Stressed out? Feeling powerless in the face of situations beyond your control? Perhaps beating yourself up for not achieving as much as you had either hoped or expected what with all this newfound “free” time you’re finding yourself with? (Nevermind that most of us didn’t really choose to have this “free” time.)

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is here to let you know that that’s fine. Whatever you’re doing, is enough. It might not always feel like it, but this overarching message is a welcome reprieve from the constant overbearing pressure to optimize your time and improve yourself. You. Are. Enough.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is kind of an odd book, as far as categories go: I’m tempted to say it’s self-help, in the same way that This Difficult Thing of Being Human is, or The Body is Not an Apology (available via Hoopla Digital as an e-audiobook), which I’ve written about before.

This New York Times article is also a good reminder if you find yourself being hard on yourself for not doing as much as you think others are doing during this time, or not being quite as productive as you had hoped to be: Stop Trying to Be Productive. You can access the New York Times for free using your library card by following the instructions on this page on the VPL website. The free code is only for 72 hours, but you are free to repeat the process as many times as you’d like.

Need more feel-good books to make you bawl like a baby because what do you mean I’m not intrinsically flawed to the point of failure and require a lifetime’s worth of working on myself before I am worth anything to anyone?  Look no further! (Well, just beyond the cut.)

I’m going to start off with one that might not at first glance appear to be in this category of things to consume when you’re feeling down about not living up to societal expectations (oooh boy is that ever a can of worms), but applying a critical eye to those very expectations might be a good place to start. I’ve written about this title before, but I think it deserves a re-mention in light of this piece from The Paris Review: Fuck the Bread. The Bread is Over., which I have been sent directly (perhaps in part because in my life bread is never cancelled) as well as stumbling upon it myself: the book I’m recommending is Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, which is also available as an e-audiobook on Overdrive. (Since our copies are all taken out right now, I’m also going to refer y’all to Richmond Hill’s Overdrive copy of Trick Mirror, which you can borrow using your VPL login. I’m almost positive Markham also has a copy, but it looks like it’s unavailable at the time of writing. Check again if you’d like in case things have changed by the time this gets posted!) Look at those societal norms and expectations with a critical eye, realize you’re bound to be influenced by them regardless of how you approach it, aaaaand… I think acceptance is the last step, but it could also be rebellion. At least you’re not alone in the prison that is having autonomy while also being under the restrictions placed upon you by the lack of negative liberty (the barriers presented in the form of societal expectations and norms in which you have been stewed for years)?

Moving on, you’ll probably want to learn to accept your lot in life while also trying to improve them, which, similarly to how Alyssia mentioned in her post on insomnia that meditation is a good way to improve your situation, here too it might just be of use. You have to learn to feel your feels, whether positive or negative, acknowledge and accept that they exist without trying to change them, and then let them move on. Thankfully both Hoopla Digital and Overdrive have lots of titles on meditation for you to browse, so take a look through them and see which one speaks to you! Personally I’m a fan of Wherever You Go, There You Are, a title on mindfulness meditation for which we have the e-audiobook on Hoopla Digital, and have enjoyed a couple of titles written by Thich Nhat Han.

Are there any titles that have made you unexpectedly weepy? Have you been feeling the pressure of endless productivity to prove your worth and relevance even more so than before COVID-19 hit?