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Honeyjubu. Nami’s Life. Choki. Ballerina Farm. These are a few of my new favorite lifestyle vloggers who fulfill my latent ASMR needs.

I stumbled onto their YouTube/Instagram channels recently while trying to avoid the news, in between my K-drama marathon and book-reading break. Once I heard the quiet patter of Nami preparing her evening meal, amidst all her cute, Japanese contraptions, safe from the cold, I was hooked.

Honeyjubu’s Korean side dishes aren’t really my thing. But her little dog, Lucy, is so adorable staring up from the half-packed suitcase and her cleaning regimen oddly calms me down.

Choki compartmentalizing her feelings with baked goods and tummy-warming stews to trickling tea, soft, slow guitar, vocals that speak more than words in the “white coat of winter” she wears like a veil…is everything.

How the Ballerina Farm lady — the lone non-Asian in this bunch — juggles children, including a babe in arms, while preparing lavish lasagna and cheese, from scratch, bewilders and bewitches me.

Simple, vicarious pleasures…Aaah, sign me up.

I’d never heard of these ASMR lifestyle videos before, or the concept of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), receiving positive stimuli from hearing certain sounds.

Although, I vaguely knew you could find just about anything on the Internet, especially YouTube.

Watching people loudly slurp noodles or chow down on as much McDonald’s as possible, however, just wasn’t my vibe. On the extreme end of such vicarious living were golden showers and people eating each other’s shit — sicko porn. Okay, no thanks to any of that.

Sick, sad world notwithstanding, I believe we’d all benefit greatly from a little more gracious ASMR in our lives.

But alas, here I am doing exactly that, and getting a thrill out of it.

My personal drug of choice is the sight and sound of cracking, sizzling eggs (how do they get yolks so orange??), as well as the preparation of coffee, grinding beans, pouring water, cleaning sieve-y things, which is why the Asian vlogs appeal so much to me.

I appreciate the fact that — except for Ballerina Farm lady — they never show their faces, even though that makes me curious; faces would distract from the doing and specify that which should remain open to the imagination, allowing for viewers to picture themselves there.

I try to set aside practical matters — all Nami seems to do is cook and clean, sometimes go to a museum exhibit, does she work? where in Korea does Honeyjubu live, and does she have any children? — sit back on my bed (where I can rest/ice my badly deteriorating knees), and enjoy the view.

Aka, stop overthinking, and let the ASMR flow over me.

I’m fairly certain I’m a late-comer to this new and growing industry trend, too. The number of relief-seeking tingleheads would probably blow my mind, and yours.

Some of these established vlogging artists easily fetch well over a million followers, and deservedly so. They’re most likely earning more than a decent living off of letting us watch them go about their diligent daily lives, within reason — and good for them.

“Creators like Heather Feather are making videos that create the tingly ASMR effect. In fact, there are currently about 5.2 million ASMR videos on YouTube, and there is interest coming from all corners of the globe... YouTube searches for ASMR grew over 200% YoY in 2015 and are consistently growing.3 On its own, a top ASMR video can garner over 16 million views.” — “ASMR videos: The biggest YouTube trend you’ve never heard of,” Allison Mooney, Jason Klein, September 2016, Think with Google

I also derive a great sense of pleasure and satisfaction from watching them brush their teeth and get ready for bed. Weird, right?

Lately, I’ve been struggling to get out of a funk. I still feel the ill effects some — I’m only human and a life-long trauma survivor with a million undiagnosed mental challenges at that — but climbing out regardless, in my own inimitable way. Writing out the kinks in my 50-year-old brain, even if it’s just for myself…losing myself in K-dramas — I’ve been on a spectrum kick, feeling a kinship with autistic characters…finding more strangers for my weekly sourdough…taking care of this velcro dog…

We even made some new friends who moved here from California. It was nice talking politics, dogs, and camping with like-minded folks over street tacos at a neighborhood hang. #tacotuesdayamiright

Slogging through life can be hard, especially when trust is suddenly gone, I’m afraid again, and all I want is to run away, to nurse my wounded, foolish heart…

I’ve had to come up with my own remedies, excuses, and pep talks.

Reasons not to ever regret giving 100 percent, as I look back with 20/20 hindsight and my pointless what-ifs. Was it all a waste of time? Precious years, months, days, hours with my family that I’ll never get back now, doing for others is doing for myself in a trickle-down economy I never seem to benefit from.

Why, oh why?

I can see these pillars of society skipping ahead with their families, while expecting me to put a hold on my own, and it’s hard not to clench my teeth with bitterness.

In the thick of the storm, I don’t know any better, I don’t know of any other way out other than to stand there for a moment, dumb-stuck, deer in the headlights.

Let me catch my breath. Regroup. Do something else, while this feeling lasts.

So, I fire up an endless series of these ASMR lifestyle vlogs from mostly Asian women I can remotely identify with, pretending I am them, pretending I am beside them, helping, not getting in the way, pretending I am anywhere but here in this aging, broken, damaged body and mind.

For 30-40 minutes, it helps, and I thank them for the break.

A few more self-care vloggers, including the ones I mentioned above:

• Grown vlog. Check out her Paris ones. She changed my mind about ever visiting the dirty city (polluted with chain-smoking snobs). As she and her visiting mom show, the city’s innate charms center around its intrinsic history, artifacts of celebration, and bakeries to die for. Definitely on my last-trip bucket list, now.

• Honeyjubu The lighting is impeccable, like a Renoir painting, and somehow, she conveys coziness, whether vacuuming a room, tossing a ping pong ball to her faithful dog Lucy, or cooking up a storm. She’s the kind of homemaker I wish I could be.

• Ballerina Farm The lone non-Asian, her lifestyle rushes by in a whirlwind of children, pots and pans, and the great outdoors, set to an invisible, poetic current, where the end result — scratch-made croissants, that lasagna, and the pinkest of Valentine’s Day cakes — is always breathtaking…and worthwhile.

• Nami’s Life This single, young Japanese Christian Dior dream come true goes about her day in romantic luxury, presenting only the best, aspirational parts of her inner world. She’s a loner, too, making the most of her presentations, striving for contentment through the art of quiet, joyful play in everyday, ordinary activities — trying out new recipes in her tiny kitchen and “useful things” to tidy up, labeled and organized neatly — that make her life better.

• Choki More foodie tutorial than simply showing up on a rainy day, Choki makes and bakes the kind of dishes you can almost smell and taste, while bathed in firelight. Here, the warm, glowing, textural focus is on beautiful food, made with love, to cheer up the loneliest of hearts.

• Hamimommy’s charms reside mostly in response to her cute young daughter, and project outward in the cute things the family of three does together, whether it’s crafting all sorts of barista-worthy coffees to go with different breakfasts, celebrating Hami’s birthday by making colorful rice cakes together, or taking a break with lobster ramen. I love Hamimommy’s gentle laugh.

• CAFICT’s a life with coffee hyper-focuses on everything good and delicious with just the right amount of pause and effect. See if you can go without reaching for a piece of toast and a cup of piping-hot coffee after two minutes of watching her go about her exquisitely-curated day. It’s the simple things that mean the most.

This song, the only thing she left me of any value, other than me holding the bag, broken-hearted…

“I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me

I'm more than a bird, I'm more than a plane
I'm more than some pretty face beside a train
And it's not easy to be me

I wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
'Bout a home I'll never see

It may sound absurd, but don't be naive
Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed, but won't you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream?
And it's not easy to be me

Up, up, and away, away from me
Well, it's all right
You can all sleep sound tonight
I'm not crazy
Or anything

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
Men weren't meant to ride
With clouds between their knees

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one-way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me

Inside of me
Inside of me
Yeah, inside of me
Inside of me

I'm only a man in a funny red sheet
I'm only a man looking for a dream
I'm only a man in a funny red sheet
And it's not easy,
It's not easy to be me.”

— “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” Five for Fighting

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