happiness/normality

about my search for the above

November has been frantic. I have tried many time to explain my job to friends, my boyfriend, my parents; it never makes sense unless you’re the one doing it. Usually I would reserve myself to that reality, but this month has made that barrier of communication stand out in stark relief against the backdrop of the rest of my life. I’ve been struggling with emails and Slack messages and other annoyances that don’t matter. I have been picking at my skin in the mirror for something else to do and it has made my right cheek break out in stress acne. I can’t take long walks anymore because it rains all the time, so I pretend to read a terrible novel about Illinois farmers and fall asleep before I remember ever feeling tired. All of this for an up to [redacted] off deal that might, sort of, save your aunt some money on your cousin’s next pair of [redacted].

Corporate life is uninteresting by design. The tasks are complex in their meniality, the reasons for doing any of the work in the first place are opaque even to those assigned the projects. This structure allows the worker to feel as if they’ve accomplished an intellectual task, that they are living a life more enriched because it takes place within the mind and not with their hands, even as they fail to find a reason for doing the work that does not relate to cash or compulsion. In actuality, the tasks require the same amount of skill as most other viable careers. It’s not brain surgery, it’s not academia, nor is it air travel. We are pixel pushers. I say this with a sense of irony, but no joy in my heart.

consider that this was me for a month straight, every night, waiting for files to upload before I could log off, and tell me if this is what humanity was bred to do

So, when one struggles with corporate life, it can be helpful to remember that none of this is really real. The “just log off” ethos can apply, up to a point. I can’t always log off, if I want to keep my job (and I do). I have about a dozen people relying on me at any given moment for creative direction and/or folders full of pixels that aren’t going to push themselves. My job might be completely inessential in the existential scheme of human life, but it is essential to those dozen people. Still, I can grasp at things outside of work that make me feel like a human being. I’ve been eating a lot and sleeping a lot, trying my best to inhabit my body, to prevent myself from turning into a full-time MacBook attachment. It has been marginally successful, though at the cost of my physical self-esteem (my eye bags are extreme and my face is constantly bloated from wine and salt).

Though my largest project of the year has been turned in, I’m still looking for ways to be a normal person(?) again. I want to pose this more as a question than a statement, because I’m not sure that there is such a thing as a normal person, but I would like to think that most people have a base level personal normalcy that they strive to stick to. I think there’s this idea that “normal” looks one way: Middle class people with a nuclear family structure, a deed to a house, and a working knowledge of The Bachelor. They know who Jelly Roll is (I’m still trying to figure this out myself, he’s like a second evolution Post Malone??). They might even go hiking on the weekends if they’re feeling really wild and crazy. I acknowledge that the person in the portrait I’m generating could scan as normal or well-adjusted, but I don’t see myself in it, so I need to find some other kind of “normal” that works for me. I just haven’t found it yet.

If I think about my ideal, that conjures itself more easily: I spend most evenings with the living room lights dimmed, record player or movie on. No one can bother me except my boyfriend or my dog. When I go out, it’s to have a nice meal, drink cocktails with friends, go to the cinema, see a show, dance to female pop singers at the club; to make fun a priority in my life (I’m a night owl when I have it in me to keep my eyes open). I carve out the time to write, to read, to run, to take pictures and laugh at them, to walk my dog. I don’t spend as much time posting things online, though that urge will always be there, inherent to me and my pixel-addled little brain, so I keep this newsletter active, just in case. My closet is a little bit cleaner, my bathroom a little more organized. I’ve finally replaced the rug in the front room. That’s happiness to me.

acknowledging that last paragraph makes me sound like Them

I’m leaving something out, though. I feel much happier, more stable, when I’m doing something I know is good. If I’m proud of the work I’ve been doing, the life I’ve been living, happiness will always follow. I don’t actually need stability; I need a purpose. I’ve considered that this is what causes me so much work-related grief. I’m not proud of what I do. I know you’re not supposed to share these things in public, but at this point I don’t know who else to tell if not everyone. I think more of us experience this than we’d like our HR departments, our families, our mentors to know. But how will we ever fix it if we don’t talk about it? I do think there is room in the workplace for personal fulfillment. Trying to find it can be hard, but it doesn’t mean we can’t try, or shouldn’t try.

I guess this is all a long-winded way of saying I’ve been needing more work-life balance and it has me re-thinking the work I’m doing in the first place. This is a romantic and philosophical question, one that can have many competing answers that I may choose from or combine. It’s easy to forget that we have so much time in our twenties, so many possible paths. I can’t just stop working, but I can choose how I work and what I’m working on. My Co-Star this morning said that “The general theme of your life during this period is to make creative changes within to the systems that structure your life. Honoring your desires can be fulfilling.” Usually I’m inclined to say that astrology is about as useful as other bunk sciences like phrenology or cryonics or Politico polls, but Co-Star may have a point there. Just this one time.

I think a lot about this interview with Matty Healy¹ from 2019; a long one from GQ where he sits on a tall stool in front of a painting he made for the cover, messy with acrylic, barely held together by hair spray. It came out at a time where he was basically Jesus for me, a fact that should be so fucking obvious in my writing if you know what to look for, but I was obsessed with it because it goes into the purpose behind the drive to create, why anyone would do it even if it makes them miserable. There is a quote from it that is so true that I quoted it twice above (the first time without realizing, the second time just to lean into the bit, corniness be damned):

“I’m happiest when I’m doing something I know is good. That’s happiness for me.”²

It’s a dumb quote, one he acknowledges is a dumb quote immediately after saying it, but it’s so dumb that it actually snags on something real. We often don’t think to say what is simple because we assume everyone else already knows, but in forgoing trite observations about our lives, it becomes easier to forget that these things have only become trite because they are true. To be happy, we must do things that we know are good. I’ve been forgetting this and I think a lot of people around me have been too.

There’s also some stuff in that interview about needing to make art that’s authentic even if it’s superficial, real “freedom” being the act of fulfilling your purpose, quitting Twitter to fix your endorphin issues… It’s a good interview that remains perpetually relevant to me. Sometimes you really have to go back to start looking forward, you know what I mean? And sometimes going back for me is regressing to that stage of real-ass fandom indulgence that was my teenage existence. I wouldn’t be who I am without that, so perhaps it does hold some answers, you know? Or maybe I’m just a midwit who looks for answers in the words of pop stars. I’m open to that possibility.

So, yes, I’ve had a difficult time recently with figuring out what I’m actually doing with my life. This isn’t a unique problem, especially not for anyone in their mid-twenties, but it is my problem to fix. I don’t know where I’m going right now, but I do know where I want to go, which is a start. There are a lot of options open to me! This can only be a good thing, if a little daunting. But it is said that the only things worth doing are hard so… I guess I’ll be doing that.

been trying not to frances-ha-max but it has been difficult for me

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Anyway, I’m going to leave it here and go back to dwelling on my Life’s Purpose, but adding some links to things I’ve been enjoying recently:

• Antiporno (dir. Sion Sono, 2016): Back to the body image stuff. Watching a movie that’s like “maybe you’re sad because women’s sexuality and beauty standards are based on insane porn and not what women actually want to do” did kind of rock. This gets acknowledged as a basic fact in feminist debate, but I haven’t watched many movies that take that premise and get genuinely narsty with it. The Substance tries, but it places blame on those struggling (as well as the companies marketing dodgy beauty fixes, which like fair enough), as opposed to placing each of its female characters in a paradigm where the choices are clearly defined by men. Women subject other women to patriarchal expectations to make men laugh, women have sex they don’t want because they’re told that, actually, they do want it. It’s a tough watch, kind of funny in some spots and disgusting in others, especially when it leans into intentionally offending Japanese sensibilities around this kind of thing, but I do recommend it. Just not with your parents or casual company. One warning: The link here is for an Internet Archive upload that’s a little sped up! Change the settings to -0.75x speed and you should be golden.

• The Secret History, Donna Tartt: I’ve come around on this. I finished it a little underwhelmed, but I keep returning to it in my mind. Hard not to when the characters feel so real!

• “Love Songs” - Margo Guryan cover by Clairo: I discovered Margo Guryan a few years ago, when I was deep in my “listening to music that makes me feel like I’m walking barefoot in the French countryside” era. “Love Songs” is about listening to songs that make you cry and it also will make you cry! Clairo’s voice is well-suited to the delicate tone and I *loooove* the production on this. There are some fun synths on it that elevate it for me significantly.

Also would be remiss if I didn’t include “Happiness” here:

1. Getting ahead of this: Everyone has their Morrissey and mine is Matty Healy. Accept this or don’t, because I won’t be changing.

2. This line was also added as a sample to The 1975 song “Happiness” in 2022 by producer DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ, which has really made it stick for me. Apparently, even DJ Sabrina recognizes the impact of this one GQ interview!