Read on Twitter
Sure it’s cool how my tl is now filled with folks wanging on about how many degrees they’ve done, kids they’ve had, soulmates they’ve found, houses they’ve bought. Not depressing and invalidating at all 
https://twitter.com/stfutony/status/1193954501620690944
https://twitter.com/stfutony/status/1193954501620690944
it's this whole neoliberal notion that you have to 'produce' - books, babies, marriages, businesses - to be worthwhile. And if you don't produce, or the things you produce aren't socially recognised as significant, then that's failure. None of this is mentally healthy.
i'm also not sure about the implicit suggestion that life is teleological - that it's about adding improvement upon improvement, always going 'forwards', or 'moving on'. It harshly erases those periods of 'stuckness' we all get, the not waving but drowning times.
it's already taboo to be not-happy, to be stuck in a space of upset or toxicity, to be trapped in loss or grief. The fetishization of accomplishing-as-producing and the marrying of this to what is considered 'positive' is where neoliberalism really digs into - and owns -your soul
so great to uncritically engage in individualistic improvement narratives.
there've been a few interactions along the lines of 'things have been crap so it's good to celebrate what isn't', and I get that - to a degree. But what if you haven't balanced the shit stuff with the Big Life Milestones?
What if you don't have the marriage, kid, house, holidays, friendships, travels, job, whatever - the things that are culturally valued - to act as recompense for the bad stuff? How do you place yourself among achievement narratives then?
this isn't a personal attack on anyone who's done the achievement tweet; I'm taking the opportunity to think more seriously about happiness and achievement as public moods, and how these make us invest in socially dominant notions of what is 'good'.
it's also probably useful to distinguish between things that we understand as 'achievements' and things for which we are thankful or have seen come to fruition from our labour. The gap between these is immense - it is the language of capital v the language of humanity.
