I'm not doing the best I can
I never was, neither are you, and that's ok
Do you remember when women started saying “we’re all just doing the best we can” to each other? I’m genuinely asking. I want to say it was during the pandemic when we were not, in fact, doing the best we could. But perhaps we’ve been saying this for a while now, as a more sober and evolved version of the chirpy “there’s no such thing as perfect!”
I don’t think men say this to one another, do they? If you are a man and say this to your friends, please let me know. I know from working with many editors that one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer and thinker is sweeping generalizations, that “everyone” does this or “men” do that and “women” do something else that’s obviously better.
Anyway, I’ve had a running joke that’s one of those jokes that’s less funny than it is just true. Every time someone remarks, “We’re all just doing the best we can, right?” I always respond, “Well, I’m not.”
Ok, I take it back, it is funny.
That isn’t to say that I don’t try. Or, actually, that this isn’t where the bar is set internally for most of us. At some point we learned that we should always be doing better, that we are never good enough, that there is always room for improvement. There couldn’t be anything wrong with that, could there? Yeah, there is. Not that we shouldn’t be looking for ways that we might be falling short for ourselves, the people we love, and our communities. But rather that this relentless self-focused bettering disregards the conditions and systems that surround us. It leans into a fear-based, performance-focused, and quite-convenient-for-those-in-power American mindset that it’s all up to the individual to fix whatever isn’t working, no matter how insurmountable.
So, over the past five years especially? No, I’m not doing the best I can. Best is a high bar, the highest, it’s what Olympic podiums are for and even then there are two lower steps. Suckers.
Can you imagine doing anything the best you can all the time? Have you ever witnessed the state of marathon runners at the finish line? It’s safe to assume that they’re all doing their best, pushing themselves to the absolute limits of their physical ability and mental strength. Do some of those runners seemingly lope across the finish line, exhausted but loosely smiling? Yes. But do you know who catches my attention? The other runners who struggle to reach the finish line with bloody streaks down their shirts from their un-lubed nipples or bloody shoes from their destroyed toenails; the ones collapsing to their knees or crawling on all fours; and the ones running while literally throwing up or crying. If that’s doing your best you can keep it, buddy.
I’m guessing I started making this joke about not doing my best mostly because I’m a contrarian pain in the ass. Say something enough times to me and I’ll start saying the opposite. I’m not proud of it, I just recognize this as a pattern that only seems to be deepening with age.
To prove this point, I recently thought about a piece that I wrote during the earliest, scariest moments of pandemic lockdown. It originated as a series of tweets (those were the days!) that an editor at The Cut asked me to expand into a service article. “Now Is the Perfect Time to Lower the Parenting Bar” ended up going viral, even landing me an interview with PBS NewsHour. I have never had more viral (that word! at that time!) pieces than I had during those early weeks of the pandemic. I’m not sure what that says about me other than I seem to be built, creatively anyway, for the end of the world.
I dreaded reading that piece again, wondering how naive or unrealistic it would seem now, but then I read this:
You can do this. You just aren’t going to do it well. But that’s okay, none of us are.
Five years later, here we are. And it feels truer than ever.
In those early days of the pandemic we were ever so briefly pulling in the same direction. It didn’t last, I know this, but still. Since then—and I don’t need to tell you this if you’re sentient—we’ve all drifted further and further from each other, God’s light, and Satan’s je ne sais quoi.
The gulf between systemic failure (and now willful and calculated destruction) and individual “responsibility” or control (i.e. doing the best we can) widens exponentially by the day. We cannot gentle parent, optimize, nor strength train our way out of what is unfolding now. No one is in charge, least of all us peasants. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be taking care of ourselves and others, or that we should just give up. We each need to do what we can, when we can, to feel emotionally fit for the war we have been thrust into. Whether you accept this or not, we’re in the fight of our lives.
This is where I’m starting: working on accepting certain things about my life so I can move away from a relentless self-focus, an exhausting bettering. I’m accepting that I’m going to be stringing my life together indefinitely. That, sure, endless economic chaos, the collapse of funding for the arts, and the reality of my own temperament may have forced this acceptance, but I’m finally seeing that this is also where I’m most comfortable, what suits me. I keep trying to create a “normal” life but I am not a “normal” person. There isn’t one job, one city, one country, (or one person or partner) that’s going to solve everything for me.
There also isn’t a single industry I’m interested in that hasn’t collapsed, consolidated, or isn’t in some sort of “evolution”. Meanwhile AI is literally eating my books and draining the world of its water but hey what’s a little environmental racism/classism and a whole lot of profits between frenemies? I’m accepting that this is not the world I wanted nor expected, but it is the world I (we) currently have.
We are living in an era of cruelty, inhumanity, and Super Villains. This is no time to also be ruthless with ourselves about ourselves. I write books about my life and this Substack (mostly) about my life and what I’m saying is I need to turn away from thinking about my life so goddamn much. This is a luxury that so many of us have, while others are suffering and wondering where the rest of the world is, why no one seems to care. That is actually the space for doing better, for doing our best, for even trying.
But when it comes to thinking solely about ourselves, the arbitrary standards we hold ourselves to, and the unrealistic self-sufficiency we keep demanding, allow me to unashamedly quote myself from that article in The Cut:
Set the bar low.
Lower.
Keep going.
Right there.
Related
The first three pieces below are worth spending time with, because they’re in conversation with one another, with an exquisite range of voice and POV — from political to creative to caregiving to explosive young rage.
“The World Has Always Been On Fire” by
“Everyone I know is worried about work” by
“WHY ARE THERE NO FUCKING JOBS?” by
You could wear this while wondering what the hell is happening.
May we all be this fish someday:
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You can find my work for brands here.
You can find me wasting time on Instagram and Bluesky.
Thank you for this wisdom.
Oooooof! The marathon analogy really got me…been there, done that, got the tee-shirt (life-wise not running-wise), and still trying to recover! And this is a great reminder my “recovery state”/“normal operating state” must be at a much lower bar than I had before. 🙏♥️