Self-Improvement Doesn’t Work for Everyone
A gentle critique.
It only took a week.
My partner had to go out of town for a funeral. We decided I’d stay home with the baby, because babies on planes make everyone miserable. A day later she caught a respiratory infection from daycare, which led to a night at an emergency clinic on top of juggling a job and a side hustle. By the end of that week I was sick, tired, and cranky.
That’s when it hit me:
This is what single parents feel like…
all the time.
Since then, we’ve lost our daycare to a pandemic. It didn’t matter. Like everyone else, we were still expected to work our jobs and run our side hustles, because even dual income households walk a financial tight rope. Now when we need rest and recovery time more than ever, we’re facing an onslaught of demands from our employers, while riding along the edge of economic uncertainty. Even my school is talking about increasing our class sizes and teaching loads.
This last year hasn’t stopped bloggers and podcast hosts from cranking out endless prescriptions for mind and body, promising us a chance to make our lives better by attending to habits and attitudes instead of demanding a healthier society. The thing is, I don’t think it’s making us better people…
