Self-Care: What is it? Nobody knows. Here are some tips that I’ve found really help me out, day to day. Bless.
1. Write a letter to yourself every day about how much you hate that guy Brian at work. Read it aloud to him.
2. If you are feeling stagnant, throw caution to the wind and make a big change! Throw everything into the wind. You live on a boat now, is what I’m saying.
3. Practice mindfulness and be astounded at how much it does NOT help you in Two Dots.
4. Once a day, do something that makes you happy, just because. Protip: keep a notebook to make sure it’s not the same thing from the day before, which is how I adopted 14 dogs.
5. Get out of your comfort zone! If you work at The Comfort Zone Sofa Superstore on Route 25, make sure you get back before your boss notices.
6. If you need to have a tough conversation with someone, practice in the mirror. If the mirror speaks back to you with a thousand voices and one, none of them your own, please read “13 Exorcism Tips to Revolutionize Your Routine!” This is the wrong list for you.
7. Find the beauty in the world! If you can’t find any, grab some makeup and head over to that big rock you always see, the one that looks like a human face, and give it a Smoky Eye.
8. Don’t worry about personal grooming and just lie around eating candy in a bathrobe. I dunno. Sounds nice.
9. Spend some time with an animal companion. If you’re allergic to housepets: I heard you can touch a manta ray at the aquarium, which sounds pretty cool. If you don’t like manta rays, I don’t know. You figure it out. I’m not your dad.
10. Make some alone time for yourself. Build a cabin where nobody can find you. Bar the doors and windows. Draw the curtains. Turn off the lights. Yes. Finally alone.
11. Chat up a friendly stranger! Unless you did the last item. Does anyone actually do everything on these? Shoot.
12. Your body is as important as your mind! Make sure to get some exercise. Unless you don’t like to do it. SELF-CARE, BABY.
Tags: Brian, Exorcisms, self-care, Who does brian think he is
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It’s ALWAYS Brian, isn’t it.
No, sometimes it’s Steve Carlsberg.
Who knew there were so many Nightvale fans here!
Fucking Brian, man.
Love the tags!
#8-10 really speak to me. And living on a boat, while we’re re-imagining a “self-care to do list” as a “life goals wish list.”
I’m going to give a rock a smoky eye and send you a picture.
Can we just do #smokyeyerock on Twitter?
PLEASE YES
Matt and Jaya, you are reaching new levels of amazing this Monday morning.
“Once a day, do something that makes you happy, just because.”
I don’t know about anyone else, but I try to be doing things that make me happy for a majority of my day, not just once a day. I mean, I don’t always succeed, but waking up and saying, “Man, I feel refreshed from that dream about Chris Evans’ pecs! Box: checked! Time to go do things I hate!” seems very limiting.
Same here, and I fluctuate between thinking that I must be really good at this whole self-care thing and thinking that I must be just really awfully lazy.
“Once a day, do something that makes you happy, just because. Protip: keep a notebook to make sure it’s not the same thing from the day before, which is how I adopted 14 dogs.”
But really, I think adopting 14 dogs is living my Best Life.
Yeah that does not sound like a mistake.
Pretty sure “being mindful” and “having Two Dots on your phone” are mutually exclusive. Not like I’m speaking from experience or anything, definitely not the experience of reading this list and immediately thinking “oh, I bet my lives refreshed!”
Fucking Two Dots. Ruining my life.
LEVEL EIGHTY BASTARD TWO
FUCK tell me about it, I have been stuck on that motherfucker for like 3 weeks now. Infuriating.
I knew I had a problem when my phone was stolen and the thing I was most upset about was that all of my progress on Two Dots would be lost.
I SHOULD HAVE LINKED TO FACEBOOK WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE
I was stuck on level 138 for a WHOLE MONTH. And yet, I never gave up. It’s teaching me the value of persistence and the horrors of addiction, all at once.
it’s teaching me a lot about how much frustration I can take when the solution to that frustration costs 99 cents.
#2 sounds a LOT like Taking to the Sea!!! =)
8. Don’t worry about personal grooming and just lie around eating candy in a bathrobe.
Check and check.
Confession: I am always baffled when people talk about self-care. It appears to just be doing things that you like or that make you happy or that relax you? If the comments about self-care on websites like the Toast are anything to go by, then roughly 80% of my life is self-care. I care about myself a lot. I care about myself more than I care about most other people. My life is just self-care and then sometimes I have to go to work. This is likely because I am a) super lazy, and b) living in a city without any friends and very limited opportunities to make friends, so what else am I going to do besides watch Netflix and read and paint my nails and eat cookies?
This sounds very braggy, which is not how I mean it. It is what I always think when I read about self-care though. I don’t understand it and maybe my life is just all self-care, all the time.
I feel exactly the same way, but a couple of years ago I was definitely NOT in this position. My old hospital job about killed me, and it would indeed have been a challenge to do something that made me happy once every day. Thankfully, that is no longer my life. Unfortunately, I didn’t come across self-care lists until after I was out of the place where I really needed them. Life is weird.
(also, I love the url for this one)
With you 100%. Cheers to being terrible grownups!
“self-care” sounds like something GOOP would be raving about
My vision of self-care is pretty much the opposite of Gwyneth’s, I’m afraid, in that my version involves lots of carbs.
I feel like, in my coming across this term, it’s moved from being aimed at folks who for whatever reason (life-consuming job, disability, caring for others constantly, burnout-y activism, etc) did not feel entitled to do this stuff for themselves or needed reminding to include it in their day, to just being aimed at everyone. So that;s my impression of where the term came from, and therefore I share your bafflement at seeing it in a more lifestyle-y than necessity context.
I’m pretty sure that self-care refers to things that you should do to make yourself feel good, but sometimes you’re taking a short-term view (working on my night cheese) and sometimes you’re taking a long-term view (working out/paying taxes/other Successful Adult things).
Ugh, #10 sounds really nice right about now, actually. Sweet, sweet solitude.
There’s a Comfort Zone in Toronto. But it’s a club.
Definitely out of my comfort zone.
That’s messed up.
I think it’s more of an after-hours? AKA even further out of my comfort zone than a regular club.
As a person who used to wear phat pants with a Pingu t-shirt and Adidas visor, I have been to the Comfort Zone and can confirm our is a total Den Of Iniquity.
I’m glad I’ve experienced it, but will never darken those doors again, and that is just fine. thathathataththathaththathathataththathathata
What the hell? The more I try to delete that, the more it replicates!
I know this is a joking list, but there are days in my life where that cabin sounds like an amazing idea.
But what if I work at The Comfort Zone Sofa Superstore on I-24 just past exit three? Am I excused for the afternoon?
No. And you know why not? FUCKING BRIAN. That’s why.
THE URL YOU GUYS
I have a cabin in the woods. There’s always somebody within hearing who’s revving up a chain saw, or firing off some rifle just for practice or maybe at one of the 10,000 mice who share the woods with us.
Just stay on bed with covers over your head and think of the woods.
this is beautiful and inspiring me to go find some quality woodland/seaside/desirable-nature-sounds on my laptop to pipe into my decompression nest-of-pillows. 🙂
I am currently visiting my mother in Middle-of-Nowhere, Vermont. For the last 2 days they’ve been replacing a culvert right outside the house, turning up at 6:30 a.m. with enormous trucks and clanky chains and I swear to goddess it’s more noise than in my apartment in LA right next to the freeway and at least in LA I can call the cops on them if someone showed up making this much noise before 8.
Who knew there were so many Nightvale fans here!
As a person who used to wear phat pants with a Pingu t-shirt and Adidas visor, I have been to the Comfort Zone and can confirm our is a total Den Of Iniquity.
I'm glad I've experienced it, but will never darken those doors again, and that is just fine. thathathataththathaththathathataththathathata
What the hell? The more I try to delete that, the more it replicates!
The main reason Will Graham doesn't live on a boat, preferring to only imagine that he does.