We Get Letters!
Like it or not, each issue, Tonic Publisher Jamie Bussin gives his thoughts on health and wellness.I’m going to let you all see behind the curtain. At some point before we go to print with the magazine something happens to me or I’ll have a conversation with somebody and the spark of the idea for my publisher’s note ignites in my brain. The problem is that because of Covid we’re all stuck in a Groundhog day loop of sameness. Nothing new, or interesting has happened to me in the past week. With apologies to everyone I’ve spoken with over the past few days, none of our discussions are spurring my creative juices in this moment. I suppose that I could take a Seinfeldian approach and say that this note is a note “about nothing” as a clever commentary about the poetry of the mundane aspects of our lives.
But there’s the rub. The mundane is only potentially interesting (in an ironic sense) if there are highs and lows to match it against. Not if there are months upon months of ‘mundacity’ (‘mundaciousness’?). I suppose I’m just kvetching about nothing. Nobody has actually died of boredom. But I suspect that boredom is getting to everyone at this point, and not just me. My old monthly poker game, which started over a decade ago but withered away to slow death last year, has revived via Zoom meetings and the PokerStars app. We’re so anxious to amuse ourselves that we’ve been playing every week…and there are repeated requests amongst the group to ramp up to twice a week. Candidly, I don’t know how our significant others feel about that. Mixed bag, I suspect. Happy for the break from us- concerned about the budding gambling addictions. So, in answer to my own proposition: no, we’re not dying of boredom, but it is priming us to indulge in our vices of choice; poker, alcohol, recreational drugs etc. Which, like everything else, can be dangerous in excess.
So here’s the spot in the note where I would usually offer up some easy ‘healthy and wellnessy’ ideas to overcome boredom. Raise your hand if you’ve already tried to make sourdough bread, gone for long walks, bought a Peloton (or a puppy), attempted “dry February’ or booked a fabulous vacation for some point a few months after the plague will be over. I believe that we’ve emptied the orchard of the low hanging fruit of straightforward wellness ideas. Perhaps the way out of my personal ennui is to come up with some more obscure health information to keep you informed and entertained.
To that end, I present to you the March/April issue of Tonic. Why not, as Shauna Lindzon suggests, cook with sweet potatoes? Alternatively, Naomi Bussin thinks that cooking with beans is pretty cool. You’re probably already taking Vitamins A, B, C and D in some form. Why not slide down the alphabet and learn from Joel Thuna why you should be taking Vitamin K. Tired of your usual yoga or meditation practice? Sari Nisker Fox recommends nidra yoga. Heck, if you’re even finding sex tedious, Carlyle Jansen explains why abstinence might be right for you. Or as always, if you want to occupy your time and contact me about anything you’ve read in this note or anything else in this issue of Tonic, feel free to reach out to me.
