I lost 48 hours of my life to a cold.

Fever. Cold sweats. Headaches. Body aches. Sleeplessness. Sore throat. Fever dreams. I have never felt physically worse in my life.

Strep: NEGATIVE.

COVID: NEGATIVE.

Flu: NEGATIVE.

Just a boring old cold virus that knocked me on my ass for 48 hours straight.

I was tempted to just try and power through it, but I’m fortunate to be married to a woman who is much wiser than me and could clearly see the forest through the trees.

She insisted that I take the time that I needed to rest and recover.

My first instinct was to make this post advice-oriented, gesticulating on the proper way to care for oneself when ill, but then I remembered a conversation that I had with my best friend Taylor back in 2018. We’d just begun working on Vöxtur and decided that we needed to start writing a blog to build an audience. I wrote this article about how to “reverse-engineer your life.” I thought it was the bee’s knees. Taylor disagreed. In a more thoughtful and well-reasoned manner, he told me that what I’d written wasn’t interesting. It was obvious. I didn’t have any expertise or credibility. I was writing out my ass.

I don’t want to write out my ass anymore. I’m not a mental health expert, so sharing educational material probably shouldn’t be my focus. Instead, I’ll focus on something I can do better than anyone else: tell my own story.

For basically my entire life I’ve wrapped up my worth in my productivity and achievement–a victim of the self-esteem movement, you might say. Self-esteem required me to be above average, which required me to compare myself others. It required that I hold myself to incredibly high standards in order to simply be okay. This lead to a lot of unkind inner dialogue and harmful behavior.

While in treatment I read a book that changed my perspective on my relationship with myself. I’d always believed that I needed to criticize myself in order to reach my goals. That if I didn’t beat myself up to hold myself accountable, I’d certainly fail. Fortunately, research has shown that I was wrong.

This book taught me that by embracing principles of self-compassion I could actually treat myself more kindly AND become the best version of myself.

To explain-it-like-you’re-five, self-compassion is treating yourself the way you’d treat a friend–sort of a reverse golden rule. It requires you to be kind to and gentle with yourself, to recognize your shared humanity, and to be mindful. Self-compassion allows me to say, “Nate, you really do feel like shit. It’s hard to be you right now. You need to give yourself some understanding and allow yourself the time to heal.”

Self-compassion is a principle that I believe we all can find value in. I’d encourage anyone curious to check out Kristin Neff’s book, Self-Compassion. I’m personally planning to start working through her self-compassion workbook tomorrow!

Anyway, time for some thoughts from my mind.

Sundays

When I was in Sequoia, Sundays were a much different day of the week. Instead of our normal schedule of 6 hours of group therapy + other assorted recovery-focused activities, Sundays were focused on rest, relaxation, and cleanliness.

We’d have a short group therapy session, spend some time cleaning the house, and then often go on a short outing to do something leisurely in the afternoon. It was a welcome respite from the relative busyness of the week.

Since coming home, I’ve been trying to figure out how to fit Sundays into my life in a way that feels more rejuvenating. I’ve removed some things from my life and added some others.

One thing I’m currently trying out is a Sunday reflection ritual. This Sunday, I drove myself down to Taco Bell, got myself some food, opened my laptop and spent some time reflecting on my week and looking ahead at the week to come.

My week was pretty quickly torpedoed by the aforementioned illness, but I am looking forward to the ritual and seeing how it impacts my wellness and productivity moving forward.

Rant: Tipping culture is regressive.

U.S. tipping culture while already inherently unethical, has taken things too far. I’ve recently come across a fair amount of folks defending the egregious overreach of American tipping culture, because “if we don’t tip, it will only hurt the employees.”

This argument rests on the ideas that (1) service workers’ income relies on tips, and (2) service workers are lower income and thus deserve our tips. Both ideas are flawed.

#1. Service workers’ income only relies on tips because we have all become complicit in what is essentially a scam supporting restaurant owners in their evasion of employer duties. By accepting (and in many cases fighting for) tips as an institution, we prop up a house of cards–one that benefits only business owners, to the detriments of consumer and labor alike.

It doesn’t have to work this way. The majority of the world does not rely on tips to pay their labor. “But prices will go up!”, some will object, but this is fine! At least then it is on the proprietor to properly price their goods, not on their customers to decide how supportive they want to be of the 24 year old single mom trying to pay her rent.

#2. I’ve seen a lot of people say, “if you can’t afford to tip, don’t go out to eat.” Sure, but also I can respond to that with an equally lame, “if you can’t afford to live off the wages without tips, don’t work at a restaurant.” It’s all dumb.

But what’s really dumb is that the defenders of the tips fail to see that tipping culture disproportionately affects lower income customers.

If I make $2k/paycheck and I want to take my wife out for a nice dinner where I spend $100 on the meal, I’ll be expected to tip 20% or $20.

If I make $10k/paycheck and I want to take my wife out for a nice dinner where I spend $100 on the meal, I’ll be expected to tip 20% or $20.

For the $2k/paycheck customer, $20 is 1% of their paycheck. For the $10k/paycheck customer, $20 is 0.2% of their paycheck. The cost of eating out doesn’t necessarily rise because of a person’s income–and it certainly doesn’t rise in proportion with increases in income. This is not a progressive tax system. Instead, it’s essentially a flat tax similar to sales-tax, but with the guilt of “taking money out of someone’s pocket” attached to it.

It’s a sham and we shouldn’t stand for it. I don’t have a solution, yet. Except that we should push back against the narrative that we should tip no matter what and that we should tip for things like takeout… smh.

What I’ve been consuming lately:

Music:

• The Cleanest of Houses Are Empty by Carly Cosgrove (Spotify, Apple Music)

  • h/t to my homie Michael Crowder for recommending this one. He thought it would be right up my alley and he was right. This album is great for lovers of punk rock and alt rock. The melodies are fun & unique, and the instrumentation is anything but lazy. Worth a spin for sure.

• Life For Rent by Dido (Spotify, Apple Music)

  • h/t to my therapist for this one. This early 2000s pop album is just a fun nostalgic listen. Dido give you what you expect to hear from her. Nothing more, nothing less.

• August and Everything After by Counting Crows (Spotify, Apple Music)

  • Another recommendation from my therapist. I’m ashamed to say that I wasn’t very familiar with Counting Crows before I listened to this album. It’s a banger, head to toe. It has something for everyone–elements of punk, grunge, classic rock, dad rock, and Americana.

• Moyu - EP by Toshiki Soejima & Nahokimama (Spotify, Apple Music)

  • Toshiki is an amazing Japanese guitar player. I came across some of his live recordings on YouTube and he’s become one of my favorite instrumentalists. He is married to Nahokimama, who is a talented multi-instrumentalist (trumpet, guitar, & piano) & vocalist. I love that they make music together, and this EP is a relaxing and calming listen.

TV/Movies:

• Kinds of Kindness

  • I think Tanner & I are trauma-bonded after watching this together. This movie was upsetting in many, many ways. It also had some moments that were so outrageous that you couldn’t help but laugh. If you like disturbing, weird shit, this might be for you. Also, Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, and Willem Dafoe are all excellent as usual. But if you like “normal” movies, I beg you not to watch this. You’ll hate it.

• Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

  • This movie is 3 hours long. And at times it does feel long. But it’s also beautiful, nostalgic, and horrifying. Kevin Costner self-financed the majority of this and it really does feel like he took no short-cuts. It did feel a bit “Fellowship of the Rings”-y in that it was a LOT of set up without a ton of resolution, but I’m okay with it. You should definitely watch it if you even remotely find cowboys to be cool.

• Loudermilk (Netflix)

  • Part of my treatment program’s curriculum was a few 12-step meetings each week. (There is a lot of overlap between addiction recovery and general mental health recovery.) Loudermilk is a ~30 minute comedy series centered around a “Sober Friends” group lead by the main character, Sam Loudermilk. I found it to be an endearing and mostly accurate look into the world of recovery (at least from my perspective).

Books:

• Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

  • I just finished this one on Sunday. I saw this book described as fantasy horror, that’s accurate inasmuch as you accept that the “magic system” is christianity. It was a very unique angle with a very unique setting (1340s France). I very much enjoyed this book 8/10.

• 3 Body Problem by Cixin Liu

  • Restarting this one after running out of time with it on Libby last time. I am having a hard time with the robotic narrator, but I am going to power through.

Anyway… That’s all from me for now. As always, feel free to unsubscribe if you hate it. If you like it, feel free to tell me because I am a slut for words of affirmation.

And most importantly, I wish you the strength to survive the hurt that life has thrown at you and will throw at you. You’ve We’ve got this.

Nate.