1. “I Awoke at 1/2 Past 7”- Elena Mary, Aeon
January 1 glimmers with possibility. For most, this season is one of diet plans and gym memberships, ambitious resolutions and optimistic declarations that “this is going to be our year” (finally).
This time, more than any other, we’re obsessed with optimisation.
We religiously track our calories on FitPal (stay at exactly 1500 calories! don’t forget to get at least 100 grams of protein and 20 grams of fiber: remember you want to lose 10 pounds!).
We compulsively check our step count (it’s already 4 pm and you’ve only walked 3,462 steps; you better take an hour long walk after work to reach your 10,000 step goal!).
We monitor our screen time and mercilessly criticize ourselves for squandering our finite mortal lives on social media (though TikTok and Instagram are intentionally engineered to hijack our brain’s pleasure centers and keep us scrolling for as long as possible).
We track our numbers (calories, steps, hours of sleep) and—like a mini corporation—try to streamline our lives for maximum efficiency.
Our social media feeds indoctrinate us into the cult of self-improvement: workout splits, fad diets, 10 step skin care routines. Everyday on TikTok, I’m reminded there’s yet something else that’s wrong with me: my food is too processed (I need to download the Fig app and only eat whole foods), my forehead is too wrinkly (I need filler and Botox), my face is too round (I need a facial brush and vibration plate), my stomach is too fat (obviously I need to do pilates).
In her enlightening essay “I Awoke at 1/2 Past 7,” historian Elena Mary argues that our obsession with optimization began, not with Big Tech, but with the relentless self-improvement of the Victorian age. Long before fitness apps and habit trackers, Victorians used diaries to collect and track data: their daily habits, their goals (and if they met them that week). “Data,” Victorians believed, “would lead to understanding, and understanding would enable mastery.”
Diaries weren’t just confessional booths, private places to share your innermost thoughts—they were planners to record your resolutions, schedule your appointments and structure your future into tidy timetables. The Victorian diary promised you could “use your time as productively as possible.”
Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the founding father of self-improvement. In his diary, Franklin ambitiously aimed to achieve “moral perfection” and measured his performance of 13 key virtues (order, industry, temperance) with mathematical precision on a grid.
Though it seems noble to be constantly bettering yourself, Mary argues such strict self-improvement can easily morph into self-punishment. Like our modern FitPal and step counter, the Victorian diary was often an instrument of scathing self-judgement. This New Year’s perhaps we can be more gentle with ourselves and not so ruthlessly record our failures.
2. “The Friend Group Fallacy”- Jenny Singer, Atlantic
Sex & the City, Friends, How I Met Your Mother. If we are to believe portrayals of friendship in pop culture, our 20s and 30s should be mimosa brunches, coffee dates, everyday hang outs in our friend’s apartments and endless Saturday nights on the dance floor. In these shows, our closest friends are always right across the hall or at the same leather booth of our favorite bar.
But what if we don’t have a close knit friend group?
What if we don’t spend our Sunday mornings debriefing our sexcapades with the same group of four girls?
In this thought-provoking article, reporter Jenny Singer wonders if there’s something wrong with her because she doesn’t have an intimate clique of close friends like a 1990s New York sitcom. Most often, she spends time with friends one-on-one. Her social life resembles a “loose archipelago” rather than an interconnected continent of individuals.
But in her research, Singer finds friend groups are far less common than she once thought. According to the American Friendship Project, few people live with their friends, and nearly half live in a different city or state than their friends. As Singer writes, “Respondents, these data suggest, are not typically living in a Seinfeld-ian endless hang.”
Her findings beg the question: are we truly experiencing a loneliness crisis? Or are we only “lonely” because our real social lives don’t match the glossy, glamorous portrayals of friendship we see on TV?