microdosing emotions #002

dispatches from gut feelings: money edition

in february (which felt like yesterday and lifetimes ago), i launched the microdosing series. here’s the recap:

if i felt everything my brain asks me to feel, there won’t be a person left. the other day, i wrote down, how much grief can we hold at once? anger? want? i’m almost always disembodied these days for one reason or another. trauma—both personal and collective—is stored in the body. if i pulled out every drawer at once, there wouldn’t be anything left to function with. i joke that i have to microdose my feelings, but it’s not far off from the truth. it’s a balancing game: if i want to access my empathy, i have to feel the grief, and vice versa. and i do, i just do it in bits.

i text myself a lot. they’re thoughts, musings, confessions that hit me so strongly that i have to get it out somewhere. i journal too, but the fleetingness of these emotions is faster than my ability to write them down. i tell myself, this will be a good essay. but when i come back to it, i can’t always muster up the energy to flesh it out.

enter: the microdose dispatches.

i hope some of these will eventually become long form essays. but in the meantime, i want to share more frequently what’s on my mind as they’re arriving, even if they haven’t quite hit their destination yet.

001. i got money on my mind in a real bad way. tax day is tomorrow. we’re seeing the impending trade war as the result of liberation day. please, please, please can people stop playing with china? does no one remember the time when dolce & gabbana put out an offensive campaign and the very next day, china stationed the military outside of its stores to prevent people from shopping there? and that was just over clothes.

002. recession indicators are here. the economic times published this piece about the stripper index and how sex workers are the first to know when we’re headed towards a bad place financially. i’m scaling high on the brunette index—the tried and true theory of how cosmetic trends can also predict an economic crash. case in point: red is too much upkeep, blonde requires too much bleach, but brunette is attainable and affordable. thank god that espresso brown was already trending. another indictor? me posting on instagram just in case i need to monetize it again.

003. no entity pisses me off as badly as the IRS. unless you’re ICE, who is in cahoots with them anyways. i thought immigrants were just freeloading in this country! make it make sense. also, the IRS already knows how much money we owe, so explain to me why we have to go through the long process of filing with them… when they can just tell us. annoying, just annoying.

004. a rich man tried to tell me that he’s not rich and i’m still mad about it.

005. speaking of, let’s talk poverty larpers. affluent new yorkers love to pretend that they’re penniless in their brownstones. this is especially true within the creative scene. the new york times put out an article today on how most of us have money dysmorphia, which is jarringly true. when i was writing for the financial diet, we talked about the difference between rich versus wealthy. if you are an individual with access (whether it be assets or generational wealth), you are wealthy. even if your bank account does not reflect it, you have access. i can be rich today, but i’ll never be wealthy. the nyt feature is worth a read, if only because it’s a nice reminder to be thoughtful about who you talk about money with (and our varying definitions of brokeness).

006. readers: i’m curious how often, if at all, money comes up in your conversations? i find our culture around money to be fascinating. let’s talk beer economy. let’s talk about why your richest friend will vemno request you for a $5 coffee. what are our social contracts around money and why does it feel like social contracts, in general, are dying? i know some of these horses have been beaten to death, but i’m declaring april 14th—the day before tax day—to be National Be Annoyed About Everything Day. drop your petty penny grievances below if you have them:

the IRS at us despite knowing! exactly! how much we owe! stupid!