Who gives you energy?
Who gives you energy?
Those are your people. Go find them, because you'll need them.
As SNL’s Stefon might put it, if you’re stressed about the world and looking for reassurance with a side of sarcasm, I’ve got just the place: Liz’s Instagram DMS.
It’s got everything! Panic attacks around daily polls. People pushing Reddit conspiracies with the urgency of a Sackler pharma rep. Heavy wine drinkers sharing tawdry first-person info about Very Bad People who are currently visiting Milwaukee. Muslim Americans afraid of deportation. Parents looking for help reaching their disengaged voting-age children. Terrified parents of queer kids. Longtime Jewish progressives who feel betrayed by support for the candidate whose slogan could easily be ”never again? Well..maybe just a little.” Also, a small selection of friends of the teens who say things like LOL GO OFF MOM101 without using punctuation, because like I said, this place has everything.
Here’s what I’m getting from all this:
People need hope.
People want to know they’re not alone.
People are desperate for connection.
I’m deeply honored to be considered a person who can provide some of these things, even to people I don’t know IRL. l will always respond best I can. But something more clicked last week when I spoke to
for my podcast about how we can recenter ourselves during tough times.She offered to share 5 micro-edits you can make to your life that will make big change. And they are all wonderful. But the one I keep thinking about most is about friendship.
“When you’re overwhelmed, it’s essential to connect with non-draining people,” she said. And she provided an easy four-question litmus test to help identify them.
It’s worth it to listen to her elaborate on her advice directly (it’s short!) but I’ll summarize here:
Who do I feel light-hearted with? Who makes me laugh and lets me be silly?
Who shares my perspective on issues I care about — political or otherwise?
Whose life is similar in scope and experience? Are we in the same place in terms of our kids’ ages, our health, or caring for aging parents, for example?
Who offers actual conversation, not one-way venting?
I’ve always called it taking inventory: Looking around at who’s in my life, and using that as a barometer of my own mental state.
That’s when a revelation came to me; I have held onto all week and it’s kind of been eating me alive:
I am worried I am the venter.
Or at least I have been the venter, more often than I’d like, with some of the people I love.
I think that right now, I really am so overwhelmed by the world, absorbing so much negativity all day long, and trying my best to be the bearer of optimism and positivity, that sometimes I finally get a friendly ear on the phone (or in my living room) and the crap building up inside me just gushes out like a geyser of black, contaminated wastewater.
It honestly makes me want to cry to think I could be that person.
It’s not just political issues by the way. Family, money, kids, work — same challenges as everyone. Oh, and NYC is looking toward our fourth consecutive heatwave, meaning my predisposition toward fainting in high humidity has been keeping me a little too homebound, which is making me stir-crazy.
(Believe me, this is the perfect opportunity to put to rest the trope that Jews control the weather, MARJORIE.)
Instead of beating myself up, I’m using this as an opportunity to try a gentle reset.
Turning myself off and on, if you will.
So while I purge some of the voices that no longer spark joy, and commit to spending time with more of the energy-givers in my life who fit all four of Christine’s criteria, I’m also working harder to make sure that I fit all four, so I can be the energy-giver that the people in my life need too.
It sounds so basic and not at all inspirational-quote-y-stick-it-on-Instagram, but: We need each other right now. We need to hear and be heard. We need to lift each other and it has to go both ways.
Things are going to get bumpy.
Go find your people.
Go be someone else’s people.
Gratitude Notes:
To my longtime friend, ad-world colleague, and now sometimes-employer, Matt Rivitz, for writing (often) about the importance of paying talented writers, and above that, how good it feels to do it.
Currently Obsessed:
I can’t stop talking about the neck fan. I even sent one to Sage at camp and one to my stepfather who wilts in the heat like me. It’s still on sale, so now I am telling you about it too. (And here’s a bonus funny story about it, if you’re interested.)
Read it Forward:
In addition to Christine Koh’s
Top photo: Alphonso Scarpa via Unsplash
Thank you my friend!! (And I second subscribing to Christine Koh!)
I love you Liz, and it was wonderful to talk these things through with you! And we all need and deserve to experience all of our different emotional states. AND, when our tanks are depleted, it's valid to gravitate towards interactions that can exist in a lighter state. That's a crucial thing I value about friends like you -- you can talk all the dimensions, and know no offense will be taken if you ask to talk about nothing in the dumpster fire valence!