On illness, The Work, and self-compassion
Ugh. I’ve been sick.
It started early Friday morning. Didn’t get much sleep. And that’s a week after a bout with some bad food kicked my ass.
The result has been physical discomfort, exhaustion and the feeling that my mind is stuck in reverse. It’s easy for me to feel anxious when I don’t feel progress. It’s even easier for me to start blaming myself when that anxiety hits.
Of course, that’s unproductive, and talking myself down is important. Because I know many of us are similarly afflicted, I share my thought process here in case it’s helpful.
On what I am
Many things can be accomplished through sheer force of will. Over a long enough arc, enough willpower can turn any size ship in any direction.
That knowledge is both blessing and curse. It’s the gift of agency. It’s the burden of responsibility.
But not everything can be subjected to will.
I am a series of entangled, interrelated systems. I am a network of neurons, whose connections are so complex we have yet to perfect a scientific understanding of their function.
I am a pool of chemicals whose balance and proportions impact the function of those neurons.
I am a series of weather patterns, shifting these neurons and their chemicals according to chaotic rules I can’t fully predict.
I am a ductwork of machinery and glands which transform food into energy — and which support a multitude of microbial ecosystems. A disruption in any single part of this linkage may spell disaster for the entire system that makes up me.
I am also a series of living cells, working in tandem to execute software written over the course of 3 billion years. These cells are subject to invasion and subversion by other biological entities who would hijack my whole platform for their own goals.
Will can create discipline to better support these systems. Will can be used for long-term prevention to improve my odds of greater health.
But once I’m sick, the only thing my will can do is enforce my responsible convalescence. Part of that is being kind to myself when I can’t perform at the level I’d like.
On my urgency
For a long time, few people in power even accepted that issues of tech diversity mattered. Much less the work of active, strategic inclusion of people who, historically, have been outsiders to technology. Because it’s new, there’s plenty of reason for skepticism. Or, at least, for me to anticipate skepticism.
The result is a feeling of professional urgency. The importance of proving the value of the work. Proving objectively that this is worth what I think it is. Not just for those I would help. Not just for an industry. But for everyone.
That is a fire always and forever at my back.
But there are other fires beyond the professional. Beyond my personal mortality — which I feel like a current running through my life, arcing and surging at unpredictable intervals — there is a feeling of real fear for the future of our species and our home.
We live in a world of abundance for some. For others, life is a series of terrifying events amidst a constant struggle to survive. Some live under daily threat of violence—authorized by powerful, state-sponsored policies. Meanwhile, our planet hurtles toward unprecedented climate change with ecological impacts we can barely imagine. Automation continually erodes the basic means people have to survive — while posing all new threats, as headlines of drone strikes make so clear.
There’s a lot to be worried about.
This is a worry I have come to accept as part of my life. If I didn’t feel like I had a way to help change the future, I could compartmentalize or even discard that sense of responsibility.
But 22 years of using the internet has convinced me that there are historically unprecedented ways to help avert a dark future. That there are ways to share resources, mobilize undiscovered thinkers, build coalitions and spread the word of a better world.
I have no idea how much time we have. I only know it’s important to me not to squander it. I have spent my career steering my work toward helping to make change.
The results have never come fast enough for my urgent mind.
Perhaps they never will.
On speaking to myself
My self-talk, then, in times of diminished capacity, is ratcheted up toward horror when I see the hours and days slipping through my fingers. When the systems that are me don’t perform at the level my creative ambitions demand, it’s easy to blame myself.
The resulting talk is not how I would talk to a friend.
So I have to catch myself. Stop myself.
Remind myself of a long game. Of the long-term effects of willpower, when applied consistently to big problems. The deadlines I imagine for myself are matters of shared fiction. Goals. Milestones for accountability.
They are important and necessary.
But more important is the consistent act of pushing the rock up the hill, inch by inch. Sometimes I’ll need a breather. Sometimes that breather will be inconvenient to my expectations. Sometimes I’ll need to adjust my posture and strategies to keep the rock moving.
But the point is to stay focused on sustainably moving the rock. That’s the only thing in my control. The maximum speed and future obstacles are determined by forces out of my control, set in motion millennia before I was born.
The systems that make me are fragile. Whether the cells that keep the machine moving or the mental algorithms that direct my onward march. If my goal is to move the rock, my goal must also be sustainable to the machinery that make that work possible.
For the cells and organs of my body, that’s sensible diet, exercise and medical care. For my neurons and chemicals, and their resulting weather systems, that’s appropriate psychiatric support through a psychiatrist who helps me choose medication, and a therapist who can help me work through my problems.
Perhaps hardest of all, for the result that is me, sustainability means kindness and understanding for all the things I wish to do — and all the realities that may constrain my rate of progress.
It’s hard work. But making these feelings mentionable is essential to making them manageable.
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