Self-Care Is for the Rich

You’re not burned out, you’re broke

An actual photo of me. Photo by Matt Bero on Unsplash

Years ago I read some advice that if you’re feeling stressed you should just duck out of work for an hour to get a massage. But if you’re poor, that hour doesn’t exist, and neither does the money.

For most of us, self-care doesn’t mean bubble baths or vacations. It means survival.

At the time I read that advice, I was a single mom of two kids, working very long hours at a stressful job with a lot of responsibility for less than $30,000 per year, and I had neither the time nor the money for a professional massage. And if I had gotten one anyway, I couldn’t have enjoyed it because I would have spent the entire hour realizing I was screwing myself over because when I returned to my desk I’d be even more behind.

Self-care is a scam

Self-care, as sold to us today, is a capitalist hustle.

It’s another way to turn exhaustion into consumption. It’s a capitalist idea that spending money on something — a massage, a vacation, a special treat of some kind — will make you feel better. Really, what engaging in self-care does is encourage spending. You work harder to afford rest, and then you’re too tired to enjoy it.

What you really need is to work less. You need more hours with your family and friends or just reading or gardening or biking or whatever it is you wish you could do more of if you were not so busy.

You need a community, and that’s something you can’t purchase, except with time. And you can’t afford time, can you?

Time costs money. And you’re out of both.

The system sucks everything from you.

And then when you struggle, it offers no suggestion for making your life easier. It just adds another burden — self-care — to your already towering pile of responsibilities.

You’re not broken. You’re tired because the system demands too much.

Self-care is a luxury

You know who can afford luxuries? People who have enough money to meet their basic needs and then some. In other words, people with at least some level of wealth. If you have enough money, you can buy some time for yourself by outsourcing some of the invisible labor.

You can even justify it as something you do that makes you feel better and that makes it possible for you to keep doing what you do.

You deserve it because you work so hard. That is how you justify spending money on yourself lavishly. You spend virtue bucks.

Consider, please, that it’s not so much the handmade truffles or pricey bottle of wine or concert or designer shoes that made you feel better: It’s the security you have. It’s knowing you can pay all your bills with ease and still have enough left to spend on whatever you want. It’s the ability to pay others to do some of the things you feel you don’t have time for. That’s what makes you feel better.

Not the massage.

Nobody likes a hamster wheel

Unless you’re a hamster.

One of the first things I did after my children’s dad moved out was purchase a hamster for each of them. I was desperate to fill those first difficult days with moments of joy. We planted a tree together. I bought their first video game — a used Gamecube.

Those hamsters ran all night long and I had to move their cages out of the kids’ bedrooms because nobody could sleep with that racket. Those hamsters ran as if they were getting paid minimum wage to do it and somebody just jacked up their rent.

We’ve got the wrong rodent: It’s not a rat race. It’s a hamster race. Like the hamsters, I was on the run constantly and never getting anywhere. Unlike the hamsters, nobody was dropping fresh food into my cage every day and cleaning up after me.

Free self-care is not a thing

We’re told self-care can be as simple as a bubble bath or a walk, but when are we supposed to fit that in, exactly?

You should do it right after you’ve finished cranking out a quantity of work that would have taken a whole team to do 15 years ago, and after you’ve finished cleaning your house, taking care of your children, paying your bills, mowing your yard and dealing with all the things.

Did you get the new sticker for your car? Did you activate your insurance card? There are always so many tedious little extras nagging you that aren’t part of your regular schedule.

Also, did you prepare a dinner that’s delicious, nutritious and not too expensive? And then clean the kitchen again? And check the kids’ homework and make sure their teeth are brushed and they’re in their jammies and you’ve read them 17 stories and organized their backpacks for morning?

Oh, guess there’s no time for that leisurely bubble bath now. Your body is screaming for sleep so most of the time (but not always) you’ll choose that over personal time.

Tomorrow, you tell yourself, but you already know tomorrow won’t be easier because tomorrow you also have that one thing you have to do.

You cannot afford self-care

You’d feel so much better, you think, if you just had a little more time or a little more money. If you had one, you could obtain the other. DoorDashing dinner or having someone else clean your house and mow your yard buys you quite a bit of extra time, which you can use to work more, so you can afford more household help, so you can work more.

Or so you can get a massage.

I thought that by this stage in my life — my kids are grown — that I’d have more free time but I don’t. Every night, my husband and I vow we will go to bed earlier, and every night there’s some special reason why we can’t manage to do so.

I am working more than ever. An original piece of writing for Untrickled every Tuesday and Thursday. A piece for The Indie Author every Wednesday. The inequality roundup every Friday. An installment of Poverty and Privilege for Untrickled every Saturday. About 30 hours of freelance SEO work each month. A gigantic last-minute proofreading gig that I didn’t expect but can’t afford to turn down.

My novel, the thing I want to write more than anything, has gone untouched this month.

Back in the day, the amount of work I’m doing would have supported my family twice over. Today, not even close. Although I’m a Substack Bestseller with thousands of subscribers, I don’t make as much here as I’d make working at a fast-food place, which is why I keep writing more in a likely-futile effort to break through.

And I doubt you’re saying, “Wow, five pieces of quality long-form writing each week, 30 to 40 hours of freelance work each month and a couple of books each year is a lot!”

You’re saying, “Sounds about right.”

If you feel like you're always behind, if your body hurts, if you're running on fumes, you’re not failing. The system is rigged to keep you running.

You don’t need self-care. You need a system that cares.

Don’t miss my current special series, Poverty and Privilege, which comes out every Saturday.

Part 1, Unlikely Allies in an Unequal America

Part 2, The Country Club Lunch

Part 3, One Family’s Fall From the Middle Class

Part 4, Billable Hours Don’t Pause for Birth

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.

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