{"id":277743,"date":"2018-11-16T12:33:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T12:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/11\/16\/load-bearing\/"},"modified":"2018-11-16T12:33:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T12:33:46","slug":"load-bearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/11\/16\/load-bearing\/","title":{"rendered":"load-bearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

notesoftruth<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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thantos1991<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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brightlotusmoon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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aspiring-bonobo-rationalist<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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theunitofcaring<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they\u2019re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they\u2019re barely keeping their head above water.<\/p>\n

(This happens to me all the time; <\/i>it\u2019s\u00a0approximately\u00a0my dominant experience of working full-time.)<\/p>\n

I think one thing that\u2019s\u00a0going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression\/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don\u2019t have to worry about looking<\/i> productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s useful to think of these things as load-bearing<\/i>. They\u2019re not just nice – they\u2019re part of your mental architecture, they\u2019re part of what you\u2019re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it\u2019s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight.\u00a0\u201cOh,\u201d I say to myself after months of fatigue,\u00a0\u201chaving my own private space was load-bearing.\u201d\u00a0\u201cOh,\u201d after a scary drop in weight,\u00a0\u201cbeing able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.\u201d\u00a0\u201cOh,\u201d after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity,\u00a0\u201ca quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you know what\u2019s important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you don\u2019t, or when you\u2019re thinking of all these things as\u00a0\u2018nice things about my life\u2019 rather than\u00a0\u2018load-bearing bits of my flourishing as a person\u2019, you\u2019re not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until you\u2019re really, really hurting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Almost two weeks after reading this, and I\u2019m still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is.\u00a0 Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now I\u2019m like holy shit I\u2019m so glad that there\u2019s now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. I\u2019m going to update my Spear Theory with this. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

@thebibliosphere<\/a> @sister-forget-me-not<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

@deadcatwithaflamethrower<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

notesoftruth: thantos1991: brightlotusmoon: aspiring-bonobo-rationalist: theunitofcaring: Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they\u2019re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “load-bearing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[26271,263,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}