I'm Adeli Mone and this is the Slowdown.

Lately, there's a lot of talk about self-care and the traps of commercializing self-care.

Self-care has become a buzzword and an industry.

Buy this $30 candle and feel healed.

Buy this $100 kitchen appliance and feel healthy.

Buy this $200 cozy sweater and feel rich.

I admit this is appealing to me at times.

I can try to throw money at the problem as much as the next person.

I too can feel my shopping cart like it's filling my soul.

Still, the self-care that I most gravitate towards is free.

Like napping, maybe a walk, maybe a little cry on the couch, maybe just lying on the floor

and staring at the ceiling and not answering anyone but myself for a whole 10 minutes.

There's a beauty in silence in the need to shut out the world even for a moment.

Once when I worked in a high rise, I would shut my office door sometimes and just visualize

myself in a green field, a breeze on my face, birds all around and I try to hold that in

my heart.

Then I'd open my eyes and remember my office was literally inside the curve of the scrolling

Nasdaq sign in the middle of Times Square and go about my day.

That fantasy saved me though.

I'm a firm believer in fantasizing, a self-care.

Today's poem praises the act of fantasizing.

For me, this poem is not only an ode to the subject of the speaker's fantasy but also

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