctrinated into a life of exhaustion and stress. They were taught to “adult” by sacrificing joy, play, and emotional processing for work.
One of my coworkers was the homecoming queen. She had perfect attendance, played three sports, held down a job, and adhered to a strict plant-based diet. To some, it appeared as if she had it all. To me, she was a sleep-deprived, emotionally absent kid with an eating disorder who was applauded and rewarded for self-neglect. Someone taught her that being a robot is more important than being human. Someone taught her that outward performance outweighed her internal experience. In my eyes, growing up and learning to be “successful” in late-stage capitalism is straight-up abusive.
When did we decide that adulting is better than humaning? Adulting, to me, requires constant normalized misery. It requires using busyness as an addictive distraction, which is incredibly harmful and unnatural. Forever adulting is not sustainable.
I like the idea of humaning because it provides space for emotions. It creates room to slow down and process hard things, like driver’s license hearings. In a society that shuns laziness, I wish my previous high school coworkers were taught to seek balance instead of pushing themselves to the max. Imagine if they were celebrated for self-care instead of self-abandonment.
For me, the antidote to constant adulting is to indulge in the magical healing powers of a weekly rot day. Every Saturday, I allow myself to do nothing except rot in bed. I throw my to-do list in the trash and chill. My only goals are to eat comfort foods, rest, watch bad TV, spend time in nature, have a good cry, and rest some more. Everything else can wait. For one day each week, I permit myself to be a human instead of an adult. I avoid distracting myself with go-go-go mode and enter feel-feel-feel mode.
In a society that teaches us to hustle for self-worth, carving out time to indulge in the magical healing powers of a weekly rot day is a luxury. Thankfully, Michigan is trying to pass a bill that allows high school students five mental health days (a.k.a. rot days) per year. I like this idea. Five days isn’t quite enough, but it’s a step in the right direction. Good work, Big Gretch.
It’s hard to say what will happen with my driver’s license. The last time I went through this process, I drank before and after my hearing with the Secretary of State. I drank because I didn’t understand the magical healing powers of rot days. I drank because I didn’t know how to slow down and regulate myself through emotionally turbulent times. I drank because I was taught to be a robot instead of a human.
This time around, I exerted minimal adulting effort and gave myself maximal rotting time, and it worked. I didn’t drink my way through a historically difficult time. Once again, no matter what happens, this experience is an opportunity to tend to the garden within.
Like the dogwood tree whose white blossoms are popping after a season of dormancy, I, too, can indulge in the magical healing powers of rotting as I await my flowery bloom.
Progress.