Some days just suck.
You wake up already tired. Everything feels irritating. Your brain won’t stop thinking. Work was awful. Someone hurt your feelings. You’re overwhelmed, anxious, sad, burned out—or you don’t even know what’s wrong.
And somehow adulthood expects you to keep answering emails, doing laundry, making dinner, paying bills and pretending everything is fine.
But maybe we don’t always need to fix the hard days.
Maybe sometimes we just need to survive them.
And as a 90s kid, I can’t help thinking about how we used to handle bad days before we had an entire internet constantly telling us how we should be handling them.
Remember When a Sick Day Actually Meant Doing Nothing?
There was something comforting about staying home from school.
You’d curl up underneath the grandma afghan on the couch with ginger ale and crackers while The Price Is Right, Maury, or early-morning cartoons played in the background.
Nobody expected you to optimize your sick day.
You weren’t thinking:
I should be productive.
I should answer messages.
I should work on myself.
I should turn this into content.
You were sick.
So you rested.
Somewhere along the way, we forgot that emotional exhaustion deserves some of that same gentleness.
Step One: Lower the Expectations
A hard day probably isn’t the day to reinvent your life.
Forget the giant to-do list.
Ask yourself:
What actually has to happen today?
Maybe it’s going to work.
Maybe it’s feeding yourself.
Maybe it’s taking care of your pets.
Maybe it’s taking your medication, brushing your teeth and getting into bed.
Everything else?
Tomorrow exists.
Survival mode isn’t supposed to look productive.
Step Two: Find Your Version of the Grandma Afghan
You might not literally have one anymore, but you probably have something that gives you that same feeling.
Grab the oversized sweatshirt.
Put on the fuzzy socks.
Wrap yourself in your favorite blanket.
Make some tea, cocoa or ginger ale.
Turn the lights down.
Sometimes self-care isn’t a 12-step morning routine.
Sometimes it’s becoming a human burrito.
Step Three: Put On Something You’ve Watched 100 Times
Hard days don’t always need new stimulation.
Put on the movie you practically have memorized.
Watch an old sitcom.
Turn on cartoons.
Play the album that instantly takes you back.
Rewatch something from childhood that makes your nervous system go, Oh yeah. I know this place.
Comfort doesn’t have to be exciting.
That’s kind of the point.
Step Four: Get Off the Internet for a While
We didn’t spend our childhoods knowing what everyone else was doing every second of the day.
If we were having a bad afternoon, we weren’t simultaneously watching 37 people seemingly have better afternoons.
Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is put the phone down.
You don’t need another motivational Reel.
You don’t need another productivity hack.
You don’t need to compare your hardest day with somebody else’s highlight reel.
Go offline for an hour.
The internet will survive without you.
Step Five: Do Something Completely Pointless
Color.
Doodle.
Play a cozy game.
Do a puzzle.
Build something.
Flip through an old magazine.
Watch cartoons.
Listen to music while staring at the ceiling.
Remember when hobbies didn’t need to become businesses, side hustles or content?
You were allowed to do things simply because they were fun.
You’re still allowed to.
Step Six: Eat the Easy Meal
Your dinner doesn’t need to look Pinterest-worthy.
Hard-day dinner can be cereal.
Soup.
Toast.
A sandwich.
Frozen pizza.
Mac and cheese.
Whatever gets some food into your body without making the day harder.
Fed is better than impressive.
Step Seven: Call Your Safe Person
Before texting became our default, sometimes you just called someone.
Not because you had exciting news.
You just wanted company.
You don’t necessarily need advice, either.
Sometimes you need someone who will listen while you say:
“Today was really hard.”
That’s enough.
Step Eight: Let Yourself Feel Crappy
This might be the hardest one.
You don’t have to immediately turn every negative emotion into gratitude.
You don’t have to find the lesson tonight.
You don’t have to turn your pain into personal growth before bedtime.
Sometimes something hurts because it hurts.
Let yourself be disappointed.
Cry.
Journal.
Complain.
Rest.
Tomorrow you can figure out what comes next.
Tonight you can simply be human.
Step Nine: Give Yourself a 90s-Style Bedtime
Put the phone across the room.
Dim the lights.
Take a shower.
Put on comfortable pajamas.
Turn on something familiar.
Read a few pages of a book.
Listen to quiet music.
Remember when bedtime wasn’t another two hours of scrolling?
Your brain deserves to clock out too.
Your Hard-Day Survival Kit
Keep a few things around specifically for days like these:
- Your favorite blanket
- A comfort movie or TV-show list
- Easy snacks
- Tea, cocoa or ginger ale
- A coloring book or sketchbook
- A journal
- A cozy game
- A playlist of nostalgic songs
- Comfortable pajamas
- The number of someone you trust
- Something that makes you laugh
- Permission to do absolutely nothing
Yes, permission belongs on the list.
You Don’t Have to Win Today
We’re constantly told to make every day count.
But some days aren’t about thriving.
They’re about getting through.
You don’t need to have everything figured out tonight.
You don’t need to turn the day around.
You don’t even need to end it feeling positive.
Sometimes the victory is simply making it to bedtime, crawling underneath your metaphorical grandma afghan and deciding:
I’ll try again tomorrow.
Maybe that’s something we 90s kids need to relearn.
Not every uncomfortable moment needs an app, a hack, an optimization strategy or a solution.
Sometimes you need ginger ale, crackers, an old TV show and a little while where nobody expects anything from you.
And maybe that’s enough for today.