Enjoying the Routine

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Clarissa

August 27, 2024

One more thing I forgot to say about Miranda July’s All Fours is this: if you are 45 and you aren’t excited about your day-to-day, you are doing it wrong and will drive yourself into a depression. The daily routine – and not the trips, the holidays, the celebrations and the special events – should be exhaustively fascinating. Anybody can enjoy a beach vacation but only people who are very right in the head can enjoy a regular Tuesday morning routine.

Perceiving the daily routine as onerous, jail-like, grating, intolerable, etc is the first sign that something is going wrong. The final destination of that journey is not good.

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3 responses to “Enjoying the Routine”

Anonymous

August 27, 2024

One of your criticisms of neoliberalism is that according to it, everything is your own fault. If you failed, it’s because you haven’t developed yourself properly, were unwilling to make necessary changes, etc.

How is this different?

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 27, 2024
  
  It doesn’t mean absolutely nothing is your own fault either.
  
  But what I propose is stepping away from the vocabulary of fault altogether. I propose looking at this as a symptom. A symptom that can lead to something worse if we don’t pay attention. A symptom is a departure from the norm. If I’m limping, there must be a reason. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person who’s at fault. It simply means that my leg is showing me that something is wrong and must be addressed.
  
  Good question, though. Very good. Because we are living in an increasingly neoliberalized world and, ultimately, we’ll either be good managers of our self or we won’t. I don’t think that’s avoidable at this point.
  
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Anonymous

August 27, 2024

that’s an interesting point that I never really thought about in this way. I do generally like my life, now in my early 50s, in a way I did not in my 20s. I won’t say my daily routine is blissful all the time but it works for me. I definitely enjoy the small moments of life that tend to be cost free – watching animals to children play, reveling in nature. Dinner at home with my loved ones. Anxiety about the future creeps in but I keep it at bay pretty well. I try to focus on what I do have control over.

Amanda

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