The Dopamine of Having Done It

When a shift in priorities made all the difference.

The metaphor:

Back in November, I wrote about dread. “This is happening, whether I rage against it, resign myself to it, or build up the fuel” for resilience.

Now, it is time to resill, which is the word I made up for the verb form of resilience. It rhymes with “until.” Resilling needs a verb form: it’s an active thing we do. And, it’s a thing I’ve needed to do a lot of this week, following Trump’s inauguration: managing when and how to take in information, then absorbing the twin blows of surprise and devastation in the face of calculated chaos and purposeful cruelty.

So, I’ve thought a lot about what’s made me resilient in the past, learning how to prevent my train of thought from building up too much steam to let me sleep.

The story:

Do you ever jolt awake in the dark of night, thoughts racing? A few years back, that started happening so often that I felt nervous climbing into bed.

The first stop for my racing train of thought was usually my job. Early on, I’d get up and go find my laptop, thinking I could sleep again if I just got something done, but then I wouldn’t actually do it. I’d find myself five clicks deep into a random rabbit hole. What’s Zach Braff doing now? Are those Madewell black jeans back in stock? So I learned to stop believing my brain when it said a task was urgent.

Sure enough, if I stayed in bed, the thought train would barrel on ahead. Next, I’d be worrying about an offkey exchange with a friend or my schedule for the week. I wanted to leave my brain in the kitchen overnight where I kept my phone, to drop it in water like a set of dentures, sanitizing while I slept.

Somehow, sunlight broke the spell each morning, whether I’d fallen back asleep or not. Lying there in the light, my exhausted body limp against the sheets, it was hard to believe I had just been stuck in a full-body stress clench. I couldn’t remember why I’d felt so trapped, or which thoughts had so recently been inescapable.

I resolved to write them down for my morning self to study, maybe finding some sort of pattern to learn from. The next time I woke in the night, I tried to get my hand to move for what felt like hours. Paralyzed like the rest of me, it stayed curled up tight against my torso, my banging heart and short, fast breath. Finally I scrawled something down. It was hard work, so I was surprised in the morning to find it so short and vague. “Work but also my parents’ eventual death and other not work stuff.” Which is what I’ll call it if I ever release an album.

I stopped trying to follow the thoughts at all. Inspired by the efforts of my friends who’d become parents, I bought blackout curtains and a white noise machine, trying to train myself to sleep like a toddler. I got a digital clock for my bed so I could check the time and know whether to go back to sleep. If I started to slip into a spiral, I’d put in headphones and turn on an audiobook to drown out the thoughts, make myself take deep breaths. I read about perimenopause and thought about hormone replacement treatment.

It was honestly a year or two before I thought, maybe I should consider how I am during the day? And then I realized the answer was: wound pretty tight.

Like, I did okay disconnecting from work once I logged off, thanks to years of practice, but I’d often stay online an extra hour or two or three, if I hadn’t gotten through my task list and my plans allowed for it. When my plans didn’t allow, I hated logging off if I hadn’t finished everything I’d meant to. In fact, each night, I’d line up the tasks I planned to do the next day, and then I thought about them all morning as I ran or lifted weights or did yoga. Then I’d shower and dress like a skydiver suiting up, launch myself into my desk chair, and start my adrenaline-fueled fast typing, trying to cram it all in.

As the workday progressed, my stomach coiled tighter and tighter, my lungs started to constrict. I had set a specific definition of success and I desperately wanted to achieve it, to spend the evening bathed in the dopamine of having done what I’d planned. By the time I peeled myself away from the screen, I was gasping for breath, sometimes with relief, sometimes frustration, and it took real effort to transition to my evening. I realized that the skill I’d so carefully cultivated of pushing my day from my conscious mind meant burying it in my subconscious, a ticking time bomb set for my sleeping self.

I had never been much for mindfulness. Like, I’d go to a yoga studio, and when the teacher told us all to set an intention, I’d think, My intention is to practice yoga. That’s why I’m in this class. I knew it was considered Good to Be Present In The Moment, to be just doing the dishes when doing the dishes – not also planning out the night to come. I understood intellectually that hurrying through the moments meant rushing through my one wild and precious life. But I had never before felt such a clear imperative in how I lived my life: to find how to move through each day in a way that didn’t knot me up inside. In a way where I could sleep.

Setting a clear goal didn’t make it easy to do. For starters, I didn’t know another way to work; moreover, I didn’t love the idea of doing anything differently if it meant I got less done. My maximum-output lifestyle had a lot of upsides: the wild high of my own achievement, the satisfaction of contributing to nonprofits I cared about, the feeling of being reliable for my coworkers. But it had downsides, too: like when things came up unexpectedly, it wasn’t just an adjustment. It was a threat to my plan, and it made me very grumpy. I had worried from time to time that I might be sharp with my coworkers in those moments. I didn’t raise my voice or anything, but I knew they could see my stress. I worried I was taking it out on them.

So I turned to that concern. This is my chance, I told myself. I’ve been living my days based on what output I wanted to achieve. What if I swapped priorities? I still wanted – and was paid – to produce good work at a good pace, but what if I made that the second tier goal, where being kind to people had languished? What if being kind became my top goal, the one that I would compromise my output to achieve, rather than risking that I’d skimp on kindness to ensure I met my output goals at any cost?

I don’t know if it felt different to anyone else, but the change felt transformative to me. I started ending the day feeling proud of my integrity, feeling like I was paying attention to the right things. Feeling in alignment with my values. It was a less heady and adrenaline-filled sense of success than my wild sprint through tasks had been, but it was warmer, deeper. More satisfying. It felt like something had shifted into where it should be. I realized that unlike my task-based goal, how I treated people was fully under my control. It didn’t mean I always succeeded, but it gave me a sense of agency where the task focus had sometimes sowed chaos. It was satisfying to focus on something that was mine.

I’ve been really working those muscles this week: paying attention to how I’m doing, making sure I can show up the way I want to, admiring others who show how it’s done. This is what Bishop Budde did, when she made a plea for mercy. It’s what the federal judges did who spoke out against the January 6 pardons. And here in my smaller sphere of influence, it’s what I hope to do: to keep my compassion and serve it, no matter the results.

In politics, as in my day job, I still have very specific hopes about results. There are lessons to learn about tactics; there are mid-terms to come, and many smaller local races and projects and partnerships. I still want to learn all the time about how to do better, and it will really matter whether or not we succeed. It’s a high priority – but not the highest. The highest is how to show up. That’s part of what makes us resilient: focusing on what we can control, on caring for each other, on caring for ourselves. That’s how I can sleep at night, I’ve learned. And that’s how I hope to resill.

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