“Learn to really listen to your body.” -Charlesia McKinney, “Demystifying the Dissertation: A Critical Conversation with Graduate Students and Advisors,” April 3rd 2024

                I’m traveling now, away from home, but a few nights ago I was lying in bed next to my partner, a cool wind rustling in from the window, our skin warm, a neighbor laughing as they walked outside. And I felt this abiding peace, this lovely overflowing past any question of “enough.”
                In the last months I’ve also felt more unsettled in my career than I have in years. There’re lots of reasons for that—economy stuff, job market stuff, health stuff—but beyond those reasons, I’m thinking about one of the funny ways I’ve been coping. Or pretending to cope. I’ve been watching these really dumb reality competition shows. Running towards elaborate, obvious stories that pretend that meritocracy works in the US, that work hard and control everything and you’ll get ahead is advice that makes sense instead of an attempt to hide (or justify, or protect) prejudiced systems designed to create imbalance. To exploit workers. To concentrate power toward a few. I think those stories are part of a worldview that likes separating the world into winners and losers, and likes explaining why the winners “deserve it.” I think those stories are interwoven with racism, sexism, settler colonialism, ableism, empire. I believe that, and there I am, watching Survivor. Feeling the parts of me that have still internalized that competition is, in the end, the real description of what “we” are, and that competition is also the way out of whatever hurts I don’t want to feel. What a funny thing to believe. But myths are strong like that.
                Lying in bed next to my partner, I felt how I seek shows like Survivor because I learned somewhere that there will never be enough, so you’re supposed to take more. But I don’t think that’s true. When I feel deeply, that’s not what I feel.. And I had a wonderful moment of feeling how I could choose to turn, not toward my worries of doing enough so I can win, but toward the cool air and our skin’s warmth. To our words and our pauses, drifting between us like leaves on a lazy breeze. I could really listen to my body, to our bodies together. And our bodies were saying how wonderful and washed together a moment is.