[HOLIDAY PARTY!] FEBRUARY 26 2020 – INCONVENIENCE YOURSELF DAY with Amy Cowan

HAPPY INCONVENIENCE YOURSELF DAY! Join us as celebrate everything the stuff that gets in the way of other stuff. Today we’re celebrating with the lovely and sometimes inconvenient Amy Cowan (aacowan.com)!! LET’S PARTY!!

Show Notes

Activities to Celebrate

Playlist

Sources

Visit HOLIDAY PARTY! with Disa & Alyssa’s main page

Show Notes

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Definition of the topic

  • Inconvenience, as defined by Merriam-Webster is: 
    • Something that is inconvenient….or not convenient especially in giving trouble or annoyance
  • The top definition on Urban Dictionary, with 16 thumbs up, is that Inconvenience is “a version of baseball you play when you do not have enough people to field two full teams.
    • The rules are that “you can only hit to right field or left field, which you have to call before you are up. If you hit to the opposite field, you are out. The outfield can throw the ball to the pitcher to get the lead runner out.”
    • Conveniently, or inconveniently depending on how you look at it, this is also the most downvoted definition of “inconvenience” on Urban Dictionary, with 47 thumbs down. It was posted on July 12, 2004 by “Steve”.
    • The only other definition of “inconvenience” on UD was posted on November 2, 2019, and states that inconvenience is the “trouble or difficulty caused to one’s personal requirements or comfort.” 
      • It has no votes either way, and was added by the user “TheUnseenWriter” (lol)

History of the holiday

  • According to Worldwide Weird Holidays, Inconvenience Yourself Day has been celebrated on the 4th Wednesday in February since 2006. The holiday was created by Julie Thompson, the then (and now?) president of Environmental Resources Network in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, to encourage everyone to recognize how our actions impact the lives of those around us
    • I checked, and this sadly means that it will never fall on Leap Day, which is too bad because it would make it an incredibly inconvenient holiday
    • “It’s easy to become so focused on our own crazy to-do lists that we forget to hold open a door, let a customer with only a few items get ahead of us in line, thank someone who has helped us or just be kind to others when there is no tangible benefit to us.”
    • Its goal is not only to recognize a person’s self awareness in life, but also to acknowledge other peoples’ lives and actions as well. There are times where you need to put yourself first, but this day is meant to encourage you to try to put someone else before you
    • And according to WWH, “the secret payoff of inconveniencing ourselves: it makes us feel good. Who knows? It could become a habit. Slow down, say thanks, and have a happy Inconvenience Yourself Day!”

Fun facts and opinions

  • A 2018 NYTimes opinion piece by Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia, entitled “The Tyranny of Convenience”, says that “convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today.” Defining convenience as the more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks, Wu describes its effects on our individual lives and our economies. 
    • “Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences. Easy is better, easiest is best.” 
    • “Convenience has the ability to make other options unthinkable.” Why wash your dishes or clothes by hand when you can let machines do it? When you can watch streaming television or listen to a podcast anytime you want, why would you bother with waiting for a prescribed radio or television hour? Why would you use BIng when you have Google?
    • Resisting convenience, such as refusing to get a smartphone or printing out Mapquest instructions instead of using a GPS, must “come to require a special kind of dedication that is often taken for eccentricity, if not fanaticism.” 
    • The “article describes two separate cultural waves of convenience,” with the first taking place in the early 20th century with labor-saving inventions for the home and industry, such as convenience foods, washing machines, electric vacuum cleaners, and factory farming. The inventions were quickly embraced, since people thought it would free them from extraneous labor and offer the possibility of leisure for the first time, meaning that time could be used instead for hobbies, education, or binge watching I Love Lucy or The Jetsons
    • This first wave began to wane and people seemed to intentionally embrace some inconvenience in the 60s and 70s in order to resist conformity and retain a sense of individuality. So it was fitting that the second wave of convenience, which occurred in the 1980s, would co-opt this ideal by presenting the idea of personal technology with the invention of the Sony Walkman. 
    • According to Wu, “if the first convenience revolution promised to make life and work easier for you, the second promised to make it easier to be you. The new technologies were catalysts of selfhood. They conferred efficiency on self-expression.” 
    • This version of convenience is no longer occupied with saving physical labor or creating free time–”it is about minimizing the mental resources, the mental exertion, required to choose among the options that express ourselves. Convenience is one-click, one-stop shopping, the seamless experience of “plug and play.” The ideal is personal preference with no effort.”
    • But convenience has a dark side. “With its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, it threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life. Created to free us, it can become a constraint on what we are willing to do, and thus in a subtle way it can enslave us.” 
    • We pay a premium for convenience. As Wu states, “We are spoiled by immediacy and become annoyed by tasks that remain at the old level of effort and time. When you can skip the line and buy concert tickets on your phone, waiting in line to vote in an election is irritating.” (On the other hand, I miss the days of buying concert tickets in person. Not only were they cheaper, but I’m a sentimental fuck who loves keeping the physical tickets as a memento)
    • Wu presents the concept of a paradoxical truth that today’s technologies of individualization are technologies of mass individualization, and that customization can be surprisingly homogenizing. Social media like Facebook and Instagram are vehicles intended to help you present your unique self, yet their formats and conventions force us to present ourselves as overwhelmingly the same
    • He argues that “being a person is only partly about having and exercising choices. It is also about how we face up to situations that are thrust upon us, about overcoming worthy challenges and finishing difficult tasks–the struggles that help make us who we are.”
      • “Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey…We are becoming people who care mainly or only about outcomes.”
    • Wu recommends that “we need to consciously embrace the inconvenient…if you want to be someone, you cannot allow convenience to be the value that transcends all others. Struggle is not always a problem. Sometimes struggle is a solution. It can be the solution to the question of who you are.”
    • We already do this to a great degree, though we call these inconveniences other names, such as hobbies or passions. If you’re into wood carving, glass-blowing, exercise, or talking about inconvenience on your hobby podcast, you already making inconvenient choices in order to create your own character and give your life meaning. 
    • Wu concludes by insisting that “we must never forget the joy of doing something slow and something difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest. The constellation of inconvenient choices may be all that stands between us and a life of total, efficient conformity.”
  • If you do find yourself annoyed by inconveniences that were not intentional, such as locking yourself out, dealing with intense traffic, or breaking your phone, sersanoconsulting.com has some advice for how to change your perspective and therefore your experience of the inconvenient. 
    • Remind yourself that these problems are almost certainly temporary
    • Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions during these moments of inconvenience. See if you can take a different course of action that will counteract the typical build-up of frustration and irritation.
    • For example, if you lock yourself out of your home and catch yourself in a spiral of blame or anger, see what else you can do with the time you’re about to spend locked out, such as taking a walk and exploring a different neighborhood, or in my case, developing a real appreciation for how fucking difficult it is to actually break into someone’s home thanks to modern door locks
    • You don’t have to get mentally stuck when your plans go off the rails, since the misfortune is not likely to be eternal and you can make the choice to not let that time and emotion go to waste
  • A thinkpiece from HackSpirit.com entitled “These 20 inconvenient truths about life are hard to admit but they’ll change your life when you do” highlight some “hard truths about life that will benefit you in the long run” to accept, including:
    • We haven’t got that much control in life
    • Our expectations are what cause are [sic] suffering
    • Everything, even you, is imperfect
    • Worrying is a complete waste of time
    • The best lessons often come from hardships
    • We often confuse being busy with being productive
    • Most of us don’t need more to be happy, we need less
    • As a society, we’re way too focused on outer beauty
    • Most arguments we have are pointless
    • It’s easier to hold onto the way things are than to learn and grow
    • Everyone will die
    • You give your own life meaning
    • There is no such thing as a perfect partner
    • Life isn’t that serious
    • Everything will come to an end
    • Be realistic
    • Make a change or don’t complain
    • The best lessons often come from hardships (see brutal truth #3)
    • Most of us don’t need more to be happy, we need less (smh)
  • Here’s mine: Proofreading is a necessary inconvenience
  • Science shows that inconvenience can actually be really  good for you, especially when helping others! 
    • Mentalfloss sites that “studies indicate that the very act of giving back to the community boosts your happiness, health, and sense of well-being”, and offers “7 Scientific Benefits of Helping Others”
      • “Helping others can help you live longer” because activities such as volunteering or helping those in need can improve your “ability to manage stress and stave off disease” as well as reduce rates of depression and increase a sense of life satisfaction. This could be related to the fact that volunteering can alleviate loneliness and support our social lives, which are factors that strongly affect our long-term health
      • One study shows that “altruism is contagious,” and found that “people are more likely to perform feats of generosity after observing another do the same”, which in turn can have a ripple effect within a community 
      • “Helping others makes us happy”! A team of sociologists “tracked 2000 people over a five-year period and found that Americans who described themselves as ‘very happy’ volunteered at least 5.8 hours per month.” This boost could come from being the byproduct of being more physically active, being more socially active, or even from providing volunteers with a neurochemical sense of reward
      • “Helping others may help with chronic pain.” One study showed that participants who suffered from chronic pain experienced a reduction in their own symptoms after working as peer volunteers
      • “Helping others lowers blood pressure.” Some research has shown that “older individuals who volunteered for at least 200 hours a year decreased their risk of hypertension by 40%. This could possibly be because they were provided with more social opportunities, which help relieve loneliness and the stress that often accompanies it.” 
      • “Helping others promotes positive behaviors in teens,” as teenage volunteers generally have better grades and self-image
      • And finally, “helping others gives us a sense of purpose and satisfaction,” particularly when a person no longer holds a life-defining role such as “worker” or “parent.” 
    • Psychology Today echoes these sentiments with their article, “In Helping Others, You Help Yourself”
      • The “warm glow” of pro-sociality that one can experience after helping someone else “is thought to be one of the drivers of generous behavior in humans [because] the positive feelings associated with helping others is that being prosocial reinforces our sense of relatedness to others, thus helping us meet our most basic psychological needs.” 
      • Activities such as volunteering, altruistic behavior, and spending money on others rather than ourselves have repeatedly shown boosts in well-being, a sense of meaning and purpose, general happiness, and lower rates of depression. 
      • There is even neural evidence suggesting a link between acts of generosity and happiness in the brain. Simply the intent and commitment to generosity can stimulate the neural change and make people happier
        • fMRI studies show that donating money to charities activates the same (mesolimbic) regions of the brain that respond to monetary rewards or sex
      • Other research from Columbia University shows that helping others regulate their emotions helps us regulate our own, decreases symptoms of depression, and improve our well-being since we are enhancing our own emotion regulation skills
        • “Social regulation of emotion is a key component of our relationships. Whenever we navigate children through tantrums, help a friend through a breakup, or rely on our partners for comfort after a challenging day, we often engage in social regulation of emotion…
        • “The two most common ways to help others regulate their emotions are through acceptance ([by] showing empathy by validating their feelings) and reappraisal ([or] helping others think about their situation in a different way).”
        • The study was done over a 3 week period, during which “participants were provided with an anonymous online environment where they could share their personal stories of stressful life events.” They were also able to provide emotional support to each other by replying to entries with short, empathetic messages. 
        • “Participants helped each other by identifying potential distortions of thinking, suggesting reappraisal strategies or providing words of acceptance. Responses were rated for their degree of helpfulness and participants were given the opportunity to express their gratitude for the acceptance or reappraisal messages that they received from others.
        • “The results showed that helping others to regulate their emotions predicted better emotional and cognitive outcomes for those participants who were giving the help. Moreover, because heightened levels of self-focused attention are common in depression, the more people helped others, the more their helping behavior predicted a reduction in their own depression, thanks to the use of reappraisal in their own daily lives.
      • The article recommends that the “next time you find yourself helping someone with regulating their emotions, consider how your efforts may be providing you with an opportunity to practice for future situations at a distance, and consequently, improving your emotional well-being. Thus when it comes to the benefits of social regulation, St. Francis of Assisi’s words ring especially poignant: ‘For it is in the giving that we receive.’”
  • There may be times when doing something kindly inconvenient will go south, though, such as the following examples from the Reader’s Digest article “14 Random Acts of Kindness That Went Totally Wrong”
    • Reddit user dendaddy’s wife donated her kidney to a stranger, and the bills were supposed to be taken care of by the recipient. However, dendaddy and his wife learned that the recipient’s insurance hadn’t paid the bill in full and the recipient wasn’t paying it either. Since then, a collection agency has been after dendaddy’s family for the inconvenient sum of $10,000
    • Judith Re told Reader’s Digest,”I was purchasing fruit at a truck where several homeless men were congregating. As I purchased my fruits, I bought apples to give to each of the men. [but as I handed out the last apple, one of the men told me], ‘I’m sorry but we can’t eat these because our teeth aren’t strong enough.’”
    • “Working out on the steps of an amphitheater, Scott Deuty, author of the book ‘Secrets of an Over 50 Fat Man’, noticed a woman and her daughter who were also working out on the steps. Inspired by the scene, Deuty responded by giving a copy of his book to the mother. Apparently, this gesture was not appreciated because the daughter responded by angrily throwing the book down the stairs!”
      • I mean. a) what narcissistic maniac is just carrying around copies of his own goddamn book while working out and b) who the fuck wants to have to now carry a goddamn book around while they’re trying to work out that some idiot just handed them and c) the implication that the woman was fat is super obvious to everyone except apparently Scott Deuty
    • When Veonne Anderson saw a pregnant woman smoking, she wanted to give her an encouraging word about quitting smoking for her baby’s sake. She started by telling her how pretty she looked, then asked her how many months she was.
      • “How many…? What?”, the woman replied.
      • “You’re pregnant, no? I mean, I thought…”
      • “Not pregnant. Just fat.”
      • Instant karma. Fuck you, Veonne.
    • “When you see someone driving with a flat tire, it seems reasonable to flag them down. But Reddit user, whistledick, went beyond that simple kindness, pulling over and offering to take the driver to a convenience store to purchase a can of fix-a-flat. Unfortunately, according to whistledick, “Not only did they ride in my car silently, offering no thanks, but they also stole my wallet out of my console when I wasn’t looking.”
    • When a homeless man asked Reddit user, hourmc, for food, hourmc gave the man the chicken salad sandwich he had with him.
      • “Ain’t nobody gonna eat that,” the man said, refusing the sandwich.
      • Hourmc recalled feeling “strangely rejected”
    • Yet another Reddit user, capatiller, let a longtime friend stay in her spare bedroom when the friend was leaving an abusive husband. Capatiller’s friend then showed her gratitude by starting an affair with capatiller’s fiance, and the two of them then kicked capatiller out of the house and took up residency there together. 
    • Our final Reddit user named Thundernut was trail running when he encountered a fallen tree on the path. He decided to move the tree as a good deed, but then felt a pain on his knee. Then another. He soon realized he was being attacked by a swarm of bees that were nesting in the tree. Thundernut then spent three days in the hospital with anaphylaxis
  • That all said, if your attempts to help someone backfire, take advantage of those emotional regulation skills of yours and remember that your discomfort is simply temporary and that anaphylaxis will only help your journey to being a better version of you 🙂

What it means to Disa

  • This was an incredibly inconvenient holiday to research
  • “Inconvenient” is really inconvenient to type
  • It’s more obvious that modern day conveniences are actually having some long-term consequences. Convenience food is terrible for you, single-use plastics and other similar inventions are terrible for the environment, and social media is terrible for your social life

Activities to celebrate

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  • Whatever you do today, be sure to do it with the #InconvenienceYourselfDay hashtag on all your social media
  • Worldwide Weird Holidays has a few suggestions to “slow the pace of [your] hectic lives, if only for today.”
    • Call a friend instead of texting
    • Write a letter instead of a Facebook message
    • Cook a favorite meal instead of throwing something together (or getting delivery)
      • Maybe even get the “good” china out of storage, because what the hell are you even saving it for?
    • Take a walk without any mobile devices and look around at your neighborhood, not just the view of the sidewalk you see past your cell phone
  • WikiHow, as always, comes to the rescue with the following breakdown of precisely how to Inconvenience Yourself today
    • Be there for someone else emotionally–if someone you know needs to talk, give them your full attention. Give them advice and try to get them to see a positive aspect in whatever they’re going through. Everyone loves smiles and hugs, especially in a stressful situation
    • Make children feel appreciated–”When parents are buried in work, household chores to maintain a clean & safe house, and bill payment deadlines to meet, it’s hard to set some time off to spend quality time with kids. Help them out with homework, have fun preparing for a test by creating index card games, take them to the park, or even play their favorite video game with them.”
    • Perform a random act of kindness to a stranger–”don’t hesitate to let someone in the supermarket line before you if they have a few things while you have a full cart. Open the door for a senior citizen and allow them to walk in/out before you.”
    • Be patient on the road–”Allow people to go in front of you to make a merge and never play the ‘bumper-to-bumper game’ so that people can’t merge. Avoid taking a parking space because it’s closer and more convenient for you; go further back to allow someone else the chance – it’s also good exercise to walk.”
    • Achieve success at work–”Use this day to re-evaluate how you present yourself towards others. Offer help to someone first; don’t wait for them to come to you. Explain things with specific instructions instead of a basic overview. Take the time out and ensure that they are presented with the best assistance.”
    • Avoid doing “me” things–”’Me’ things are activities or wants that people desire to do in their spare or leisure time by themselves. Examples could be sleeping in to a later time, taking a stress-free walk by themselves, or reading a book in a peaceful and quiet place. Agree to an outing with friends or attend your daughter’s stuffed animal tea party.”
    • Reflect on “Inconvenience Yourself Day”– “If you have put someone else before you, how did it make you feel? Were you satisfied or unhappy with the result(s)? Try to adapt and practice this everyday and see if it comes back to you.”
  • Weekendnotes.com offers this comprehensive schedule for a proper celebration of the holiday
    • “You start the day by waking up at 5AM, you need to celebrate the day to its fullest
    • The first thing you do is start a load of all your bath towels
    • Then, you take a freezing cold shower for 15 minutes
    • When you’re done you realize you have no towel
    • You figure out that problem and then you get dressed
    • The thing is that you don’t get dressed the convenient way
    • Put your clothes on backwards and inside out
    • Once you’re completely dressed you go get the ingredients for cereal
    • As you are pouring the milk you look at the time and then freak out, you’re late for work
    • You spill the milk and then decide that you need something to eat
    • You get your purse/wallet and then remember you need your coat
    • You put your purse/wallet down and your coat on and get your car keys off the key hook
    • You get in the car and hurry to the store
    • Once you’re at the checkout you remember you have no money, because you forgot your purse/wallet
    • You hurry to your car, just to remember that you locked your keys in the car
    • You call the police to see if they can open the door, but the closest police man is over a half an hour away
    • You call a friend who thankfully takes you to work
    • But you’re late! And your boss is mad at you, for being late for the past week
    • He gives you an insane amount of overtime, which you know you deserve
    • You finish a hard day of work at 7PM, dealing with various inconveniences you made for yourself
    • You didn’t wear your suit, so you had to borrow another employees extra one
    • Well, you spilled coffee on it, so you had to find another just like it
    • You yell at your friend, because she was yelling at you for ruining her suit and you just made the meaning of the special holiday come true 
    • You return to the store and a police officer arrives. He goes through many ID questions, but realizes you are legit
    • You go home just to find spoiled, bumpy, smelly milk all over your kitchen floor
    • After you clean it up you realize it is 8PM
    • You put your cell phone in the charger and the power to the house turns off
    • You change into your most uncomfortable outfit and go to sleep
  • And never forget what our wise “prince of paradox” Gilbert K. Chesterton once said, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
    • GKC was an English write, philosopher, and lay theologian, often referred to as the “prince of paradox”

Playlist

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Sources

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