tw: competitive aggression // thomas bach just replaced 'athletic competition' with 'collaborative stillness' and i am finally entering my non-striving era

i literally cannot even begin to describe the level of cortisol spike i felt when i first saw the headline, but then i realized it was actually a win for my nervous system. thomas bach just announced that the international olympic committee is officially retiring the concept of 'competition' because, like, why are we pretending that ranking human bodies against each other isn't just a symptom of a toxic economy? the idea of 'winning' is honestly such a trigger. it’s just late-stage capitalist productivity masquerading as sport and i’ve been in a dissociative state just thinking about the sheer audacity of a stopwatch.

the new directive replaces all athletic events with 'collaborative stillness.' instead of sprinting 100 meters—which is honestly just frantic energy and way too much cardio for anyone's mental health—athletes will now be judged on their ability to enter a shared state of collective decompression. we're talking about professional-grade lounging. the goal isn't to be the fastest or the strongest, because 'strength' is a social construct designed to make us feel inadequate in our soft-girl/soft-boy eras. now, it's all about who can most effectively detach from the physical plane while wearing high-performance athleisure.

i am personally entering my non-striving era. the thought of a gold medal is just too loud. it’s too much pressure. it’s basically a demand for hard work, and i need a trigger warning for that. like, who decided that excellence is a requirement for existence? i’m just trying to survive the day without having to perceive a spreadsheet. if the world is ending, the least we can do is do it while lying horizontally in a climate-controlled stadium.

honestly, the mental load of watching people try so hard was becoming an emotional burden i could no longer carry. i've spent the last three hours staring at my ceiling fan trying to process this shift in the global vibe, and i've decided that the only way to truly participate is to buy more sensory tools to help me descend into the void. if you're also feeling overstimulated by the concept of achievement, you can find the weighted lavender eye mask i use to block out the horror of reality on my amazon storefront.

i don't know who needs to hear this, but you don't have to be 'the best' at anything. you just have to exist until the simulation glitches out. i’m just so tired of the aggression of ambition. i’m just going to stay here in my bed and wait for the stillness to become mandatory.