Michaela Wang ‘21, Feature Editor

During this unprecedented global crisis, you find yourself reaching into the Ruffles bag during pauses of the 2010 season of Real Housewives of New Jersey. You haven’t learned how to crochet, but you have learned to crunch only during the loud finger-pointing fights. During the montages of Jersey City nightlife, you notice your untidy reflection in the darkness of the screen. While delivery workers, cleaners, landscapers, mailmen and women, and grocery store workers labor courageously on the front lines, the only line you have reached is the one you fill water to in the Easy Mac cup.

Cornered by a sense of guilt and inactivity, many Americans have scrambled to their living rooms for remnants of a home gym, pursued old entrepreneurial ideas, grown their own yeast starters, and finally fixed the back door that always seems to creak. Time – a luxury once enjoyed so rarely – is everywhere, and overwhelmed by its abundance, we desperately try to control how we utilize it. Several NA community members created strict calendars to grasp a sense of time and return to their normal circadian rhythms. A sophomore formulated a health and wellness agenda, planning to rise at eight to workout, shower, cook up an elaborate brunch, contribute to a volunteer service, make a healthy homemade dinner with her mother, and finish the night with a Bob Ross painting tutorial. And just like every meticulous, well-thought plan, it failed. The student confessed, “I was so overwhelmed with the amount of time that I had and the number of things that I could do, that I couldn’t do anything. I burned out, and it was only Day 1 of quarantine.”  

The pressure for productivity, the idealistic standards and the eventual fallout, is characteristic to Newark Academy and American hustle culture.  Every minute of our lives must be commodified for gain and self-improvement, and this compulsion only severes when we are faced with such an empty, wasteless agenda. Anne Helen Petersen, a journalist and author of the forthcoming book Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, told the New York Times: “We’re so used to making every moment of ours productive in some capacity. Like, I’m on a walk, I should listen to this information podcast that makes me more informed or a better person.”

As we attempt to find solace in social media outlets, we only settle ourselves in this hustle culture.  The Do 10 Tag 10 Instagram push up challenge tasks each participant to film themselves performing 10 push ups, then tag 10 more participants to do the same. Fitness accounts flood with inventive workouts, for example one fitness guru lifted Campbell’s Chicken Soup cans as dumbbells. Toxic diet culture has also appeared on social media, where influencers display their light green smoothies and meal replacement bars in fear of gaining “COVID 19”, as in 19 pounds. An NA student admitted that this time in isolation is particularly difficult for her, as she feels inactive and unproductive in comparison to fitness accounts and peers on social media: “I see all these fitness ads encouraging everyone to get fit and use this time to lose their lower ab fat. Everyday, my peers post their post-workout selfies, flaunting how they did two workouts in a day because they have nothing else to do. We are living through a global pandemic, not a 30 day ab challenge.” Moving around and eating healthy food is crucial for one’s physical and mental health during isolation, but when we promote fitness as a punishment to the sedentary lifestyle and only value fitness in the presence of end results, burnout will inevitably hit.  

We must recognize that it is a privilege for us to feel bored, to hold so much time in our hands, and to even feel the pressure to be productive. Thus we must truly appreciate time, not oppose time as an enemy. Now more than ever, we have to allow ourselves opportunities to reflect and to observe the world around us, sit with discomfort. Take walks with your family, keep a journal, order some takeout, read a book; the most inactive, most useless activities may in the end be the most productive for your mental and physical sanity.