Here we go with the Friday night depression: Twisty wants to know what “fun” is, and how it is affected by class and dominant culture.
Fuck yeah it’s affected by class and dominant culture. Today I heard Annette Bening, whom I love, on NPR talking about the need for excess in order to be creative. I wanted to tell her to shut the fuck up, talking about “balance” with her four kids and movie career, the importance of staying creative. It’s much easier to be creative and whimsical when you have a couple of nannies, fame on the level of royalty, good work whenever you feel like it, and millions of dollars in the bank. Excess, indeed. I’m tired of receiving unwanted advice on the good life from fucking celebrities.
I haven’t had fun in awhile, longer than is comfortable to admit. I don’t get to see E, and when I do I’m exhausted. I see Chef in weird increments thanks to opposite schedules. Many of my friends have moved out of town, and I don’t have time to see the ones who live close anyway. Parties stress me out, and anything else I enjoy is too expensive. The last thing I got excited about was discovering there is an American Studies program at Purdue.*
The truth is, I’m too tired for fun, and all the fun I do have is related to trying to make the best of a shitty situation. I have fun mocking my bank account, bitching about my circumstances, and sometimes, when I’m less negative, I am able to find fun observing the quirkiness, the sheer humanity, of the public. A man picks a wedgie in a parking lot, and a woman digs at her nose while stopped at a stoplight. A cat beats up a baby on YouTube.
When I find myself in a sudden explosive rant I can turn a phrase, and lord, do I have fun with it. But this is anger, partly, laughing because there is no other option. Sometimes I just want to drop out. Mama’s having a spell. The truth is that I am profoundly unhappy with most of my life, and without my small support system I would be completely, utterly broken. To be melodramatic, I think this is the result of profound disappointment: no, you’re not a unique snowflake, you’ll never write the Great American Novel; no, you’re not all that special or smart or cool or funny. You and everyone else are plodding along, trying to make the best of unfair circumstances. The downfall of having expectations.
My beloved therapist of olde used to tell me she wished I could give a hearty belly laugh. I can laugh, I told her, I’m just not that happy about it.
In other news, I wish I had insurance. Between cavities and wisdom teeth, half-blindness, a month-long whooping cough, Prozac-lust, and a need for hospitalization for treatment of “exhaustion,” insurance would make for a damned good time. Universal healthcare: that would be fun.
________
* Har-ry Targ! Har-ry Targ! (…lives across the street.)
Lauren, I could have written that entire post and I have echoes of that refrain all over my own blog. I am sick to death of how pleasure has become such a class-defining quality with the have-nots also apparently not needing any kind of balance or fun.
I predict that with the ever-shrinking middle-class, this will become even more pronounced over the next several years.
I’m just going to keep telling you this. It will get better. Promise.
See, I KNEW you shouldn’t have had that kid! (Please know that I am kidding.)
But seriously, what the fuck would you do without the Internet? My heart goes out to all those who’ve suffered in isolation before.
“no, you’re not all that special or smart or cool or funny”
Well, that’s certainly not true. You may not be going to write the Great American Novel, and I agree with you that there seems to be rather more plodding than I had hoped, but you are very smart and cool and funny. Just think of all you’ve accomplished on teh internets. Small comfort when you can’t afford to go to the doctor, I know, but it’s one thing to think your situation sucks, another to think that you do. The latter just isn’t true. And, of course, your son…
In the olden days of my mom’s yoot, her (lower) class social groups were people that lived on the same block for 45 years and had fun by getting drunk while playing music in the kitchen. Maybe there’d be fisticuffs.
I think fun is hard to have if there are few people on the same wavelength to have fun with.
And I do think fun has been awfully commodified, and we move around more, and there’s less community to help keep an eye on the gaggle of kids while doing activity X - be that music or little plays or cards or sports.
(This is why I’ve threatened to break the legs of my friends should they even *think* of moving away. Okay… Okay. I jest. The truth is, tho’, that having drunk women in my living room laughing and trying not to wake the children is the best definition of fun I know.)
I don’t think we’re meant to be so alone raising our kids. It’s too bloody much work. It really, really is. I’m not meaning partner, either: I’m meaning groups of people and their kids of different ages and everyone has got an eye out and sometimes meals are shared and always work is shared.
There are flaws in such a system, too. Like everyone knowing everything and the horrible attack of gossip. If you can’t get away… I’m not fetishizing the “past”, but I do think there’s something to the organization of society that’s in flux, and things have been misplaced.
I wish you goddamn had insurance too. That makes me the most mad of all. How are you supposed to “optimize” your “potential” and “take risks” to make it in this system if you’re sick and tired and worked to exhaustion and in pain? Gargh.
No. The system is broken.
Not you.
Miranda, I’m not sure this si something that it has become - I think it has always been that way, to some degree. Before it was just accepted (children working etc.), while now, the mass media culture makes it clear that it’s a deficit.
Insurance would be nice. This was one of my main motivating factors when I decided to become an RN. I want decent health insurance.
I have an appointment with my dentist for a teeth cleaning in 2 weeks, and I have no clue how I am going to pay for it. My wisdom teeth desperately need to come out, but it’s about $200 per tooth for the extraction. Of course, all 4 of mine need to go. I probably wouldn’t be able to afford the prescription for the pain pills I would need after the whole ordeal.
It sucks to be poor.
I’m going to go into crabby old fart mode, so bear with me, but…
First, you’ve accomplished the goals you set for yourself. You acquired a college degree, are a good mother and companion, and you’re made your dent against society via Feministe. You’d be surprised how many don’t get halfway to their set goals.
You need new ones. Don’t care what they are, but you need to figure out what they should be, figure out how to achieve them, and achieve them. It may mean leaving Indiana, it may mean creating a whole new social structure. But failure is assured if you plant your ass, whine, fume, and do nothing else.
Second, is life hard in your 20’s? Especially nowadays? Yup. Was for me too, was for my dad and mom too. They had a lot more opportunities, I think, and I think my generation had more than you, but I also remember my parents marrying early but being very careful with their finances, being the first among their friends to afford a mortgage, waiting four years to have kids after getting married, then getting slammed right after my mother was pregnant with me by an eleven-month steelworkers strike (my dad worked at US Steel at the time). My dad didn’t even consider college as an option until he was 24 and had a wife and two kids to support, but he knew what he wanted and, with a few stumbles, he got there.
And then realized he didn’t want it. He instead found that teaching high school was his thing far more than being a stockbroker, switched careers and never looked back, happy as a clam.
And as you need to figure what your next plans are and how to get there, you also need to figure out what you deem “fun” versus “contentment”. I have music, books, the web, my daughter that I raise alone and from which I derive more joy and pride than I ever thought possible. I enjoy them, they give me contentment. “Fun” is what you make of life and what it throws at you in general. Granted the commercialized world wants to convince you otherwise – tell them to screw themselves, if need be, but determine, for yourself, what “contentment” is, and life in general will eventually become more “fun”.
But first and foremost, Lauren, get off your butt and research what thrills you in terms of how to make a living, then make a plan, then go after it. Eventually the jobs will come, the money will come, the half-assed or better benefits will come. Your ready to move on to the next stage in your life – get started.
(I’m sorry if this sounds clipped, but I’ve been busting my ass with GOTV recently, and I’m tired of the listless and pathetic folks that won’t do shit when we’re almost at the point of accomplishing Stage 1 of Kicking W’s Ass Out of the White House.)
palamedes, I don’t know whether it’s my place to say so, but as a person who’s now a decade into an off-and-on depression (and counting), and spending most of my time these days looking around and wondering what the hell happened to that life I was supposed to have, I just question the effectiveness of the “Focus on your goals and try harder” category of advice. Certainly, it’s useful to remember your goals and try not to succumb to despair. But since you brought up being tired - obviously I can only speak for myself here, but a lot of what Lauren wrote sounds familiar to me - sometimes “tired” is a long, long time going away. For me, at least, when I spend most of the day feeling the kind of tired that’s like a bag of wet sand in my chest, the idea of working even harder than it takes to get up in the morning is sort of daunting.
Just, for what it’s worth. Speaking for myself, I’ve heard that kind of advice a lot, and for all that it’s true, to an extent, and obvious, it’s also very frustrating sometimes.
Don’t know if this is an option for the wisdom-teeth people, but I got mine removed at our University’s school of dentistry. Had my only root canal there. The big minus (other than having a student who’s a little unsure): it took 4 weeks? I think? For the root canal, and that was after a bit of a wait to get in the chair. The big plus: it cost me $175. Also, the wisdom teeth were $50/pop. There are lots of practised dentist-professors on staff, and they were there for each procedure and in heavy consultation, so I never felt like I’d end up with my teeth in my brain or anything.
Of course, you need a school of dentistry nearby. When I was growing up, we had no such thing - but we did have a school of optometry nearby, and that was useful.
Also, counselling at schools of psych, physio at schools of physio, etc. etc. I am a heavy user of students-in-training.
(( All dollar amounts in Cdn.))
JC, seriously. The internet has been a savior. Blogging, too. It’s embarassing to admit to my real life friends, but blogging has kept me from a life of real isolation.
Arwen, I have the drunken women in my living room thang going on tonight.
Also, I have discovered the secret to cheap fun this evening: wigs.
Arwen;
I don’t think Purdue has a school of Dentistry, but IU at Bloomington does, as does IUPUI in Indianapolis. And I’m certain the cheaper “learning on your teeth” option exists at both places.
Astrotango;
There’s no doubt that clinical depression - for that matter, everyday blues - and such slows the desire to do much of anything useful to you, but as it’s also typically true that the meds can only take you so far until you reach a point where effective therapy is the next step towards living a whole life again, so also is figuring out what gives you a sense of purpose and a desire to do more/be more that is the bridge to a better life once you’ve hit a plateau in accomplishing your goals. If the issue for Lauren is meds, then she should seek them out. But if that becomes an excuse for not moving beyond where they can place you once in use, as I have seen too often for too long, then they become an excuse for “schlumping in place”.
And if your goals no longer excite you (which isn’t the issue here for Lauren, but “what to do next”, or at least, so I interpret things), it’s time to seek ones that make you want to do something about them.
I just question the effectiveness of the “Focus on your goals and try harder” category of advice.
As someone who shares with quite a number of other people the affliction/blessing of ADD, I can vouch for the fact that someone like me with ADD is very likely, in fact, to respond to such advice with a hearty “Go Fuck Yourself.” No matter how well-intended the advice may be.
Word, Chris.
Though I don’t feel that my ADD is in any way a blessing.
Lauren, first off, please know that for whatever it is worth to you, you are very much in my thoughts and prayers.
Second off, it’s a reminder to me — who blogs at great length about his recreational activities — that I need to be more careful about how I write about how it is that I live. I mustn’t confuse good fortune with virtue.
Thank you for being so candid; blessings.
Though I don’t feel that my ADD is in any way a blessing.
I know how that feels, L. Believe me.
I couldn’t write the way I do without mine, though. So speaking only for me, etc.
World of Warcraft. $15/month, hours and hours of fun.
I couldn’t write the way I do without mine, though. So speaking only for me, etc.
Oh, I understand, Chris. Really, I wouldn’t be who I am without it, and that’s not a totally bad thing.
palamedes, let’s forget about clinical depression. Let’s not even consider brain chemistry; let’s stipulate circumstances and only that. I still want you to understand the triage that goes on. Even if — tabula rasa, no history, no genetics, no life lived, we’re talking about a person as she exists now and only now — we go on to suggest hey, just focus on the future and work, we still have to take into account current circumstances. To wit: if you’re fighting as hard as you can not to sink beneath the quicksand, advice about how it’s just as simple as keeping your eyes on the horizon tends to sound hollow at best. In general, it just sounds absurd.
Try this:
Sit down and write down your accomplishments and those not reached. Then write down goals reached and those yeet to be accomplished. You will be surprised at what you have done. (I repeat someone who noted your son, your college degree and your outstanding, successful blog history. I am sure there are others.) You have secured a job, right? What kind of timeline are you giving yourself? Then start planning what it is you want to do and how you expect to achieve that. I know it sounds simple on papaer, but it is a start to going in the direction you want to go.
Not something I would suggest to people who get hooked on computer games. I have seen people drop out of their education because of this game, and one of friends dumped her then-boyfriend, because he couldn’t understand how to prioritize correctly (hint: games are not more important than quality time with your partner, especially not when both of you are very busy at work).
I’m walking past here and I want to say that in counseling they always try to get us to stay away from advice giving, because it doesn’t let the person explore the issues they need to explore. Sometimes why you want to do this or why you feel this way or coming to a solution on your own is more important than following the right advice.
a-go;
Part of what allows you to deal with the here and now is having something to work toward. That’s not an absurdity. Per Joseph Addison, “The great essentials for happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.”
If the point is “What do I do with my ‘now’ to make it better?”, then that’s a different question. I answered a sliver of that, if you’ll read above, with the closest dental school options in Lauren’s area. I don’t like going too far into that for someone else, though, because that’s a more personal “How do I get by financially, day to day?” issue, and you don’t tell people how to pay their rent unless they want to discuss that issue, which I didn’t see in Lauren’s commentary. (That said, if Lauren ever asks for financial help to move on to the next stage in her life, or to cover needed dental work, I’d toss into the kitty in a heartbeat. I’ve done so for other friends, and in fact have a relatively new roommate at the moment because she had to choose between paying for removing a cancerous mass in her intenstines or paying the rent.)
What I hear, instead, in part, is “LIfe sucks for me, and I hate people telling me what consititues having a good life/good time while having no idea of what I deal with on a regular basis.”
I know that life can be incredibly hard for some of us. What defines you, I’ve always thought, is how you react when the worst happens in your life. I’ve seen my wife become severely mentally ill, then refuse her meds consistently once she was stabilized. I was forced to accept a divorce, fought for my then under-two-year-old’s majority custody for over five years when my ex, through negilgence caused by still refusing to take her meds, put her at risk, all the while fighting her parents who couldn’t (and still don’t) accept her illness, transforming their guilt and frustration into rage at me, that I somehow caused this to happen. (Oh, and God told them personally that it was all my fault. That I maintianed my faith in the midst of that bunch of nasty was a small miracle.)
There were some very long days when I didn’t do much, didn’t care, didn’t know how I was going to get through, felt pissed off at those who continued to have what at least seemed to be happier, more fulfilling lives. Spent, muddled, hanging on, frustrated.
But part of what got me through was figuring out what I could do, and what I couldn’t. What I was now responsible for, and what I wasn’t. That which I could change, that which I could improve, I did my best to make so. That which I couldn’t, I had to let go of. And what I could affect, I figured out how to deal with.
And while life isn’t by any means perfect, I make a living, I make a small difference in the world in which I live, my now thirteen year old daughter is whole, happy and sensible for her age (though still very, very thirteen), and I’ve made and followed through on most of my plans. I still have a few to complete, and have a few new ones on tap.
It’s still not an easy life, though I’ve no right to complain. My daughter suffers from dyspraxia, which some in the education system want to treat as a mild ADD and which some want to ignore outright. After suffering four years of my group at work being threatened with outright layoff, and a year of peace, my employer has decided to outsource a bit of what we do, causing a lot of infighting that doesn’t see an end anytime soon.
You do what you can. Part of what makes the rough times liveable is hope and dreams. Both best become reality via figuring out how to make them into something tangible.
Yea, universal healthcare would be a damn hoot! :) Yesterday I had my sons at a campout. My son took a serious tumble and the first thing I thought of was “crap, no insurance”. He was fine and I was relieved. I felt guilty because my relief wasn’t just that he was okay but also that he wouldn’t require medical attention because that would cripple my already wounded bank account. I watched Grey’s Anatomy the other night, the one where the kid was skateboarding and fell on a pile of yard debris and ended up with a tree branch through his middle, and all I could think about the whole time was how much that would cost. It consumes your whole way of thinking, worrying about how you will care for yourself or your loved ones if anything were to happen.
I feel like I am literally checking off days that we haven’t gotten into accidents or needed medical care–you know like those posters they have in work places “20 days without an accident.” I feel like I am thumbing my nose at fate and that we are bound to have something happen “just because.”
I too had to have dental work, a root canal and also a crown to cover it. The estimates for the work were upwards of $1500. I went home and cried. Luckily, my endodontist discounted my procedure and that helped. I still owe him the money, the procedure was done a couple months ago. Another thing hanging over my head.
As for fun. Thank goodness for the internet. I would be completely socially disconnected if I didn’t have it. In order to get out of the house, I have to pay a sitter and whatever i’m doing has to meet the is-it-worth-the-babysitting-money criteria. And then of course you generally need money to do something with while you are out. Even a simple night out can equate to a week or two of groceries. So I stay home a lot.
Sometimes I feel like an observer in life. I know people my age and educational background are having nice dinners at fancy restaurants and watching theater and hanging out at trendy nightclubs and going to great concerts, while wearing great clothes and driving properly insured cars. I would like to say that just spending time with my children smelling the roses of life was enough for me (and it is a wonderful thing, don’t get me wrong) but dang, everynow and then it would be nice to have to use what little extra money I have to pay for something fun for myself instead of for unreimbursed medical expenses.
This was a good post. :) Thanks.
As a person who spend their twenties living on about $6 an hour, with no benefits at all, I want to shed my one pearl of hard-won wisdom:
If you are too tired to do more than shuffle groggily through your day, you are probably sick. YOu probably have a bacterial infection of some kind (sinusitis, bronchitis, cervicitis) and you need to go to the doctor. NOT going can make bacterial infection chronic (your body stops fighting it) and that is a very bad outcome. GOING to the doctor and getting some antibiotics, and taking them ALL can lift you back into sanity.
It is ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE when you are truly money-poor to justify going to the doctor, (especially when you are relatively young and strong) but if you are that tired, do it. We are told by our economic overlords to just take some over the counter crap and keep pushing our exhausted bodies so we can make more $ for the Man….and we internalize it. We buy this shit. I can’t believe I bought it for as long as I did.
Oh, and I vote for universal health insurance! Where do I cast my vote? (looks around)
(seriously though, I already voted (early Texas Voting) and I voted FOR those who are more LIKELY to let us have health insurance SOMEDAY)
Oh, Jesus, she’s doing it again.
Miranda, I’m not sure this si something that it has become - I think it has always been that way, to some degree. Before it was just accepted (children working etc.), while now, the mass media culture makes it clear that it’s a deficit.
Exactly. It’s a Calvinist sort of reward, fun for its health benefits rather than fun for the sake of pleasure. And the plebes are being castigated for failing to make time for fun just as they are being castigated for failing to make time for exercise, sleep, quality childcare time, and balanced homemade meals. Lazy neglectful lardassed sugarveined wet blankets, all of them.