How To Follow Your Mood In A Long Winter

Opening Argument: How To Follow Your Mood In A Long Winter

So let’s talk about strategy — not overall strategy, which obviously has to include your health and finding ways to stay in contact with people safely and managing what I know are enormous challenges for parents with kids in school; I am not the person to advise about that. But let’s talk about how to deploy the art and the entertainment that you love in the best way you can. Please don’t take this to mean I assume everyone has free time: Plenty of people do not have free time right now. But even the busiest of people — like doctors and nurses and exhausted parents — have told me in recent months that they need their stories, their music, their things to read. So let’s talk about it. 

My first suggestion is not to be afraid to revisit things that you’ve loved for a long time, particularly if you haven’t already done that in the last eight months or so. Very often, I find that if I return to a movie or a book that I loved, it seems really different to me, and it sometimes helps me map some change in what I care about or notice or relate to. I think a lot of people try to optimize their cultural intake, and I completely get it, and obviously I spend a lot of time on discovery myself. But I also believe that every decision takes a certain outlay of mental energy, and sometimes that energy just isn’t there for finding the new thing. 

However! My other suggestion, which is complementary and not in opposition, is to use any time that you do find you have to discover some of the stuff you’ve filed under «I’m not going to get to that.» I recently started making my way through The Leftovers, which just never made it into my weekly rotation. It’s a cliche among TV critics to say some shows get better as you go along, and I am not really a fan of investing ten hours in trying to get yourself to start to like something. But the fact that something didn’t spark with you in the first moments you encountered it doesn’t mean it won’t now.
 

Also: Your mood may be really … volatile. Mine definitely is. Sometimes, I just want something sweet and nice and romantic to watch, like a holiday movie. (You’ll be glad to know there are … many of those to watch.) Sometimes, I want to watch 20 consecutive YouTube videos of experts making fun of how their jobs are portrayed in the movies, or I want to follow the video journey of a woman making authentic Victorian underwear. Sometimes, I’m in the mood for one of those deeply serialized dramas, or I want to read a great nonfiction book, or I want to listen to the audiobook of a memoir. My point here is that if you find your head is a little all over the place, you’re not alone. Just follow it gently from point to point, don’t judge it, give it lots of choices. (Your head, I’m saying.) 

And before I get off this topic, let me say a kind word about hobbies. Specifically, about making stuff. You can tell people have been embracing crafting by how hard it is to get certain kinds of crafting supplies right now (try to buy a highly recommended basic sewing machine at the moment). But this is a really good thing to add to your options. (It obviously does not have to be sewing.) My choice has been papercrafting of various kinds, learning to make greeting cards. I know that might sound weird given how few people send mail anymore, but let me tell you: When people don’t send mail very often, you get a lot of points for sending mail. People are pleasantly surprised! 

We’re going to keep talking about it. For now, find what you love, be good to yourself, and get some sleep.