In “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" by Becky Chambers, there is a character named Ohan. Ohan is part of an alien species called Sianats. As children, all Sianats are infected with a virus in their brains that lets them navigate space in a unique way. This makes them invaluable for certain types of space travel, and the Sianats view the virus as helping them fulfill a special purpose.
However, the virus is also harmful to Sianats; those with the virus will eventually start to wane and have a lifespan of 30 years. Sianats can cure themselves of the virus and live much longer lives, but this is taboo in their society — those who cure themselves are labeled heretics and exiled. The virus also influences your thoughts so that if you have it, you don’t want to cure yourself. Usually, you will need an outsider (a cured Sianat, or a member of another alien species) to convince you or force you to take the cure.
Essentially, Sianats have to make a choice: a short life “with purpose”, or a longer life without the brain folds that enable them to fulfill that purpose.
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If I know I have an overwhelming number of things to do in a day, I find it easiest by organizing them into a to-do list. My to-do list often look like this:
catch up on emails
respond to whatsapps/texts
lunch
do sunrise stuff
write
wash dishes
clean litter
buy groceries
write some more
plan recipes for the week
I find that decision-making is often tiring, so if I front-load all the decision-making and just lay out what I need to do, the rest of the day flows easily.
Rarely do my to-do lists allow room for rest.
My relationship with rest and mental health is not good. Like many Asian Americans, I grew up not hearing the phrase “mental health”, and once I did learn about it, I didn’t believe in it. Now I can superficially say it’s important without really understanding what that means. I’ve internalized so many things about productivity, achievements, work, self-worth, etc. from my family and the times we’re in and
being the eldest child,
of immigrants,
who are Asian,
living in a capitalist society,
in America.
I find myself thinking that I can’t really imagine living life if writing and creation wasn’t as the core of it. That my writing will never really stop because that would mean my life would stop. Even though sometimes writing is really hard. Even if I would never think these things true for someone else, but I do think it true for myself. That it’s okay to think it for myself because I can be hard on myself.
I find myself thinking that if I lose hope for humanity, there is also no point in continuing life. Because what am I looking forward to? If I genuinely don’t think society can improve and that there’s a better future for the world ahead, why keep living my current life, just to continue to work and eat and struggle, without thinking I could have any positive impact? I find myself thinking these thoughts are okay because they propel me forward as an organizer and general steward of the planet.
Sometimes I think organizers must all be a little messed up* because we spend so much of our “free time” doing more work. Even if it’s not the soul-crushing kind of work from our day jobs, it’s still work. And we’ve maybe lost the plot on how to relax. I know some of us enjoy it but I think some of us are genuinely so terrified of the future that we have to keep working, because we’re afraid of what will happen if we don’t, if we can’t say we did everything we could.
(*I also hesitate to say this because I don’t want to spread a message that all organizers are martyrs or have to be messed up to do the work. Organizing is liberating and makes me feel less anxious and more rested than I would be if I wasn’t doing it. Organizing is for everybody and everyone comes in for a different reason. But also I think everyone is a little messed up, so maybe this is still accurate to say.)
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The virus in Ohan’s brain tells him his physical suffering, his waning, is worth it because of the brain folds the virus gives him. That ability to navigate multiple dimensions gives him purpose and lets him see a side of space no other species can. He is so afraid to remove the virus because it’s an integral part of his identity.
Sometimes I think I have my own virus. It tells me I can rest when everything has been fixed (it never will be). It tells me life is not fulfilling if there is no grand purpose to it all, that “just living”, whatever that means, is not fulfilling enough.
I don’t know what to do with this information other than be aware of it.
—
I never understand what it means to “love yourself”. I’m the machine I use to navigate through the world. You don’t really love those kinds of things, you just use them. If there are things the machine is bad at, you work on improving them, or just don’t do those functions. I used to think of myself as a consciousness that found this Jamie body and just has to deal with what it’s got.
Maybe that’s a healthy way to think, or maybe that’s just the virus talking. Maybe there is no such thing as a “healthy” way of thinking; maybe we are policing people’s mental health too much. Maybe there are many ways to think and live and see yourself and as long as you are surviving and perhaps growing, that’s okay.
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In my little to-do lists, I always put reading last because it’s my way of rest. And for some reason I will find every excuse to put so many things before reading. Wash dishes, clean the litter, reply to this email. Like I’m delaying rest for as long as possible, like I need to do X number of things before I deserve to get that rest. Because then that’s more things off my plate for tomorrow. And then tomorrow I will make up more things to do.
Sometimes life feels like an endless to-do list. It gets weirder when you’re the one exacerbating that to-do list.
—
It feels like a virus because I see myself do these things, this endless list-making and rest-delaying and finding work outside of work, I am conscious while I am doing them, but I’m unable to stop it while it happens. Like I’m watching a machine run itself, and on some level I know it’s unhealthy, but that’s what the machine was programmed to do. The machine could have a longer lifespan if it didn’t wear itself out. But does it want to? Does it know how to? At some point will I reach a tipping point and face a catastrophe?
On January 28, 2025, I received a stop work order for a few of my projects at my day job due to executive orders from the Trump administration to pause foreign aid and environmental justice activities. In the midst of all the horrors going on, there was something wryly amusing about this.
You’re telling me to stop work? Haaa.
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This post doesn’t end with “and then I had XX realization and I stopped my unhealthy ways and sought out help and learned how to take care of myself better”. There’s an ending in which I learn I’m not a machine and I view rest not as emptiness but as something that takes up space. There’s an ending where I don’t separate every activity into “good use of time” and “waste of time”.
Maybe that realization will come one day. But for now I’m just a Sianat sharing an observation about myself. Maybe you experience this too and can relate.
I won’t spoil the ending of “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet", but if you’ve read it, you know what happens to Ohan. And if you haven’t, you can read it or look it up.
I think that a cure is possible.
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Further readings: “Goodbye, again” by Jonny Sun