How Are You Handling It? | An Illustrated Column By Ezra W Smith

What a month, huh?

As a person who is overwhelmed easily, I tried to stay offline as much as I could. I was never really reading the news that much, but eventually I stopped going to my usual information sources as well, because… guess what! Even blogs about art and crafts eventually started to only talk about COVID-19. Even lesbian podcasts, even sustainable fashion brands… I couldn’t take it anymore. So I replaced podcasts with audiobooks, and decided to only check the official recommendations of the country of my residence once per two days to know what is going on.

Another hard thing was that the majority of people (at least on social media) seemed to mostly be dealing with boredom and isolation. While I was still working as usual from home plus trying to homeschool my seven-year-old. For the last 3 weeks I was doing two full time jobs at the same time, keeping my home clean and preparing food, and taking care of 2 pets (one with chronic health issues). I wasn’t bored. I was scared and overwhelmed and stressed and under so much pressure. I wanted to yell at people— “what is wrong with you! How can you be tired of doing nothing! What the hell! Your only job is keeping yourselves entertained! This is not a real struggle!”

However I didn’t yell at anyone, even on the internet. In fact I didn’t even complain to any of my friends or anyone else about my situation. I decided that devaluing other people’s struggle in these difficult times is cruel and unproductive. Also I happened to have a child reasonably early in life, so now I find myself in a situation where I have a primary-schooler, but none of my friends have any kids at all and are maybe just starting to think about it now. So I knew nobody would relate. People would feel bad for me, but would not know what to say. Awkward. So I didn’t talk to anyone. Instead I stopped checking my Instagram, stopped listening to podcasts, stopped texting people and focused on actually doing my 2 jobs. Long story short, I survived. And this weekend spring break started so I no longer have to homeschool my child. For the whole week! What a lucky girl I am.

After this quick update on my life, let me finally get to the point. In this column I meant to talk not about myself (for once), but about a friend of mine. Let’s call her Magda.

Magda is the head of an animal shelter. She collects cats and dogs from the streets, takes care of their health, spays or neuters them at the vet clinic, and finds lovely new homes for these animals. The shelter can only function because of the volunteers - people who choose to spend their free time helping this animals, feeding them, socializing with them, giving them the love and attention they need. However, in this difficult situation we all found ourselves in, the government has decided to forbid for now any volunteering that is not connected to COVID-19. And so the shelter had to be closed for the time being. This is how Magda ended up with 6 dogs in a two-bedroom apartment.

But taking care of the animals, managing volunteers, buying supplies for the shelter, is not all of Magda’s job. She also needs to get money for the shelter. Somehow.

In order to do so, Magda has a very beautiful Instagram account where she shares professionally done photos of animals, tells their stories, and encourages people to donate money for the shelter and adopt a pet. And she has to continue to do that now as well. Because even though the shelter is shut down, the rent for it has to be paid, and medications for sick pets have to be purchased.

Three weeks into quarantine, Magda posted to the shelter’s Instagram account a beautiful picture of her, sitting on the couch, surrounded by five sleeping dogs. Her stylish apartment looked amazing, there was a beautiful antique lamp next to the couch. It looked like a cover of a magazine. She and the dogs looked so peaceful and relaxed.

I commented “beautiful”. A second later I got a message from Magda saying “call me.”

I dialed her number. She was crying, several dogs were barking in the background. And then she told me what kind of hell she had been in for the last couple of weeks. So the shelter was closed. She had 6 dogs at home who didn’t really like each other. Well, not all of them.

More than once a day there was a fight. More than once a day she would fail to take a certain dog out on time and they would poop or pee in the apartment. More than once a day an aggressive dog that is basically living in her bathroom was having a nervous breakdown, throwing itself against the bathroom door, and growling for 15-25 minutes straight. They peed on the couch, they made holes in her blanket, and they destroyed her absent boyfriend’s favorite shoes. So now she thinks he’ll break up with her when he comes back (the guy is quarantining with his parents in the countryside). And meanwhile, Magda is not mad at the dogs at all; she is exhausted.

She ran out of photos to post on Instagram from before, and so she is trying to photograph those 6 dogs that she currently has in the house. She basically cleans one little area of the house at a time, then tricks some dog to go there with tasty food and takes a picture. She doesn’t want people to see the chaos in her house. Because… well it is humiliating. She is ashamed of what her cute apartment has become.

She doesn’t want to discourage people from adopting animals from the shelter by showing them how hard it can be.

That conversation made me think of a certain chapter of the book about minimalism I am currently reading. It’s called “The More of Less” by Joshua Becker. The chapter was basically about how comparing ourselves to others makes us feel embarrassed by all the wrong things. Joshua basically writes about how people feel bad about not having as “nice” (meaning expensive) things as people around them. Not looking successful. Not looking respectable.

We get embarrassed that our clothes are not from the right brands (whether it’s luxury brands or sustainable ones), that our vehicles cost less then our neighbors’, or that our houses are smaller than our guests’.

I will be the first to confess feeling bad about all of these things. My daughter is going to a private school. It is a priority for me to give her a healthy and stress-free environment to study with fewer people in class, professional staff who are well-paid and love kids, and a psychologist available to her at all times. My school experience was a horrifying nightmare with hardcore bullying and exhausted teachers who worked long hours and got very little money for their jobs, who had miserable lives and were incapable of liking children at that point. My gentle, shy daughter cannot go throw this, I decided once and for all. But omg! How difficult it is for me to afford it. All of the other parents are 10-15 years older than me - I assume they were making money in their 20s and 30s and then had kids. I feel ashamed of my tiny apartment when other parents bring their children for playdates. I feel weird saying I don’t have a car so I can’t drive my daughter to their three-floor house outside of the city. I feel bad about my worn carpet and the fact that I don’t have a dryer. I am so not like them.

Joshua writes about how our current culture normalizes the pursuit of appearances, possessions, and selfish gain. I would just add that we are basically forced to live up to this universal idea of success: a nice clean (big enough) house, stylish clothes, productivity, financial security. We don’t think our lives are worth showing to others if we don’t at least look like we have achieved that mythical “success”. I think it is very much applicable to Magda’s or, for that matter, my situation.

Joshua writes, “…this feeling of embarrassment stems from our baseline understanding of normal. Nobody feels embarrassed for just being normal. Yet our understanding of normal is entirely subjective, based on the measurements most often defined by the social groups with which we surround ourselves.”

Magda is not feeling normal at the moment because she took foster dogs in, something she is always asking other people to do, but she can’t handle it. She is failing at  being happy with these dogs. And of course she was never advocating adopting 6 incompatible dogs at the same time to a small apartment. But I can see how that might feel like a failure to her.

I don’t feel normal at the moment because I am supposed to be bored, and I am supposed to turn this boredom into productivity. That’s what everyone else, it seems, has been doing. I am supposed to be writing a book or drawing a graphic novel that will make me famous. And instead I am so tired I don’t remember who I am anymore, and wearing the same sweatpants for 16 days in a row.

And on a bigger scale, I don’t feel normal because I find myself among people who actually can afford private school without major sacrifices, who maybe had a better start in life or just more time to build a career and make money before they had kids than I did.

I feel unrelatable. I feel like I'm a failure.

However Joshua continues in the book: “What if we are getting embarrassed over all the wrong things? What if instead of being embarrassed because our house seems too small, we became embarrassed over the amount of unused space.” Just think of all the electricity we spend to heat those huge houses we don’t need, and how that impacts our planet.

What if instead of being embarrassed over no car, we would be embarrassed by the amount of pollution our cars produce?

What if instead of being embarrassed by not being capable of buying a third LOL doll this year, we would be embarrassed by the amount of plastic we collect in our houses and its impact on our planet?

What if instead of being embarrassed by not having a clean house with six foster dogs that had no other place to go, we would be embarrassed by breeding even more dogs, buying them for their looks and kicking them out when they fail to fulfill our expectations of a perfect pet, then let people like Magda take care of the rest?

 “What if excess became the cause of embarrassment? And responsible living that championed generosity became the norm?” – Joshua concludes.

I am certain that both Magda and I suffer significantly more because we need to be handling everything perfectly and also are expected to let everyone else know how perfectly we are handling it. The reality is that we are not handling it perfectly.

And that’s okay. It’s a difficult, unusual, weird stressful time. And not all of us have to handle it with grace. Some of us are just going to be exhausted and have a messy house. And I think it’s okay. It’s not our jobs to fulfill other people’s expectations of how we are supposed to be handling it. 

Our only job is to survive.

More Time & Less Stuff | An Illustrated Column By Ezra W Smith

By no means am I this fancy person who loves shopping. Until recently when thinking of the person who might have too many things, I was imagining Cher from the movie “Clueless”. I love Cher dearly, but she is not someone I can easily identify with. She is young, I am 30. She has money, I have rent that eats 60% of everything I make every month. I shop in vintage and secondhand stores (mostly due to lack of funds), I watched “True Cost” four times, I live in a small apartment with two other people, and I don’t have a separate room for my clothes like Carrie Bradshaw.

Ezra W Smith

And still, somehow, I have too many things. Not just clothes. But also clothes.

I have moved four times to another country in the last decade, and every time there were a few boxes of clothes I donated or threw away. Clothes accumulate wherever I live. Just like dust, appearing slowly but undeniably until you can’t breathe anymore.

And 80% of the clothes are that annoying “not quite right” type. Pants that are comfortable but only if you don’t sit in them for two hours. A blouse that is just slightly too small, so it unbuttons itself right where my breasts are. Not often. But often enough that you are anxious the whole time you are wearing it. Shoes that leave your feet bleeding, but only if you walk for more than 2 bus stops. And you know that. But somehow you still end up walking for quite a bit.

I believe that the problem is not the amount of clothes, but the amount of those “not quite right” clothes. This is what makes you wonder what to wear for more than a few seconds and blankly stare at the open wardrobe.

Granted, I didn’t really spend that much money on those clothes but even (let’s say) a few dollars per item is a fair amount, considering that during my intense moving around I got rid of about 35 boxes of stuff. Would I want to have that money now? Absolutely.

But even if I was going to spend it… How many hours of therapy could I pay for with this money? Even if just a few, that could make my life much better. Maybe if I hadn’t spent that money on clothes, I could afford a pet, another living soul, whose company would significantly improve my mental health.

And another perspective on this: as Henry David Thoreau once said, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” How many hours did I need to work to make that money? Quite a few. Was losing that precious time worth those clothes I don’t even remember now? We don’t buy things with money; we buy them with hours from our lives.

How many hours could I have not worked in the past if I hadn’t spent all of the money I was making on stuff I didn’t really need?

And the last thing. Did wearing or owning all those clothes make me happier? Uhm… I do not recall that.

Honestly, I don’t think there are people who are getting happier by buying stuff – no research ever supported that. It may result in temporary joy for some, but the happiness found in buying a new item rarely lasts longer than a few days. In my case, rather a few hours.

And every time I saw something I liked at the store, I was imagining the time and the place I would wear it. One time last year I was thinking for a couple of days how cool it would be to actually finally enroll in Ph.D. studies. I always wanted to be a doctor. Not a real doctor, just a “Dr.” before my name. Ross Geller type of doctor. And then I saw that brown jacket. I swear to god, just like in a movie, I saw that really nice, serious-looking brown suit jacket and I immediately imagined myself in a big auditorium teaching 1st-year university students.

I bought the jacket. And it’s a “not quite right” jacket (imagine that!). The sleeves are too long. I told myself I will take it to the tailor, but I probably won’t. 

This is a very toxic concept. Brands sell you your dreams, not the actual clothes. And I arrogantly thought I was not like that. They can’t sell me cheap fast-fashion crap by hiring a supermodel to advertise it. I don’t want to be a supermodel. I don’t want to walk on the streets of Paris, light as a butterfly and all men looking at me. I have been to Paris – it’s not my thing. I like my very not-model-like body, and I have no interest in attracting men.

I don’t even shop in mass market. But I am a product of the society I grew up in, I watch commercials, and I have dreams. The thing is, in very limited situations will a huge amount of clothes help us achieve those dreams.

I bought the jacket. Which might or might not be a big deal. I bought it in a secondhand store for relatively little money. Certainly nothing to beat myself up over. A better question is: did I enroll in Ph.D. studies? Nope, I did not.  

So my latest insight about shopping is not that it is preventing me from studying. I figured, the reason I didn’t try to buy less and move toward having a more minimalist wardrobe is the fact that always, for as long as I can remember, I have been rewarding myself with stuff.

And the opposite: deciding to not buy clothes always sounded like a restriction, a punishment. I never wanted the clothes; I wanted that immediate boost of joy and the feeling that I was moving toward my dreams.

And I was never thinking about how much space that stuff will take up in my home and in my life.

Recommendations:

“The Beauty Myth” Naomi Wolf, book.

BeMoreWithLess.com, site and newsletter.  

Episode “Minimalism” of the “Be Uncluttered” podcast.