issue 11: girlmossing
quiet quitting, how to do nothing, and all that jazz
Girlmossing (n.): the antithesis of girlbossing and the active resistance to it; embodied exploration; daydreaming; doing nothing. Also see girlmoss (v.): to do nothing that contributes to the productive economy
22-year-old me (in the era I now think of as B.C., before covid) would be dismayed by how far I’ve strayed from her girlbossing, hustle culture persona. Did she really suffer through 12 years of weekly piano lessons, Kumon indoctrination, an all-girls high school, sleeping 4 hours multiple nights in a row in college, the suffocating weight of her immigrant parents’ deferred dreams, only to love doing nothing? There’s injustice to fight, bread to get, and a planet to protect, and sometimes I all I can do is lie motionless in my bed, lost in the textured dreamscapes of Flying Lotus and Scriabin and Caroline Polachek.
The irony is that girlmossing takes all the concerted discipline I have honed in grooming myself to become an ideal worker under late capitalism. More, actually. Sitting down to write this blog post, for all the joy and catharsis I get from it, takes discipline. It takes a tremendous amount of mental stamina for me to meditate everyday for 30mins, a habit I began wayyy B.C. The fact that being present with my breath is less intuitive for me than hopping on the subway to go to work fills me with inexplicable sadness and shame. Same goes for when I am reading, painting, knitting, drawing, taking a walk. What shouldn’t feel mentally exhausting maddeningly becomes so, because girlmossing requires resistance, as well as subscription to a worldview that mostly able-bodied, privileged people like myself desire. One that, up until recently, I have tried to work myself out of wanting.
I’ve always thought that what is now termed quiet quitting was, for me, an admission of failure. I didn’t know how to not go above and beyond, especially when it came to work. Working to, and past, the point of burnout was supposed to be my default. I thought so little of myself that not operating at 150% capacity would’ve forced me to examine why I derived my self-worth from work, and that would prove far more painful than running myself to the ground. (Which is exactly why we have the glorious machinery of capitalism to cast us back into an illusory, unthinking stupor, how convenient!)
I wish I could say it was a byproduct of my immigrant daughter guilt—“that is exactly the daughter my mom wishes came out of her vagina,” as Awkwafina expertly delivers in Shang-Chi—but it was mostly something I did to myself. Deep down, I knew it was a convenient copout to put it on my ancestors. I assumed it must be true that they labored through hunger, tyranny, war, and racism all so I could prioritize work over nourishing myself and my spirit. Now, if I were to meet them, I think they would want nothing more than for me to do…nothing. To nap with them on the grass, equal parts prickly and soft beneath us. Watch the sun scintillate across the floor, bright and wondrous like it’s been bottled up in an aperol spritz. Go on a hike and inhale that distinct mix of spring peas and firewood and clean musk that suffuses the air.
This all does not negate the fact that I actually do enjoy my work, which sends me into another mindfuck spiral of how can this coexist with girlmossing? Aren’t they supposed to be mutually exclusive? Surprise, work becomes more enjoyable and fulfilling when you detach your identity from it. I am still getting used to the idea that it is something I do, something I can allow myself to barely do sometimes, not the person I am.
Quiet quitting, like doing nothing (the way the artist and writer Jenny Odell describes it), opens you to the fullness of your world. I love being shocked by how much there is in nothing—Odell analogizes it to a burgeoning weed patch thriving in an abandoned plot of land. “Who am I without work?” So much, it turns out. I love sitting in the same spot overlooking Turtle Pond in Central Park, watching the turtles bob their tiny heads and gurgle tiny bubbles while some zealous dog or Canadian goose tries jumping in after them. I love mixing paint colors until they bloom into exactly the one I wanted. I love waiting as a fluffy cake rises in the oven and makes our apartment smell like Du pain et des idées. I love reading a particularly structurally sound sentence over and over again until the words appear strange and new.
In other words, I am myself, perhaps even more so.
Curious?
“It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam” by Tim Kreider
“Athleisure, barre, and kale: the tyranny of the ideal woman” by Jia Tolentino (also called “Always Be Optimizing” in her Trick Mirror essay collection)
How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen
A brilliant review of Carolyn Chen’s Work Pray Code by the brilliant Kevin Chu:
Lately (Recommendations)
Extraordinary Attorney Woo on Netflix
“When Pickles Become A Weapon” from Palestinian Journeys
Regina Spektor’s and Endea Owens’ (upcoming!) Tiny Desk Concerts
Saidiya Hartman on insurgent histories and the abolitionist imaginary from Art Forum
“Is Abortion Sacred?” by Jia Tolentino
John Gargano’s story on Humans of New York
