Apparently, being exhausted is kinda chic now. Or, at least, admitting that you are a human being who occasionally takes the easier route might be.

If you have spent any time on social media lately, you have probably encountered the “kinda chic” trend. People are making lists of things they have decided are suddenly chic: going to bed early, wearing the same clothes repeatedly, carrying an enormous purse, staying home, reading books, eating snacks, having hobbies that aren’t particularly impressive, and generally doing things that would probably horrify the imaginary version of ourselves who wakes up at 5:00 a.m., drinks lemon water, and has already exercised, meditated, and answered twelve emails before the rest of us have figured out where we left our glasses.

I love it.

Not necessarily because I think we need another internet trend telling us what is or isn’t chic, but because there is something delightfully freeing about taking all of the little things we have somehow decided we should feel guilty about and reframing them as something desirable. I have spent enough of my adult life trying to figure out the secret combination of planners, routines, organizational systems, apps, notebooks, and sheer force of will that would finally transform me into the kind of person who has everything under control. Spoiler alert: I have not found it. I have, however, acquired a truly impressive collection of notebooks.

So, in the spirit of the trend, I have been thinking about what qualifies as kinda chic in a Not Quite Superhuman life.

Using grocery pickup because the thought of walking around a grocery store after work makes you want to sit in your car and stare into the middle distance for twenty minutes? Kinda chic. Buying the pre-cut vegetables because history has repeatedly demonstrated that your aspirational whole vegetables are destined to become a science experiment in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator (True story!)? Also kinda chic. Ordering takeout when there is technically food in the house, but none of that food has magically combined itself into dinner? Definitely kinda chic, although perhaps less chic when the credit card bill arrives.

I would also like to nominate putting something on your to-do list after you have already done it just so you can cross it off. I know it doesn’t make sense. The task is already complete. Writing it down accomplishes absolutely nothing. But there is something deeply satisfying about looking at a list and seeing evidence that you did, in fact, accomplish something today. Sometimes we need the receipt.

There are plenty of other contenders. Rewearing the outfit that you know looks good instead of creating a new one. Deciding that the clean laundry can remain in the basket because everyone in the house is perfectly capable of retrieving their underwear from it. Buying the birthday cake instead of making one (Semi-Homemade is a lifesaver!). Saying no to an invitation because you genuinely don’t want to go. Using paper plates on a particularly awful week. Abandoning a book you aren’t enjoying. Paying someone else to do the thing you hate doing if you can afford to do so. Having a chair in your bedroom that hasn’t actually functioned as a chair in several years because it has been promoted to Clothing That Isn’t Quite Dirty Yet headquarters.

Kinda chic.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that there is a reason this particular internet trend appeals to me. Beneath the joke is something that I have spent a lot of time thinking and writing about here: the enormous amount of pressure we put on ourselves to perform competence.

We have created a strange version of adulthood where simply getting through the day isn’t enough. We are supposed to optimize it. We should have morning routines and evening routines. We should meal prep on Sundays, exercise several times a week, maintain our homes, nurture our relationships, respond promptly to messages, remember birthdays, manage our finances, stay informed, practice self-care, drink enough water, get enough sleep, pursue hobbies, work on ourselves, and somehow have an appropriate amount of work-life balance while doing all of those things.

And when we can’t?

We tend to assume the problem is us.

Maybe we need a better planner. Maybe we need more discipline. Maybe we need to wake up earlier. Maybe we need to stop procrastinating. Maybe we need the app everyone is talking about. Maybe we need to create a color-coded system. Maybe if we just organize our lives correctly, we will finally stop feeling like we are constantly dropping something.

I have tried enough systems to know that sometimes the system really does help. I love finding a tool or strategy that makes something easier. But I have also learned that no productivity system can solve the fundamental problem that there are only so many hours in a day and only so much energy available to us during those hours.

Sometimes you aren’t doing something the easy way because you’re lazy. You’re doing it the easy way because you have correctly identified that you don’t need to do everything the hard way.

That distinction matters.

Take grocery pickup. I am perfectly capable of grocery shopping. Most of us who use grocery pickup are. But capability isn’t really the issue. If I have already worked all day, dealt with people, made decisions, driven home, and still have a list of things that need my attention, spending another hour walking through a store doesn’t somehow prove that I am better at adulthood. If I can spend five minutes ordering groceries from my couch and use that hour for something else—or use it for absolutely nothing at all—that isn’t necessarily laziness. It might just be a sensible decision about where I want to spend the energy I have left.

We don’t talk about energy that way very often. We talk about managing time and managing money, but energy tends to be treated as though it should simply appear whenever we need it. If something technically fits on the calendar, we assume we should be capable of doing it. Then we wonder why a day with “only a few things” on the schedule leaves us completely drained.

But not all hours cost the same amount of energy, and not all tasks deserve the same amount of it.

There are things worth doing the hard way. There are things that challenge us, stretch us, or matter enough that we willingly spend more of ourselves on them. I don’t want to eliminate difficulty from my life, and I don’t think convenience is automatically better.

I just don’t think difficulty deserves bonus points simply for being difficult.

Maybe that is what I like about declaring these things kinda chic. It takes something we might normally apologize for and asks us to look at it differently. Instead of saying, “I should have been able to do that myself,” we can ask whether doing it ourselves actually mattered. Instead of feeling guilty because we took a shortcut, we can ask what that shortcut allowed us to preserve. Instead of measuring our competence by how much we can carry before we collapse, maybe we can get a little better at deciding what is worth carrying in the first place.

So yes, I will happily declare grocery pickup kinda chic. I will extend the designation to store-bought birthday cakes, abandoned books, repeated outfits, frozen dinners, unfinished laundry, saying no when you don’t have the bandwidth, and any organizational system that looks ridiculous but somehow works for you. I will even extend it to buying yet another notebook, although at this point I recognize that I may have a conflict of interest.

Maybe the most Not Quite Superhuman thing we can do is stop waiting to become the imaginary version of ourselves who effortlessly manages everything and start making life work a little better for the person who is actually here.

The one who gets tired. The one who forgets things. The one who occasionally needs the easier option. The one who has limits.

Turns out, she’s kinda chic.