A recommitment to and cherishing of oneself isn’t self-care, or self-centeredness, at least not in the contemporary connotations of those words. Inst… - Anne Helen Petersen

In The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class, Elizabeth

Why have I worked all the time since actually finding one? Because I’m terrified of losing it, and because my value as a worker and my value as a person have become intractably intertwined.

If we shift our focus from relentless productivity, we may collectively rethink our societal metrics for success. A society obsessed with shareholder value, GDP, and corporate wealth creation will value and reward those who drive those metrics upward: bankers, venture capitalists, day traders. A society obsessed with quality of life, care, and societal health values and rewards a very different set of people. Before and during the pandemic, our most “essential” workers struggled to receive equitable pay and adequate protections, precisely because their work wasn’t valued. But what if it was? And what if one of the key steps to getting there was for nonessential workers (like us!) to change the way we see ourselves?