If you had asked me what I
wanted most in life just one year
ago, I would have buoyantly
responded with: a book deal
and a successful writing career.
As
my
aptitude
for
setting
professional goals stretches back
even further — a circled “1500”
signaling my goal SAT score, a
nine-page recount of a leadership
development conference I went
to when I was 17 and a crisply
flattened picture of me and my
mom after we toured Vanderbilt
are among the many artifacts
of
my
high
school
journal.
Preoccupied by the stress of
standardized tests and classwork,
the purple ink in that journal is
the mark of a person dominated
by an almost entirely different set
of standards and values from the
person I am now.
In the years since, as my
anxiety has escalated, many of
my professional goals have been
drowned out by the cacophony of
my own thoughts. Success, in my
mind, used to take the shape of
a degree from a university many
people perceive to be “great” and
a job that people perceive to be
equally as “great.” Now, success
takes the shape of my hands —
steady, unflinching from anxiety
— and a mind that hasn’t worried
itself sick wandering to the “Worst
Case Scenario.” I’ve watched my
world fold in on itself, watched
the measurable goals that once
constituted my life’s meaning
dissolve like unstirred honey at
the bottom of a teacup: sticky, too
concentrated to be useful. While
I used to think of my life in years,
I now think of it in days — if not
hours. Within the last year, the
scale of my life shrunk as my
anxiety grew, completely shifting
the standards I hold myself to:
What I want most in life now is,
most prominently, to be at peace
with myself, followed by people to
love and be loved by and financial
stability.
Although my anxious thought
patterns were the most pervasive
this last summer and fall semester,
these patterns are still very much
muscle memory. Catastrophizing
that phone call with a friend that
was a few minutes too short is
now second nature; impulsively
playing mental reruns of daily
interactions and overthinking
fleeting moments of eye contact
are now habits.
In the throes of my anxiety, the
last thing I was thinking about
was a future career, or a new
club to join. And now, as I live
alongside the remnants of that
anxiety, I struggle to look beyond
what’s currently in front of me.
Recursive and overpowering, my
anxious thought patterns dizzy
me. They extend beyond the point
of attempting to make plans for
a future that seems so abstract.
Because the more I think, the less
my thoughts make sense; and the
less my thoughts make sense, the
more I think. At the height of my
anxiety, all I wanted was control
over myself and my thoughts —
which is why I so incessantly
relied on these familiar, albeit
destructive, patterns. I believed
that if I played back these
moments enough times I could
eventually rewrite them. It was a
cruel iteration of the very human
craving for comfort by way of
habits and familiarity.
It’s no secret that humans are
creatures of habit, and, as a self-
proclaimed organized, type-A
person, I’ve always prided myself
on maintaining a specific brand
of habits: prioritizing school
even at the cost of my sleep or
wellbeing, filling out my planner
months in advance, never leaving
my bed unmade. However, my
anxious mind preyed on my
affinity for structure and turned
it on its head. In my most anxious
months, there was no place that
felt as safe to wander as the
well-worn paths of the same
“Worst Case Scenarios” I had
played out in my head hundreds
of times before. While I knew
that my shaking hands and these
nightmares that had become my
perennial bedtime stories were
not sustainable, I didn’t know
how to break the cycle I was in.
Although many articles on
coping with anxiety suggest
a formal, or at the very least
concerted, effort to analyze your
thought patterns and/or use stress
management techniques, I did not
feel like I had the space to take a
step back and think about why my
mind was going the places it was.
Instead, over the next several
months, I began noticing parts
of daily interactions that made
me grateful — not just anxious
— to be experiencing the day I
was experiencing. This wasn’t
even a choice I remember actively
OLIVIA MOURADIAN
Statement Columnist
Restructuring my ambition & other beginnings
Design by Pheobe Unwin
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
S T A T E M E N T
8 — Wednesday, April 19, 2023
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
I spent this year’s Spring Break
in Utah with a group of 11 other
University of Michigan students,
most of whom I hadn’t met before.
We embarked on a trip with the
Michigan Backpacking Club, and
had been paired together based
on our preferred spring break
destination
and
daily
hiking
distance. The plan was to spend a
week driving through the southern
part of the state, following good
weather, and to enjoy as much time
in the backcountry as possible.
In backpacking communities,
there are certain “iconic” hikes
that convey a level of status and
expertise: climbing the steep
granite crest of Half Dome in
Yosemite, summiting Mount St.
Helens, descending 6,000 feet into
the bottom of the Grand Canyon
and coming back up again. We
were in Zion National Park, in part,
to complete one of those iconic
hikes. More than half of my group
had no real hiking or backpacking
experience, but this trip was about
to establish our place among
“serious backpackers”: we were
going to complete Angels Landing.
On paper, Angels Landing is a
deceptively short, 5.4 mile hike
that covers a modest 1,488 feet of
elevation gain. For the last half
mile, however, hikers cross over a
narrow rock formation that’s just
a few feet wide in certain spots.
Metal chains have been drilled
into the rock to support hikers
in segments that are too steep to
complete unassisted. One wrong
move, one misplaced step or
moment of hesitation, and you’ll
fall nearly 5,000 feet into the red
canyon below.
Angels Landing started out as
a loose suggestion: Wouldn’t it be
fun to do it if we were going to Zion
anyway? But for some members
of my backpacking group, it
became an obsession. Individuals
in my group with improper
equipment (crampons are strongly
recommended in icy conditions)
insisted on attempting the trek
anyway, and attempts to dissuade
them from putting themselves in
the way of undue danger turned
into a screaming match. One
person even admitted that they
had only signed up to make the
30-hour drive to southern Utah
with the backpacking club to hike
Angels Landing.
In the end, most of my group —
myself included — did complete
the hike. It was stunning and
strenuous
and
everything
everyone had described it as. It
would be untrue to say that it
didn’t live up to the hype. But I felt
a strange disconnection between
Angels Landing as a physical place
and embodied experience and
Angels Landing as an ideal.
I
began
to
suspect
there
was something deeper to the
way certain hikes and outdoor
experiences convey status — that
for some people, it really wasn’t
about enjoying nature, but about
something else entirely. This
thought lingered in the back of my
mind throughout the trip. Again
and again, comments would come
up that made me return to this:
We should hit all five National
Parks in Utah just to say we did
it, we can just go to the visitor
centers.
I don’t want to spend three days
in Capitol Reef National Park; no
one has ever heard of that.
Why were we so obsessed with
having certain experiences and
how had their subjective value in
our collective imagined warped
my experience on my trip? There
was an unspoken agreement that
we would rather visit certain high-
profile attractions in a superficial
way — stopping at the visitor
center, checking out the scenic
overlook and then leaving — than
spend more time hiking less iconic
spots. Was the visitor center at
Bryce Canyon really worth more
than three days of backpacking in
Capitol Reef?
Overconsumption
has
been
written
about
extensively.
Overconsumption of new, trendy
and low-cost clothes is fueling
the fast fashion industry, which
contributes to climate change
and the exploitation of low-paid
garment workers in the Global
South.
Overconsumption
of
social media is divorcing people
from real life and contributing
to a crisis of loneliness and
isolation, especially for teens.
Overconsumption contributes to
a deep, psychological unhappiness
where more is the ultimate goal —
and where there is no longer any
pleasure in enjoying the everyday
or familiar.
Notably,
critiques
of
overconsumption
have
almost
exclusively focused on physical
goods. This is unsurprising — it’s
easy to cite how overconsumption
contributes to hoarding, excessive
shopping hauls and social media
companies’
mandate
to
get
people to spend more and more
time online. But is it possible to
“overconsume” experiences?
I used to think it was impossible.
In fact, I constantly worried I
was disengaging from real life,
too caught up with whatever was
on my phone, on my computer or
lingering in my mind to deeply
experience what was around me.
Now, I’m convinced that it is, in
fact, possible.
Overconsumption
isn’t
just
for the tangible. The same logic
that
demands
we
constantly
pursue newness is pushing us to
live shallow, disengaged lives.
It makes no difference if you
experience something deeply, all
that matters is that you experience
it. Overconsumption is coming for
real life, too.
***
Once I started thinking about
overconsuming
experiences,
I began to see it everywhere.
The most egregious example
was BookTok. BookTok is an
influential
corner
of
TikTok
dedicated
to
reading
and
reviewing books. I am, admittedly,
not a regular viewer of BookTok
content, mostly because I don’t
like to read Young Adult novels
anymore (despite being marketed
towards teens, the genre has
taken a hold on chronically
online 20-somethings). But more
importantly, I had an aversion to
the community’s obsession with
their “read counts” — how many
books they had read in a given
week, month or year.
I admit that this may seem like
a hollow critique — the point of
books is, after all, to read them. On
BookTok, however, read counts
are the ultimate indicator of
status. Creators will boast about
completing 100 books in a year.
Not only is this reading volume
unrealistic for the average person,
it’s hardly aspirational. To meet
these lofty reading goals, creators
offer their viewers tips on how
to finish novels faster, such as
listening to audiobooks at double
speed. Here, the novel functions
more like a Zoom lecture that a
reader just needs to get through
than something to be engaged
with and enjoyed. Other tricks
that these influencers tout include
skimming long passages of text
and opting for shorter texts like
novellas or graphic novels. The
imperative is clear: read a book so
you check another item off your
to-read list, not because you’re
actually interested in the text.
Of course, there’s an element
of traditional, commodity-based
overconsumption
to
BookTok.
Novels are primarily a tangible
good, and literary influence has
made substantive critiques of how
literary communities encourage
consumerism.
Nevertheless,
BookTok’s
incessant
pressure
to finish more and more titles
suggests it’s not just about owning
an excessive amount of books.
Reading becomes a means to an
end, devoid of any critical analysis
or enjoyment.
Overconsumption is, at its core,
about making yourself palatable
and interpretable to others. Real-
life overconsumption is largely
driven by self-presentation. If
someone tells you they read five
books last year, it certainly tells
you something about them. But if
they say they read 100 books last
year, or even 30, it’s a clear signal
of who they are. That person is a
reader, embodying a particular
aesthetic that comes with the
title. Other facts about that person
are irrelevant, because reader
provides a neat rubric through
which they can become legible.
In an essay for Bustle, author
Stephanie Danler describes her
foray into BookTok. Danler, who’s
novel “Sweetbitter” was popular
among
reading
accounts
on
Instagram, joined TikTok to stay
up-to-date with literary trends,
but found that the app was more
about
successfully
performing
aesthetics than actual content.
“On it, you can’t just show a book
by Clarice Lispector,” Danler
writes. “The successful accounts
performed being a ‘woman who
reads Clarice Lispector.’ ”
The same is true of outdoor
communities.
Visiting
one
national
park
is
a
weak
signal
of
someone’s
identity.
Overconsumption,
however,
provides a neat way to translate a
narrow set of experiences into a
fully formed idea of a person. In
my mind, I can picture the kind of
person who visits all five national
parks in Utah. The line “I’ve hiked
Angel’s Landing and Half Dome
and Mount Saint Helens” makes
it immediately clear to me who
someone is. If they’re a woman,
they’re
probably
a
“granola
girl” or if they’re a guy, they’re
probably a “dirtbag” — a brand of
outdoorsman who “is committed
to a given (usually extreme)
lifestyle to the point of abandoning
employment and other societal
norms in order to pursue said
lifestyle.” It’s less about what
particular
archetype
someone
embodies, but more that living
that archetype allows everything
about them to fall into place.
HALEY JOHNSON
Statement Correspondent
Overconsumption is coming for real life, too
Design by Grace Filbin
Read more at MichiganDaily.com