Decoupling Productivity From Self-Worth
NGL writes about combatting perceptions of worthlessness and going to therapy for the first time. Plus: Cap takes on political discourse and the strength in numbers during COVID-19
(Photo Illustration by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)
Every week features new newsletters from Nathan Graber-Lipperman telling stories from his personal entrepreneurial journey, as well as examining media, business, and pop culture through a Gen Z lens.To read his last letter, click here.
Author’s Note: The aim of this essay is to talk about my experiences with mental health and depression with honesty. Therefore, some aspects may trigger an adverse reaction. If at any point you are feeling uncomfortable or upset, I advise that you please stop reading it immediately and talk to your support network.
Two weeks ago, I provided an update on our collaboration with D&D’s — which is still available and you should totally check out! — while also mentioning I was saving a somewhat serious topic for later.
Turns out, I completely forgot that we were set to have some sort of election the following Tuesday.
In any event, I postponed, again. A lot ended up happening last week, so it’s probably for the best that I didn’t focus on getting out this newsletter. And yet, there was that same feeling of disappointment that I’ve become conditioned to know and loathe all the same, an overwhelming feeling of worthlessness.
This is not a new dynamic for me. In fact, I’ve written about it before. But of late, it’s taken new meaning.
Because a month ago, I went to therapy for the first time. And I was scared as shit.
Technically, I guess I didn’t “go” anywhere. It was all over Zoom — Cisco Webex, for that matter. It’s been a mostly frictionless process: I login at our scheduled time, we talk for an hour or so, we wrap up by focusing on how to approach the next week, and then we’re done.
I didn’t really have anything to be overly anxious about. Mental illness is pretty normal. In fact, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year. Additionally, therapy has become more normalized and less stigmatized — Vice surveyed a slice of Gen Zers earlier this year and found that 30% believe everyone will be going to therapy by 2030, treating it like “going to any other kind of doctor.”
And yet, even when I first started having depressive episodes over a year ago, I balked at the idea of seeing a shrink. That’s only for people who have real problems, I told myself. There’s nothing wrong with me. Going to therapy would mean there’s something wrong with me.
Things were on-and-off for a while, but when it started getting really bad again in September — like, head pounding, curl-up-in-a-ball-and-don’t-get-out-of-bed-some-days bad — I knew I had reached a breaking point. Either I scheduled an appointment with a professional, or I continued on my bleak and lonely path forward.
I chose the former, and I’m thankful that I had the support system in place to help guide me through my decisions. And while I have yet to make a clear determination on whether or not it was the right move, thus far, the results have been a net positive.
One of the best things about my experience has been the simple action of talking. The individual I work with encourages me to spit out my stream of consciousness, even as I profusely apologize for what I perceive as rambling. Speaking out loud in this fashion to a professional listener is something that I — and I believe a lot of people whose interactions have been increasingly mediated through social media — don’t ever really have the space to do.
This is the direct antithesis to my prior bias towards the pen. When I’m flooded with anxiety, I often find writing to be a form of catharsis. At the same time, however, while I find writing to be the the best way for me to communicate my thoughts and ideas, the medium can sometimes be a deterrent due to its inherent struggle.
After all, it often takes me an hour or two just to write a paragraph. Even my journal entries are full-on papers.
So yeah, therapy has made it easy for me to just vocalize my thoughts and ideas, most of which are drivel. I find that most environments aren’t conducive for that. People don’t want to listen to you babble.
A major theme of these conversations have been about one central notion, one I haven’t been able to get out of my head since first seeing it on my timeline via a certain friend of the brand:
One Wednesday the week before my first session, I got a lot done. I worked on projects for my internship, and in the afternoon, I finalized details on the D&D’s collab with their owner, put posters up all over the store, and created screens for printing merch late into the night. By the end of the day, I had worked pretty much straight from 8 a.m. to midnight, but there was this palpable ball of energy powering me through everything — no caffeine required.
And then the next day, I woke up feeling like shit. Incredibly down, by mid-morning, something in my brain decided I was useless and therefore shut me down until nightfall, when I found myself trapped in my room, staring up at the ceiling.
No matter what time of day — or day, for that matter — I always have this itch of I’m not doing enough. Depending on the situation, this itch can get harder to ignore, to the point where it becomes maddening, and suffocating.
When contextualizing this feeling every time I don’t hit a deadline, every time I don’t live up to a seemingly high standard I set for myself, a pattern emerges. It’s often later in the week, I’m skipping out on showers and meals, and it’s usually related to something I pump a lot of passion into.
Therefore, I’m trying to be a little bit more compassionate to both myself and others in regards to my expectations of output. For example, I said this newsletter would come out at 8 p.m. every Tuesday, a promise I am acutely aware of. Yet I’ve missed deadlines the past several weeks to prioritize things like cooking a healthy meal, taking a Saturday off to explore a state park, or calling a family member to wish them happy birthday.
And I believe I’m getting to the point where I’m okay with that, whether it be through actions (like the ones listed above) or through inaction (such as allowing myself to take a nap some afternoons).
It’s certainly not a straight line, though. Thing is, though I don’t think we should correlate value to productivity in the sense of how much "work" we can plow through, I firmly believe we can correlate value to productivity when it comes to implementing things that are inherently valuable to us and other people while simultaneously requiring hard work.
In layman’s terms, quality over quantity can still ring true when it comes to our depictions of self worth.
I also think that a lot of us believe in this idea of a pure meritocracy, where the “winners” in our society are the ones who simply outwork everyone else. They say competition is the greatest motivator, and for the most part, I would tend to agree.
You look around at various industries, everywhere from the sports world to the startup world to the restaurant world, and the ruthless warriors are often the ones we hear about, the ones that supposedly leave their stamp on the masses. I know I'm not an uber-competitive person and it's not what motivates me; nevertheless, in a society that values competitive spirit more than arguably almost anything (see: making politics into a team sport), it sometimes does feel really stupid to tell your boss or peers Hey, I need to take a mental health day.
Should we normalize practices like this, and destigmatize them? Fuck yeah, we should. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, those who are more competitive, the ones grinding away in a gym or garage or kitchen somewhere, creating something and/or honing their craft...those are the ones we end up hearing about, right?
History is written by the “winners,” after all.
To sum, I’m still figuring things out. The next step I’m working on with my therapist is what to do when I have this feeling of worthlessness. We’ve talked about the idea of visualizing success as it relates to my life, as well as relating motivation to the values I’ve identified as most vital: empathy, altruism, and aesthetics.
Also, I’m trying to be more intentional in my actions, too, which includes doing something kind for someone else every day and journaling about it so that I can look back when I’m down.
Finally, injecting some healthy competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, which is what’s reinvigorated me to find a business partner who drives me to believe in my vision and the values I set forth.
Of course, talking also helps. For me, the first step was with a professional, but I also think there’s so much to learn from each other. With many of the conversations I have with my peers who dabble in creative and entrepreneurial spaces, I leave with a sense of positivity when we’re able to talk openly and honestly about mental health and the constant struggle of figuring out why we do.
Nonetheless, these conversations are few and far between, and the more we don’t have them, the easier it is to trick ourselves into thinking we’re going about it alone. Therefore, I might create some sort of weekly Zoom call or Discord channel or something that’s super informal but focused on this dynamic; if you’re interested, feel free to drop me a line and let me know!
Links (and Other Things)
Captain America Trades Nazis and Mad Titans for Political Discourse
(Photo via Wired)
Over the course of the last month, we saw record amounts of voter turnout for the 2020 elections by way of mail, in-person voting, and by raven (Editor’s Note: the latter has been the subject of most right-leaning pundits’ ire in recent days due to the people of Westeros’ tendency to skew left ever since the Mad King fell).
It’s way too early to discern any real, thorough takeaways; in fact, a decent chunk of the country still thinks the damn thing isn’t over yet. Nonetheless, one thing we can all agree on is that voter registration efforts and information over the last several years in an attempt to curtail voter suppression made a lasting impact. From politicians and voting rights activists like Stacey Abrams to Indigenous organizers that helped swing the vote in Wisconsin and Arizona, every little action matters. Even the LeBron-led initiative More Than A Vote played its part in galvanizing youth across the country through harnessing the power of entertainers’ platforms.
So much for Shut Up and Dribble.
What’s clear is that the American public is now more politically-involved than it ever has been. The next question is, how does it remain that way — and potentially even accelerate?
While he isn’t pitching his new venture as an end-all, be-all solution, there’s one superhero giving his spin on prolonging political participation past Trump. You may not believe it, but Chris Evans is now fighting for something new off the silver screen: civil discourse.
Lawmakers didn’t buy it at first, either. In a video Evans posted on social media this year, he explained that it took a while for Washington to buy into the idea of Captain America building a new app to help engage voters on the topics that should matter to them.
Part of this might have been the quality of the original pitch itself. After all, in 2017, Evans filmed himself talking about A Starting Point with the subpar webcam on his computer. When he sent the video out as an email attachment to “every senator and representative in Congress,” only a handful replied. Most of them thought it was a troll job or a bot; the rest thought it was a joke.
Nevertheless, when you’re trying to gain some traction on an idea, it certainly helps to be uber-famous — or, as Wired put it, “…there are few doors in American life that a square jaw can’t open, particularly when it belongs to a man with many millions of dollars and nearly as many swooning Twitter fans.” Fast-forward three years, and the app is a success, featured on the App Store with a 4.9-star rating.
The logic behind ASP is that people want to be more engaged with politics, but there’s simply too much information online that it becomes rather overwhelming. It becomes more and more difficult to keep up with the core issues when you don’t know what elected officials stand for and who to trust.
Therefore, ASP delivers the stance straight from the horse’s mouth: the politicians themselves. You can view 1-2 minute videos where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle answer frequently-asked questions (i.e. “What is the Affordable Care Act?”); back-and-forth on hot topics (like “Can Congress come together on climate change solutions?”); and sideline chats from the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.
To be perfectly honest, there’s nothing that revolutionary about ASP. Sure, it features a clean interface, and the development team did a great job. What’s so unique to me about ASP, though, comes back to the unique value prop Evans’ and Co. originally sought to bring to life: the discourse is actually civil.
Shocking, right?
While I acknowledge that the finger-pointing from some more centrist Democrats is a little misguided — and the fact that not all loud voices deserve forgiveness — I simultaneously believe in the power of leading with respect and empathy, as well as lending an ear to listen. I believe that ASP is, ironically, a great starting point in this regard, and I’m excited to see what Cap’s new team does in the coming years.
The Summer of Viewership
(Photo Illustration by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)
I figure I should spend more time in this newsletter bumping our awesome stories, right?
In any event, I’ve been thinking about this piece — courtesy of Isabelle Jocelyn and UNPLUGG’D MAG — more and more as the year winds down and we’re setting new hospitalization records due to the novel coronavirus. Remember when the pandemic was supposed to wind down by Easter, then by July 4th, then in time for schools to open, then on November 4th when it would mysteriously disappear?
Yeah, that obviously didn’t happen, and we’re now facing the massive consequences as people spread the virus through small indoors gatherings due to the weather changing. Businesses are going to close, and lives will be affected, particularly as vast socioeconomic inequalities are exacerbated.
To connect to the over-arching theme of this letter, though, is a small sliver of hope: I think we’re going to have to lean on each other more and more to pull through this thing. There’s a lot of dark days ahead — both literally and metaphorically — and it’s on us to work together and be responsible.
In her story, Isabelle talks about doing a double-take when she sees television characters going about their day in the mask-less, pre-COVID world. This is something I think about a lot, particularly as the concept of normalcy grows fainter by the day.
Nevertheless, 2020 has been a year full of accelerated growth for many of us. As Isabelle writes:
To say this year has been uncomfortable is an understatement. How we continue moving forward is going to be more than that. However, if being uncomfortable means seeing who we really are, taking accountability of that, and eliminating the biases and blind spots that we have that harm others, then I’m all for it.
Just because we are still stuck in trying to define this new normal doesn’t mean we can’t make a continuous effort to be active in educating — and bettering — ourselves.
There’s a lot of really good stuff in there you should go check out — and make sure to check out her other work here, too!
Out-of-Context Rap Lyric of the Week
As a reminder, I’ve decided to post a new rap lyric every week that’s completely out of context. First person to respond to this newsletter with the name of the artist, song, and year it was released gets a free Unplugg’d t-shirt featuring Stormy, shipped free!
Alright, here’s this week’s lyric:
“The only thing I put before me is ‘Do, re’”
Think you got it? Send me an email with the answers and your address and you’ll be good to go. Oh, and congrats to Ruben Gonzalez for winning our last competition!
Thanks for reading this edition of ‘The G-L Review.’ If you liked it, consider sharing it with a friend or supporting us here. If you want to keep the conversation going, send me a reply at ngl@powderbluemedia.com.
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