politics

Life Hack: What’s the Point?

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, it’s important for me to keep my spirits up to combat all the ways the world is horrible. But you know what’s easier? Just skipping it all and succumbing to the feeling that my limbs are growing a little too heavy to hold up.

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This is me now.

Getting out of bed is really hard in the face of constant reminders that the world is full of endless suffering, and that our government is actively making it worse. So I’m using my platform as a lifestyle blogger to tell you that you have to get out of bed anyway. Go for a run! Make a smoothie! Or you can stay there and pretend you’re living in a cave like an early human, and that maybe we can rewind and start this whole “modern history” thing over and stop climate change before it’s already out of control.

One of the most important tenets of lifestyle blogging is that you should feel great all the time, no matter what horrible thing your president just said to hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico. Your circumstances are still in your control – unless a nuclear bomb falls from the sky because of a twitter feud – so you have no excuse not to meditate.

I wanted to tell you how to keep taking care of yourself while the world is rotting from its core, but so far today I’ve eaten a bag of Cheeto Puffs and a Nestle Tollhouse ice cream cookiewich that I bought from a liquor store last night, so maybe don’t take my advice?

I don’t know. I’m going back to bed.

I’m Not a Supreme Court Justice, but I Can Work Out Like One

Posted on by Julie Pearson

Even a successful lifestyle blogger isn’t immune to the turning tides in the world around her. I haven’t been operating at maximum adequacy for the last couple months – if you want to pick a totally arbitrary date, let’s say since November 8. Sometime in the late evening if we’re going to get very specific. But again, arbitrary.

As a result, I’ve been a successful lifestyle blogger in name only. By which I mean, I have not blogged. I’m very sorry. I know my inherent successfulness will only carry me so far in life. But I’ve returned, and I want to use my adequacy to make the world a better place.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg does twenty pushups a day. She’s 80 years old and very small. Plus, she’s incredibly busy being on the Supreme Court, which I guess is a pretty demanding job. She also has the advantage of working out at the Supreme Court-only gym, and I might stop being a successful lifestyle blogger to produce the reality series Justice Gym.

Anyway, if Ruth Bader Ginsburg can handle twenty pushups a day, surely I, a successful lifestyle blogger in my late 20’s, in peak physical health, can do it too.

So I did.

Ruth does two sets of ten, so that’s what I set out to do. Ten is easier than twenty, and I could take a break between sets. No big deal, right?


Pushups are very hard, it turns out. My arms are small spindles that cannot support my dense body. How does that tiny octogenarian do it?

You might have to do modified pushups. After struggling with regular pushups for a few days, I switched to modified for a while. I think my form was better with the modified ones. How am I supposed to know if my form is good or not? I don’t have a trainer. (Ruth has a trainer.)

But! If you’re lenient on yourself about what constitutes a “pushup,” it’s totally possible to do twenty of them.

Then, to make it a really ceremonious workout, I look off into the distance and proclaim, “I am Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” It gives me something to look forward to while I tolerate an entire minute of exercise.

I’ve been doing my RBG’s for almost a month, which is by far my longest run at an exercise program to date. The pushups are civic-minded in name only, and do nothing to enrich the world, but I do feel ever so slightly stronger, and at this moment that feels like a victory.

I am Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I don’t know if I’ll continue my career as a successful lifestyle blogger next year. For 2017, we might need to be better than adequate.

 

Photo Credit: Tiffany Smith