Right after I quit drinking, I got a job doing media for a housing organizing group.

This kind of job can take over your life very easily, especially if you don’t have much of a life to begin with (I didn’t).

As a result, I was very grateful for this job — it was completely consuming, allowing me to avoid any real self-reflection while remaining *technically sober* for almost 3 years.

Unfortunately, this organizing job did pose one dilemma: it involved a lot of high pressure time sensitive work with other people, including SROs tenants, people experiencing homelessness, journalists, and people in politics: all who tend to have their own complicated relationship with alcohol.

When I was working in this consuming job and didn’t have a life, every week or two someone would offer to buy me a drink.

Or, maybe they would clearly have just been drinking themselves, or very thoughtfully wanted to share the bottle of vodka from 7-Eleven, because it felt like a nice thing to do.

When this happened, I would panic.

At this time, I point-blank refused to engage with any other human about the fact that I was trying to be sober, let alone about any feelings about being sober I may have had.

So my coping mechanisms were limited.

Specifically: my coping mechanisms were limited to what I could get my brain to do BEFORE it would choose to drink.

Anything on my phone was out — there would always be crisis there, imagined or not, to make things worse.

Doing any kind of a long term healthy thing (journaling? breathwork? I don’t know, drinking more water?) was also out – I wasn’t drunk, but I was still actively and perpetually in fight or flight mode, which wasn’t much better.

But over time, I figured out one thing I could do on the concrete floor of my weird little cubicle without anyone seeing me or knowing that this is what I was doing while I was freaking out.

Push-ups.

I don’t like push-ups. They’re hard.

But I didn’t have time to go to a gym.

Bringing in any kind of fitness equipment to this office felt immensely uncool.

And other bodyweight stuff — squats or burpees, or I don’t know, some kind of abs?— could be seen by others over the edge of my cubicle, making my panic noticeable to everyone else in the office.

So when I was panicking after every press check in or tenant meeting icebreaker:

I would set a weird little kitchen timer for one minute, and do push-ups.

I would do as many push-ups as I could until the timer went off, my arms hurt too bad to keep going, or I no longer felt immense, consuming Doom adjacent panic.

It was usually the first one.

—

Push-ups worked well for me as a *sort of* healthy coping mechanism when I was 27.

But I’m learning lately that this particular coping mechanism doesn’t work as well 7 years later. Part of this is because my elbows hurt if I do too many push-ups — (What’s that about? Should I get that looked at?)

But it’s also because I’m now much more invested in:

1. Being out of flight/fight mode,

2. Self reflection,

3. Care for others,

4. Having a life.

Lately, I’m finding that being invested in these things is really annoying.

Because it means when I panic, I can’t just do push-ups until the timer makes a beeping noise.

Instead, I have to do something worse: interrogate the root of my panic and think about my feelings.

Ugh.

To be clear, I wouldn’t describe myself as *coping* particularly well right now.

However — I feel excited because around me, I see people doing similar things every single day — not push-ups, sorry.

They’re slowing down, reflecting, and dealing with the panic.

Dealing with the feelings feels mandatory in this particular crisis moment — but it also feels almost impossible.

Choosing reflection over push-ups is the OPPOSITE of what capitalism demands from us, of what crisis demands from us, everyday.

It’s so hard that sometimes it feels almost disrespectful to ask people, or social movements as a whole, to “slow down” in a world that is mostly on fire and going to continue to be more on fire, every single day.

But at least for me, that’s exactly why I have to practice — now, before the tendonitis (or the next round of climate apocalypse) hits.

It’s hard. I’m not doing a very good job.

But I’m trying.

And when I try, I also remember that none of us (especially in movements) were supposed to get this far — but people did it anyway.

And knowing that is a better feeling than the panic push-ups could ever create.

How’s it going with you?

Are you coping okay?

+ H

PS — Been watching people move off Substack over the last couple of weeks because… yeah. Nazis.

Will be switching it up soon, albeit slowly.

Good luck to you and me as we resist crisis mode at work and in *content creation* 🫡