The Last Word On Nothing

I’m generally skeptical of the vast majority of things labeled as “self care” these days. Plenty of people have written about this, about how “self care” has become overrun with basic consumerism and aesthetically engineered Instagram posts rather than, you know, actually stuff that helps you care for yourself. So recently, when the The New York Times published a clever little piece asking journalists in their newsroom how they thought about self care, I prepared to roll my eyes. And a lot of the advice in here is certainly eye-roll worthy. But one piece stuck out to me.

Choire Sicha, co-founder of The Awl and now the editor of The New York Times Styles section wrote this:

I’m like a working dog who sometimes forgets it. I spend a lot of time bringing tennis balls to people who didn’t ever ask for them and then I stare at everyone and wonder why they’re not throwing the tennis ball for me. The “tennis ball” is usually a memo of some kind. Then when no one throws my ball I go to lay down for a while and then I become sad. Soon I become a confused prissy toy dog pouting on a pillow.

The only way I ever feel better is through sheer brute accomplishment or doing something for someone who isn’t me so I can forget about how dumb I feel.

What kind of dog are you? I’m mostly attracted to herding dogs. I’m a loner who likes to get rounded up. Shove me around, I’m there for it! I like hounds too, they make good novelists and songwriters and painters, they always smell something weird far away and then they wander off towards it then I have to help them bring it back. They are always all muddy and I get to complain about it.

I also like terriers because they dig out rats and their secrets. They make good reporters and publicists. The yapping is excruciating though. You know who you are.

If you don’t know what kind of dog you are you don’t know how to take care of yourself. I have to take care of myself by making a list of things and doing them. If I don’t do them I am overcome with a crippling grey cloud that results in overly long soggy showers and needs to nap and watch many episodes of T.V. shows that are set in space. Work is the only thing to do before we are all put down.

Also if you don’t know what kind of dog you are then you’re missing out, or you are a cat which is okay, but not great, and I say that with a whole lot of respect. But cats will never have the fulfillment of a job. Please read my memos.

I’ve been using this analogy all ton recently. I have a friend who’s a great editor who I think is a border collie: he likes to get everybody around him into the optimal order. I have another friend who, god bless her, is a Pomeranian: for her, style comes before all else. And lord is she stylish. I have another friend, an investigative reporter, who is a bloodhound. Once she is on a scent she cannot give it up.

Like Choire, I am a retriever. I think this is what makes freelancing work for me — I pitch and pitch and pitch and never get tired of it. I sometimes even pitch editors stories that I don’t want to write, I just think they’re interesting and that someone should write them. I write detailed memos for weird projects and send them to editors who just wanted me to pitch a feature. I have a running lists of projects it would be cool to do that I mostly just want to tell people about, more than I even want to do them.

For the past few weeks I’ve been in a funk. I’m sure some of it has to do with the news, writ large, of course. We show no sign that we’ll do a single thing to stop climate change, which will ravage the Earth in as little as ten years, journalists are getting murdered all around the world, the President is trying to systematically remove the rights of trans people, I could go on. But this funk was a little different than the usual baseline funk brought on be all that. And now that I know what kind of dog I am, I can actually explain it.

Right now I’m in a bit of project purgatory. I’ve pitched a bunch of things, and I’m very excited about them all. I’ve brought well-loved and probably a-little-too-slobbery balls to a handful of places. Those places have taken the balls and told me that they will get back to me on them. And now I wait for them to decide whether they are indeed going to throw the balls back for me to chase.

At this point, I have brought enough balls to enough people that if they all decide to throw the ball at the same time, I will be in a bit of a pickle. Here is live footage of future me if every ball I’ve brought someone is thrown back:

Because of this, I also know that I need to stop bringing balls to people for the moment. But I’m a retriever! Ball bringing is what I do! It’s my thing. Without that, I’m truly at a loss for what I should be doing. How can I feel fulfilled as a dog/worker without bringing balls to people!?

This isn’t to say I don’t have work to do, oh boy do I have work to do! But I always feel best when the work I have is accompanied by bringing new balls to new people. Right now I am not allowed to give anybody any more balls. And this ball purgatory feels very strange and bad, like when you tell your not-that-smart retriever that it’s time to stop playing fetch. This is me right now:

So for all my skepticism about self care tips, I have to say, Choire is right. Knowing what kind of dog I am actually is helping. I know that there will soon be balls for me to chase and drop into people’s laps at a barbecue when really they just wanted some potato salad and not some nasty ball. Soon I will be back to my retrieving ways, I just have to be patient. But I’m not a German Shepherd, okay? Patience is not my thing. Now will someone please throw me a ball?