Digging for deep joy.

Why does surface-level always feel easier? Why does it never work?

As always, check out the audio version of this post to hear me read this essay and talk in more detail about this week’s essay subject (which you can subscribe to on your podcast feed so it populates automatically when it goes live, by the way!). And a reminder for paid subscribers that my March 2024 Month in The Life content is currently live! PS: You can pre-order my debut novel SUCH A BAD INFLUENCE now! And stay tuned for the end of this essay to find out how to get a signed bookplate and friendship bracelet with your pre-order of SABI!

The only thing I have fantasized about changing more than my body is the amount of time I spend thinking about my body. For a long time, the persistence of these thoughts was a bright, flashing signal that, of course, there was something wrong with my body, something to be fixed. Years later, I started to wonder if the thoughts simply meant there was something wrong with me. My brain. My values. My psyche was broken. My ego was huge. Yes, my ability to know that looks or weight didn’t define a person was perfectly in tact, but my belief in this when it came to myself was nearly zero. In relation to body image, someone once told me something like, “Maybe this all will bother you less when you have kids and you have things to focus on other than yourself.” And it’s funny, really, that I had spent so long fantasizing how to feel small, but I had never considered that sometimes someone else can do it for you. I felt like a tiny star dotting an immense sky, a dim light fading, sputtering out. Maybe they were right, I thought. Maybe the problem was me, a brain stuck on all the wrong things, all the time.

Here I was doing the work, getting older and wiser, and the thoughts persisted. There wasn’t a single task that I didn’t imagine the alternate version of. What would this be like if I was thinner? What would that feel like if I was hotter? It was like a merry-go-round of shame, each seat on the ride a little different, but the music and movements identical, unchanging for years. Eventually, though, the worst part of all of this wasn’t the same old tired melody playing in my head, but the fact that the second I thought I had gotten off the ride, I found myself standing in line again, ticket in hand. Hadn’t I learned? Didn’t I know better by now? What was wrong with me? On good days, I realized had grown up in a version of the world where this Jessica Simpson was disgusting, and America’s Next Top Model had discussions like this. We were all a little fucked up, probably. On bad days, well, I had no one to blame but myself. If I was more interesting, or maybe deeper (or maybe, as that person had posed, more selfless), then my body would be a background detail, simply the vessel that was steadily carrying my through a gorgeous life instead of a deficit to overcome.

If I’m honest, every time I come here and end up writing about body image once again, I am half-way sick of myself. Really? Still? After all this time? All this work? I roll my eyes at myself, but then I’m back here again, writing through it. Funnily enough, I didn’t even want to primarily write about body stuff this week. Instead, I wanted to write about surface-level satisfaction (or something closer to distraction, maybe) versus deep joy. The topic has been on my mind a lot lately, especially as I find myself falling in love with gardening (a new hobby! in adulthood! delightful!). Jake and I were working to clear a massive, overgrown garden bed last week, a task we have done eight times over for the past month or so, making space in the entire backyard for what will hopefully be a gorgeous, vibrant summer garden, and I found myself completely enjoying the task and marveling at my enjoyment of it, studying it, really. We were doing boring work, stabbing at the ground with a shovel, pulling out deep-rooted invasive plants and weeds. In other words, this wasn’t the cottage core variety of gardening you see on the internet, with me romantically dragging my hand through waist-high flowers as a gaggle of chickens follows behind me. This was messy and difficult, physical and sweaty and repetitive. It felt never-ending at times, boring at others. But it was all necessary for the gorgeous, colorful, vibrant parts to exist, and I knew that, too. By the end of the day, arms were sore and I really wanted a cold beer and gigantic sandwich, but I paused and I looked at the cleared patch of dirt under my feet and there it was… I felt this deeply satisfying brand of joy.

Sure, there was some level of pleasure in the task itself (being outside, fresh air, etc.), but really the enjoyment is something much deeper and more satisfying. Part of it is chipping away at a bigger goal, part of it is delayed gratification, but mostly I think the thing I found myself loving so much was that it was an activity that felt like it nourished something in me, instead of dulling it. And this, maybe more than anything, is something I keep coming back to lately. I think about it when I am weighing scrolling versus reading at night, or comparing my career to other people’s instead of writing, or when I opt to numb myself instead of prioritize true relaxation or entertainment (really, all of the things I talked about my last essay). And I also think about this when it comes to my body. There’s more nuance to this conversation than I want to offer here today (or that I even could offer on one essay, anyway), but it is hard to be on social media right now and have a complicated history with body image (or dieting or disordered eating or anything). It is really hard. I am almost physically dizzied by how many times a day I go through the cycle of shame/wanting to change myself/wondering what I’m willing to do to do that/wondering what’s going to happen if I don’t. I picture myself in a world where everyone is thin but me, and I feel like I am 11 again, a time when what I most remember is that that is how I felt all the time. If I could have taken medicine to magically become thin when I was 11, I would have done it in a second, but there was no such thing. And now here we are.

Really, though, this dizzying pattern of thoughts isn’t just about the Ozempic of it all. It’s more about my tendency to prioritize the quick fix. Don’t like how I look in the mirror one day? Re-download MyFitnessPal. Take Day 1 progress photos and organize them into a new folder on your phone. Tell yourself that this is as bad as it gets. How many of those conversations with myself have I had? How many of them feel any different than wondering if Ozempic would be the thing that finally quiets the noise? And no, I don’t mean food noise (that went away when I finally stopped dieting). I mean the noise of my own thoughts about my body, the ones that existed when I was dieting and when I wasn’t, when I was thin and when I wasn’t. Sure, it’s easy to blame myself for those thoughts — I’m self-obsessed, maybe, or too shallow. Flatten it all into something that is wholly my responsibility. But that’s just it. That is a flattened, one-note version of reality, one that conveniently ignores the corporations and industries that benefit from women’s belief that it’s our responsibility to love ourselves enough to look thinner and hotter. It sounds extreme, but when it comes to beauty standards specifically, this is how I often feel about the most common version of the conversation right now. When it comes to weight loss or anti-aging, so much of it all gets boiled down to “empowerment” and “bodily autonomy” and yes, of course, sure. Those things are great and important. But is that really the whole story? Is that the whole conversation? Why does it feel like there’s room for nothing else?

Here’s the thing: My most knee-jerk, base instinct is to respond to every moment of self-doubt I have with the absolute easiest, most surface level action. I download MyFitnessPal or take progress photos. I compare some obscure statistic of mine to that of another author’s. Take a moment from a couple months ago, when I was waiting for my train at Penn Station and some drunk guy (long story) told me he thought I was 40 (I’m 31, for reference). And look, I knew the facts of the situation: I had gleamed this information from an intoxicated stranger in the world’s worst place (I’m talking OG Penn Station, not the new, fancy part of it, to be clear), complete with the world’s worst lighting, but it didn’t matter. I was embarrassed. I was panicked. I texted no fewer than five people I know, hoping they’d share in my horror and assuage my fears. I Googled “Botox near me.” I studied my forehead in the mirror. I wondered if I looked older than Jake. I thought about buying some $100 moisturizer. I considered every quick fix option, knowing that I could wave it all away with a shrug. It’s empowering. It’s self-care. It’s whatever I need it to be so I don’t sit in this moment of discomfort and shame. It’s whatever I need it to be to fit into a safer, friendlier, more successful body. It was anything other than the truth, which is that reacting this way means I never have to work through any of it. I never reach a place of deeper satisfaction with aging, never reach a place of peace. I never even give myself the option to dig deeper at all, to work toward something better. I settle for surface level and I expect it to save me, to protect me from the Big Bad Feeling, from ever feeling like I did at 11 again. And it just doesn’t. It’s a long, endless, losing game. There is no satisfaction in it at all. It’s exactly what pulls me back to the line for the merry-go-round, or something close to treading water in a hot tub, a pool with a great view. It feels doable and pleasant, really, until you realize you’re exhausted. That maybe you always will be.

There’d be nothing wrong with me if I opted for the easiest option, as I still often do. Pay for the moisturizer, the Botox. Compare my career, my writing, scroll social media for hours looking for reasons to believe I’m talented or I’m not, I’m successful or not. Pursue thinness for the sake of aesthetics at any cost. But none of this has ever brought me deep joy, and I know that, too. I can’t just ignore that fact forever. And if I want more deep joy instead of less of it, then I have to change some things about how I think and those knee-jerk, must-take-action reactions.

Deep joy is a personal thing, though. The things that do and do not provide it are not universal. But I know what my Deep Joys are. To start:

• Writing. Getting lost in the work for hours. Looking at the clock and wondering how time flew by. How something could be so challenging and so rewarding all at once.

• Gardening. No phone. Little talking. Maybe some music. Dreaming about what plants will look like in a week, a month, year. Trusting the process. Learning new things. Being exhausted and happy and ready for a good meal at the end of it.

• Reading. Appreciating how someone has strung words or a plot together just so. Being surprised, delighted, challenged, swept up. Allowing your brain to churn with inspiration while still going somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t your world, your worries. Staying up late into the night to finish a good book. Giggling when the main characters finally kiss. Setting the book down and staring into space for a minute when the twist really gets you good.

• Cooking. Putting my hair up. Taking the time to put on a podcast or a playlist. Gathering the mise en place. Pouring an large glass of ice water with lemon or a glass of wine. Enjoying the process. Eating the meal at the table.

• Movie nights. Not just watching a movie for the sake of it, but picking one out carefully based on mood or season or nostalgia. Making a night of it. Popping popcorn. Gathering snacks. Putting on your coziest sweats. Getting lost in the story, laughing out loud. Thinking about it afterward.

• Radical self-acceptance. Not believing a single change or purchase or dress size will make me better, or will make life better. Not responding to panicked feelings of self-doubt and comparison and insecurity with the quickest, easiest action or product or treatment. Sitting with the feeling, instead. Working toward something different, instead. No more treading water.

I want more deep joy. I do. Even though it’s hard work. Even though it’s lonely work sometimes, too. Even though numbing is easier. Even though slapping a metaphorical Band-Aid on it is quicker. Even though I’ll still scroll on my phone and think about my body and wonder if any of it is really as work it as some other option. I want that hard-fought joy. That dig-deep joy. Really? I’ll sometimes ask myself. Still? After all this time? All this work? Yes.

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