Edition #62: Optimization and Surrender
Plus, why you will marry the wrong person, letting women be villains, and a one-minute show about New York
A Note From the Editor
I could feel myself burning out towards the end of last year. The sensation was physical; a hundred little fleas crawling around my core, chomping on the lining of my gut, an undercurrent of tears threatening to spill out at the slightest provocation. I toggled between logic (it’s a global pandemic, you haven’t had a home of your own for six months, of course, you’re burning out) and pushback (but you’re not working that hard, you could be doing more, you don’t deserve to burn out). In the end, my reasoning was irrelevant, it was happening whether I liked it or not. I decided to give myself a little self-sanctioned break. Two weeks of no writing, no fretting over whether I was writing enough, no “progress”. My intention was a dedicated time to rest, to mentally recoup, but under that puritan guise was my true expectation: that rest was but a necessary middle step in the equation for improvement. That it would make me more capable and more aggressive in my pursuits, afterward. I didn’t need to say it aloud to understand what I was signaling; I’ll give you this, but you better bounce back better than before. You better make it worth it.
For two weeks I didn’t write. I didn’t work out, I ate whatever I wanted. I drank wine every night and watched more TV than I had all year. In that way, I rested, but before long my body began to respond. That army of tiny, invisible fleas took up residence in my gut once more. I itched to create a semblance of order, as I knew that there was a wave of inevitable change on the horizon. Playtime was over. I needed to make plans for getting back to New York. I needed to find an apartment, I needed to sort out my finances before finding an apartment, to figure out what I could afford and what neighborhoods I should consider. I needed to move my things out of storage. Also, I needed to set goals. I needed to make a clear writing plan for 2021, filled with milestones and clever pitch ideas and tangible improvements. I needed to foster my creative projects, too, and to improve at work. To do all this, I needed the perfect schedule, one that would allow me to excel at my full-time job while converting all my free time into creative time. Oh, and I also needed to fit in daily workouts while maintaining a social life and reading lots of novels, and finding ways to visit my family more often. No matter. All I needed to do was write everything down.
And so the Frantic Pages began. During the latter half of my two-week break, I busted out my trusty five-subject notebook, turned to the “Notes/Other” section, and began to make lists. It was all kosher to start; a few pages of math, to work out the implications of five different living scenarios (subletting in this neighborhood, moving to that neighborhood, keeping my storage unit, getting rid of my storage unit, etc.). Okay, now I knew exactly how much would be in my savings account by the end of 2021 in five different living scenarios, I just had to do some goal setting, Simple goals, SMART goals. Only a handful. But then I needed a method to achieve them, to break them down into weekly actions. Then came the four pages of sample schedules: by the day by the hour, every action geared towards the slow chipping away at one of my goals. Okay, so if I just followed this exact schedule everything would be perfect and I would achieve my goals. Right. Things continued this way, with lists and plans and equations. After 20 freehand pages of notes, my resting period was over. The curtains rose and there was 2021, a stage awaiting my entry. A stage whose intricacies I had studied obsessively, whose lighting and markers I had tried to set just right.
You might be able to guess now what I was unable to guess back then — that the internal tensions were building, the plot of my neuroticism was thickening. Just to push it a little further, I came up with what felt like a genius tactic to practice at the start of the year, a practice of accountability. I would record exactly what I was doing, day by day, by the hour. This made sense to me at the time. I needed to be sure I was following the schedule, which I needed to follow in order to achieve those goals I had set. I created a Google doc and kept the tab open for two weeks, recording exactly what I was doing daily, down to the minute.
By day four of this practice, I was well on my way to a downward spiral. My body was giving me warning signals. Normally I am a great sleeper, but during this period sleep was but a distant memory. When I shut my eyes at night the numbers danced around my mind, minutes and hours and seconds being constantly calculated and recalculated. Time, suddenly so measured and precise, became too precious. I was afraid I might be wasting it, afraid I might be making the wrong decisions about how to spend it. It didn’t feel good. Still, I persevered and continued recording my days with the duty of a rotary club secretary keeping minutes at a monthly meeting. The excess of personal data was debilitating. I experienced my first ever bout of writer’s block and my appetite was gone, I was nervy and on edge and I couldn’t begin to make sense of why any of this was happening. But I’ve done all the right things, I reasoned, I set SMART goals. I rested!
I’ve always believed that exercising control was the only way I might be able to achieve a happy ending: a safe home, the stability I missed out on early in life, the safety net that money can provide. While my propensity to strongarm every facet of my personal and professional life has propelled me closer to some of those things, it has also often robbed me of a happy present. Control is the antithesis of magic; control is planning and expecting and knowing. It leaves no doors ajar because every door is accounted for, leaves no opportunity for an unexpected visitor to sashay in and shred your meticulous plans into a million little scraps of paper so that you can write a new story. One with no well-formed plot, a total absence of neatness. Just a pen to paper and closed eyes.
Just a feeling.
____
After the Frantic Pages and after the documenting of time, I returned to New York. I stayed with my best friend in Harlem for a week as I began my apartment search. We observed each other’s lives in a more intimate way than we had before, the teeth brushing and hours spend hunched at our computers and the bedtime rituals. She could see I was not well and trying to hide it from her was a useless feat, as she knows me as well as I know myself. So instead of hiding, we talked.
We talked about habits, how they are often inherited as a response to the environments we grew up in, how there is a dissonance between our actual habits and the ways we claim to care for ourselves — through therapy and face masks and phone calls. We talked about healing and inherited trauma, about the things we did not want to pass along to our children. We talked about control and surrender, the precarious relationship between the two poles, about how one must be relinquished for the other to exist. About how hard it is to drop the reins, to stop steering.
She said, “No one is forcing you to wake so early. You have nowhere to be. You don’t have to write for two hours every morning when you’re not feeling inspired. You can go for a walk if you want. You can’t force your creativity to appear exactly when you want it to show up.”
Then, “You’re allowed to break the cycle. You’re allowed to change. To heal.”
And,
“You’re allowed to surrender.”
____
Cheers, my dears, and as always, thanks for reading.
P.s., that friend I mentioned? She could give a TED Talk on the creative process, on allowing space for it. Here’s the new song she released last Friday. It's a whole mood.
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. I originally heard about this piece in a podcast interview with its author, writer and The School of Life founder Alain de Botton. This one was the most-read story in the New York Times in 2016, and for good reason. Botton considers our relationship with love; the impossible expectations we put on one another, how we might shift our approach to acknowledge that the person we love will be deeply flawed. You’ll marry the wrong person because no one will fix you the way you want to be fixed, no one will make you feel loved enough. Because there is no right person.
“Marriage ends up as a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully avoided investigating. “
A Photographer, Seen Through the Eyes of His Late Wife. I will never not examine a photo series covered by the New Yorker. This one was interesting for its perspective shift: a photographer who spent his life photographing his late wife revisits his archives and is surprised to find photos she took of him over the years, of which he was unaware. As I read the piece I thought, "God, what beautiful prose," and then I saw it was penned by Rumaan Alam. Of course!
Please Just Let Women Be Villains. I love a good villain, always have, especially female villains. Ursula and Bellatrix Lestrange and Regina George. Our handling of female villains tends to veer to the delicate side. A woman can’t be just plain evil, she has to have a certain type of back story to serve as justification for her actions (see: Wicked), usually involving redemption for a wrongdoing (see: Promising Young Woman). This piece inspects the new Disney movie about one of the most fabulous villains of all time, Cruella De Ville, whose backstory rob her of her evil appeal and makes you wonder whether we can allow woman characters to access the same broad form and function of humanity as we do male characters.
“Cruella is not, therefore, a two-dimensional villain who likes to kill dogs. She is a misunderstood #girlboss whose actions will be justified by the film, and whose actions most likely were in reaction to bad things other people did to her first.”
Perhaps You Should…
Watch a 1-Minute IG Show About New York
Chaotic? Creative? Endlessly entertaining, about New York and not on TikTok? SIGN ME UP. I recently discovered Sidetalk NYC from a feature in The Cut and have spent the better half of an hour watching a bunch of the show’s one-minute videos, in which two NYU students run around New York interviewing a cast of characters. If you need convincing, just watch this one. It’s all very Gen Z and very New York and I’m here for it. Watch out for these two creatives, they’re on the up and up.
**Bonus Content** (John Mulaney Does It Again)
So many things to love about this hilarious standup routine. One, that John Mulaney was just as funny back in 2016 as he is today. Two, look how geeky he was! Three, the small crowd, the outfit! It takes true talent to be able to be this funny without relying on raunchiness. Also, I cannot wait until we can go see live standup again.
A Quote From A Book You Should Read:
“If you don't like my story, write your own.”
-Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.
Or, share the most thought-provoking piece from today’s edition with someone you love, then call them up to discuss, debate, and percolate. As a wise woman once said, “Great minds discuss ideas.”
The google doc schedule !!!!
Love this weeks !