Michelle's Melange: Edition 16

Spring thoughts: videos that make my palms sweat, feng shui-inspired rearranging, eccentric women, and what cleaning & organization is distracting me from.

Apr 30, 2024

I’ve fallen into a bit of a self-help reading rabbit hole. Without a cult to attach myself to (please watch Love Has Won if you haven’t, old news now but imploring that you get back to me with your thoughts), I’m instead reading about how I’m a procrastinator perfectionist and need to absorb the idea that aiming for perfect means never starting.

Sweaty palms content

I’m not totally surprised that my recent internet consumption reflects my state of mind (or probably caused it, haha), in that it’s veered further into mind numbing content, or the type that exposes me to things I’ll never do. Specifically, things I deeply fear— free climbing skyscrapers, ziplining with rusted equipment and using your bare hand to slow yourself down, jumping from a tall building into a narrow body of water and just missing pedestrians down below and the like (nothing bad happens in these videos, FYI, though they will make your feet tingle).

*I’m not sure if this is exposure therapy or like watching true crime content, the fascination of your deepest fears being made real.*

Feng shui inspo

In other inspiring news, I’ve picked up a good late 90’s feng shui book, The Practical Encyclopedia of Feng Shui, from the library bookstore, the library being a place I’m always trying to spend more time as a “third place.” I’ve overheard some funny banter between the retired volunteers who work there; it makes me think of how in high school I romanticized getting a job at the library so much. One of my crushes worked there and I was like omg how did he get that job…I must get that job restocking books…

Since the start of the year I’ve been pretty fixated on clearing out the detritus (good word) from my home office and making it an actual fun and inspiring “room of my own,” and this book has given me some good takeaways. I like the idea of changing the way a space feels through reduction or rearranging rather than redecoration, and likely why my office has felt off is because of 1. Too much stuff and 2. It lacks a thoughtful layout.

A few tips I liked, relevant to the home office:

Throw away a post-it after its associated task is completed; having paper laying around reminds you of unfinished work.
Don’t have your back to the door, and instead make sure your desk has a view of it. This is called the command position, which “allows you to feel more in control of your life and career because you can see anything that's approaching.” Otherwise, you’ll have a feeling of uneasiness while working. Which is funny considering that so many workspaces are designed so that people are frequently walking behind you— the worst (and prob on purpose, the corporate panopticon).
Place your desk in the furthest spot from the entrance to the room, facing east if possible. This is the money corner. I did this and while I don’t yet feel rich, I do feel more focused….

Related, I love watching Dear Modern’s YouTube Shorts about feng shui, they’re very on the “small changes for big impact” tip and super motivating to start moving things around rather than waiting for a dramatic, expensive revamp.

On ~embracing more eccentricity in life/being less boring~

I’ve always been drawn to the stories of real-life eccentric women, essentially as inspiration for how to live an alternative type of life. While sometimes, they lead lives that 100% wouldn’t work for me— an eccentric life path can sometimes be a lonely road— I like it as a reminder that you can shape your life however you’d like to, that you have agency.

Hollywood’s Eve, a biography of Eve Babitz, is a story of an eccentric woman that’s worth reading, as one of her ex boyfriends once said his year spent with Eve was “my favorite year, but I couldn’t have lived through another one.” Eve was a WILD woman who was at the center of the 60s/70s LA scene and knew and dated soon-to-be stars like Harrison Ford, Steve Martin, Stephen Stills, and Jim Morrison. Ever since she was young, she knew that she wouldn’t get married, that the concept didn’t align with what she saw for herself. She would go out all night and then come home to write clever stories about parties she went to and the men she dated. In the 90s and sober, she was driving home from a party when her cigar caught her skirt on fire and left her with 3rd degree burns. A cast of Hollywood characters threw a fundraiser for her to pay for the medical costs. I liked this biography because it was created in conversation with Eve— the author tell’s Eve’s story while also telling the story of their slowly developing friendship, as prickly as Eve was in her old age.

Sometimes I forget about other ways of living, or, because of the content I’m absorbing, go down a slightly obsessive spiral trying to organize my life (see: office feng shui), sell excess clothes, give away strange little items, protect my time.

*Me, except I’m still going to bed after midnight for no good reason.*

And I get that being organized and creating structure doesn’t preclude being interesting, but sometimes it feels as though it squeezes away all that’s strange or unexpected about me or about life.

“Clearing the decks” was a concept I wrote about in the last issue and that feels relevant again in this context— this can be in the form of endless to-do lists, inbox zeroing, & putting others’ needs (in work and in personal life) always before your own personal goals or desires. We do this because it feels like we have to reach that ultimate state of completion before we can proceed to fulfilling our own silly lil desires.

But that’s the myth, the state of completion none of us will never achieve. There’s always some task I actually care about that I’m avoiding by way of these unnecessary ones. Maybe it shouldn’t be the #1 priority to abide or have things under control (I’m sure I’ll always have an obedient, eager-to-please side, who wants the validation of a teacher or boss telling me I did my work well 👼 ) because it can prevent me from making or doing anything interesting. Maybe a desire to be clean and organized is a desire to hem myself in in some type of way.

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Weirdly, I question whether the emergence of CleanTok, where people are shown cleaning showers or organizing refrigerators, coincides with people in this era experiencing a sense of lost control, ennui, or a lack of purpose.

I feel I’ve been clinging more tightly to routine, order, checking mundane tasks off a list (see also: recycling 10 yr old socks at H&M) as some punishment or as a means of salvation!! Don’t buy any new clothes, you’ll never again need a new coat because you’ve got a closet full of them, etc. It feels Puritanical?? Like I need to see progress in some minor way as a false form of productivity to distract from the progress I’m not making on things that actually have stakes, or that would involve me taking a risk. Ouch! Self-read.

It’s better to be disciplined, but for yourself and self betterment, not just blindly double cleansing every night for 5 mins because someone on TikTok said you absolutely had to do it to remove sebaceous filaments (which, debunked! I saw a dermatologist say that it’s just dead skin sloughing off, not all of the contents of your nose pores). You don't actually need the shower scrubbing brush that TikTok heavily peddles in order to clean your shower well. Similarly, I'm reminding myself that I don't have to perfect every small adult task or worry about superficial signifiers of having it all together. Instead, I could be doing more meaningful and creative things.

Biohacker content

Annyyyyways, I’ll leave you with a palette cleanser. I love seeing white-guy-biohacker type of content, since the knowledge they’re spouting appears to be made up at least 50% of the time, almost like they’re improvised bits. And it’s good comedy!

Check out Dave Asprey sharing straight facts: how kale is ornamental and is only eaten because it used to decorate Pizza Hut’s salad bars decades ago, followed by another tale about ornamental kale-