Little Things To Inspire You This Week

#21: On mess and moral failings

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Where is shame preventing you from moving forward in your life? That’s what I’m thinking about this week. This question came from an unexpected source: A book about cleaning.

This week I read — aka, listened to on Libby — How to Keep House While Drowning: 31 Days of Compassionate Help, a popular book from last year. I have a complicated relationship with mess. I hate it, but when I’m busy or overwhelmed, tidying is abandoned with ease. The only time I want to clean is when I need to write, and then suddenly, I simply cannot be creative until my home is perfectly neat.

How To Keep House While Drowning is remarkably validating and compassionate. It is not a book that will lecture you about the importance of keeping a tidy home. Instead, it will validate every single thing you may consider a personal failing, from leaving laundry in the machine for too long to not washing your hair enough. It’s a must-read for anybody who struggles with everyday tasks and then wonders what’s wrong with them. The answer? Nothing at all.

The book teaches the idea that cleaning is morally neutral. Having a messy home is not a moral failing. Having a clean home does not make you morally superior. Once we reframe things like this, it becomes easier to clean because shame does not surround these tasks. It’s remarkable how much weight shame holds. It even blocks us from completing the task that would erase the shame, because confronting the task would bring out overwhelming feelings of guilt and self-hate.

If this is true about cleaning, where else in our lives might it be true? Where is there some deep-rooted shame that stops you from taking action? One place it shows up for me is ignoring emails or texts that I’m embarrased I didn’t respond to right away, only making matters worse. The only antidote to shame is offering ourselves kindness and understanding. This might require stating out loud or writing down notes of forgiveness or kindness to ourselves. If those modalities don’t work, find one that better suits you.

I wish you all a week of deep, shame-free self-compassion.

“You are not a failure because you can’t keep up with laundry. Laundry is morally neutral.”

― KC Davis, How to Keep House While Drowning

Question for you: What role does shame play in your goals and tasks?

✨Congratulations to SAG who finally reached a deal! The Hollywood strikes are officially over. Work is slowly returning. This will be the busiest holiday season in Hollywood in a very long time. For Fran Drescher, she’s had the role of a lifetime.

✨I’m reading Death Valley by Melissa Broder, which I recommend for readers who enjoy dark, voice-driven, idiosyncratic novels. Few writers make tragedy as entertaining as Broder. From her Twitter “So Sad Today” to the unnerving joy of her previous book, Milk Fed, Broder has emerged as one of my favorite authors writing about the pain of being alive.

✨I am also, of course, reading How To Keep House While Drowning. If you haven’t read it and get overwhelmed by daily tasks, it is a must-read.

✨

Jessica DeFino

has a new beauty column at The Guardian, and I love her perspective: “Once you buy into the concept of anti-aging, you buy in forevermore. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and – even though, sure, injectables might make you feel good in the moment – it inspires an unending cycle of age anxiety.”

✨There is new fiction in The New Yorker from Emma Cline, Haruki Murakami, and Junot Diaz.

✨Vanity Fair’s November cover story is a Sloane Crosley profile of Greta Gerwig titled “Greta Gerwig has no plans to rest.” I have mixed feelings about this framing, especially Gerwig’s quote that nothing is scarier than being idle. I think that perhaps nothing is more important than learning why we are afraid of idling, and then learning to do it. But I do love this quote from her: “At some point, the terror of never making anything becomes much bigger than the terror of making something bad.” The lesson? It’s okay to make bad art until good art emerges.

✨I’m watching nothing except my favorite show of all time, the Great British Baking Show. My bronchitis has kept me from the theaters. Please recommend TV shows for me!

✨Amy Pohler has a new hybrid scripted/improvised podcast which I recommend if you enjoy laughing! My friend Alice (hi Alice!) wrote for it and I’m very proud.

✨Starting to think about holiday gifts? Check out my gift guide from last year:

Use the below as journaling prompts, or answer them in the comments:

• Where is shame preventing you from moving forward in your life?

• Write yourself a letter of self-compassion, forgiving yourself for all the tasks you haven’t completed because of shame.

Last week I asked about what daily rituals you share with somebody else. Here are some of my favorite responses:

• An “analog night,” in which a reader’s family spends a night playing games, reading, talking, or anything else without screens.

• A married couple of 20+ years who have coffee in bed together at least once a week.

• A twice-a-week virtual coworking session between friends.

• A weekly in-person Yoga class a group of friends attends.

Do you share any rituals with a partner, friend, or roommate? I’d love to hear about them!

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