Enjoying the newsletter? Gimme $2/mo, man. Writing is labor.

This week’s question comes to us from Jim Christensen:

Is there really a difference between being bitter or being petty? Most of the time I feel the latter is being confused with the former. Am I missing something here?

Pettiness is a gas. Bitterness is a solid.

I will explain, but first I’ll tell a story with a few tangents. Buckle up.

I can’t remember if we got to take our first high school elective in freshman year or sophomore year, it was a long time ago. Maybe it was the second semester of freshman year. Doesn’t really matter. Whenever it happened, I signed up for art class immediately. As a kid, I drew constantly. So the idea that you could spend an entire period of school in the art room, drawing, was amazing. I had no goals beyond thinking that art was more fun than math and science, and also rooms with art supplies have always been havens. I also had no idea what kind of art room I was about to enter, but I quickly found out.

The art room was run by Bernard Harmon. And if I were to create a list of people who’ve guided my life towards the positive, he’d be very close to the top, if not the actual top of that list. Maybe he is on the actual top, because if he hadn’t come first, no one else would’ve gotten a chance to make an impact. Bernard Harmon took a lost, angry kid, who only understood the world through the lens of his childhood home, and put him on a better path. And as a public school teacher in 1980s Philadelphia, what he was able to achieve with the kids that walked into that art room was nothing short of miraculous. He didn’t run an art room, he ran an honest to goodness art program. He screwed kids’ heads on straight and he got them into college, and he did this with kindness, grace, and only the occasional raising of his voice. Which worked because we had so much respect and love for the man that we felt shame in having let him down enough that he had to raise his voice at all.

Fast forward to Junior year. By Junior year I’d figured out a way to work the system to the point where I was spending almost half my school day in the art room. And while this had long term effects that revealed themselves when my kid asked for help with her algebra homework, it might’ve been the right call at the time. In Junior year, everyone in the art program worked towards applying for a National Merit Scholarship, because it was a gold star on your college application. And by this point I’d decided I was going to art school. We worked on our portfolios endlessly. We practiced answering essay questions. We learned how to photograph our work and mask slides. (Thankfully something you don’t need to do anymore.) The way Merit Scholarships worked (to the best of my recollection) is that you sent your shit in, and a few weeks later you were told if you were advancing to the next round. The next round being that you got flown to Miami, competed with other art freaks, a handful of winners were chosen and given a $3,000 check, which was supposed to go towards college (put a pin in that.)

Bernard Harmon was on a heater. Every year, since anyone could remember, one of his students was a finalist. Every year, the art room celebrated. My junior year, I sent in my application, and a few weeks later I was amazed and surprised when I got the fat envelope. I was going to Miami. I wanted to keep Mr. Harmon’s streak alive. (I also wanted that check.)

The day before I was supposed to fly out, Mr Harmon called me into his office and sat me down. I thought I was about to get a pep talk about how proud he was. Instead, he told me to have fun down there. (Oh oh.) He told me that I was the first student that was selected that he wasn’t sure about. He said he was sure about John. He said he was sure about Chuck. He said he was sure about Miguel. (Yes, this was an all-boys school up to that point.) But he wasn’t sure about me. Every. Word. Was. A. Gut. Punch. I ran out of his office crying. I cried on my walk home. I cried myself to sleep. The next day, I got on a plane to Miami.

A week later, I showed back up in his office, fist clenched like the Arthur meme, holding my Finalist Certificate, and told him I’d won. He ever so slightly looked up from whatever he was doing at his desk, smiled, and said “Of course you did.”

Pettiness is a gas. Gas is fuel.

Bernard Harmon was the first person to figure out what made me tick. He knew that I needed to be told I couldn’t do something. He knew that if he told me something was outside my reach, I’d only reach harder. He knew that if he told me something was impossible, I’d work the problem. He knew this because he was the one who taught me to work the problem.

(Fun aside: One of the assignments in Miami was that you were given a box of paint, and a secret word—a verb— in an envelope, along with a large canvas. My word was SMASH. This was all happening in a school courtyard. After sitting for a bit, wondering what to paint, I positioned the canvas on the ground close to the building and carried the box of paint to the roof. I then threw the entire box of paint off the roof. It landed on the canvas, creating a giant fucking mess. I walked calmly down the stairs, stood next to the canvas, and announced “That was SMASH!” before walking off like someone who knew exactly what he’d done. This annoyed the other contestants a lot. What they didn’t know was that I turned the corner and immediately vomited into the bushes, freaked out that I’d shot my shot, and terrified that it hadn’t worked.)

(Second fun aside: I very wisely never told my parents that this adventure I was going on came with the possibility of a cash prize, and while I did manage to save some of the money for college, a significant portion of it went to Sound of Market, where I picked up a sweet stereo console system, including a cabinet, massive speakers, and a lot of import vinyl. When my father saw this fresh—and very large—stereo system in my room I told him I’d found it, and that seemed to satisfy him. Now that I’m a father myself, that interaction mystifies me a lot.)

Pettiness is a gas. Bitterness is a solid.

Being told I can’t do something has always made me want to prove people wrong. I grew up in a household where my mother constantly reminded me that as immigrants we had to keep our heads down because we weren’t in our own country. As a kid who’d known no other country (we immigrated when I was two) this didn’t make sense to me. How was I less than the other kids in the neighborhood? How was the neighborhood not ours, collectively? How weren’t we all entitled to an equal share of time on the swings? Always ask for permission, she said. And I never understood why I had to ask permission of my equals.

My brothers, who were raised by the same mother, in the same exact conditions, have decided to live a life of bitterness. Blaming others for the fact that they’ve tried nothing, and none of it worked. When the MAGA movement came along they were easy pickings. Eager to join a movement that encouraged them to blame others for their own lack of effort. I’ve watched over the years, as these two kids who I used to eat cereal with, and watch cartoons with on Saturday mornings, have lost their lives to the solidity of bitterness. When our father died they didn’t attend his funeral because it meant going to the city to get a passport, and the city that we grew up in scares them.

(Third fun aside: After I won my merit scholarship one of the judges came up to congratulate me, big smile on his face, and asked “Who told you that you could climb onto the roof?” and I replied “The same person who told me I couldn’t climb onto the roof.” He seemed to enjoy that answer, and then he handed me a check, and you better believe that was a defining moment for me.)

Man, you can just do things. For sure people can try to stop you, and even succeed in stopping you, but they cannot stop you from trying to do things.

When I say that bitterness is a solid, I mean just that. Bitterness is a weight. A weight that positions itself on your chest, making it impossible to get up. Impossible to move. Impossible to interact with the world. Bitterness is a weight made up, not of all the times people told you you couldn’t do something—but of all the times you believed them. All the times you let it discourage you. All the times that you mistook difficult for impossible.

Bitterness is the weight that makes you think that things are inevitable. And they may be, but I’ve decided to be petty about it. I’ve decided to believe they’re not.

Bitterness is how people are exploited. Hucksters and conmen will come around and they will give names to the weight on your chest. They will blame others for the weight on your chest. They will offer to remove the weight from your chest. Which is when it’s worth remembering that the weight is made up, not of all the times people told you you couldn’t do something—but of all the times you believed them. You are the only one who can remove the weight.

And let me be clear, I’m not saying that pettiness is a virtuous quality. It’s not. But it can be a useful one in moderation. Pettiness will light the occasional fire under your ass. Pettiness might be the thing that uncovers an extra gear you didn’t realize you had. Pettiness might just be the thing that gets your ass off the couch. People have written books, songs, albums, and paintings just to prove that someone else was wrong. (I’m listening to Lemonade as I write this.) Much like ice cream, you don’t want to center every meal around it, but once in a while it’s a nice little treat.

Looking out over the landscape in front of us today, I see so, so, so many things that could turn a soul bitter. But bitterness is a weight that will keep you from doing the work that needs doing. Bitter people don’t dismantle flock cameras. Petty people do.

Bitter people don’t get in ICE’s face when they come for our neighbors. Petty people do. Bitter people don’t start stealing furniture from work when upcoming layoffs are announced. Petty people do. Bitter people don’t learn how to make their own books when their “publisher” (quotes earned) runs away with all your money. Petty people do. Bitter people don’t call Waymos to a protest just to set them on fire. But you better believe petty people do.

I’m not encouraging you to be petty, but if the choice is between pettiness and bitterness… pick the one that has you making molotov cocktails behind the shed at 3am.

Then SMASH.

🙋 Got a question that needs answering? Ask it!

📓 If you enjoyed this essay, I got a whole book full of them. You should buy it. It’s really good.

📚 If you want to learn how to make books, or zines, or what not, Lucy Bellwood and I are teaching a workshop about it on August 28!

😷 …AND, two weeks before that, Erika Hall and Kio Stark are teaching a workshop on talking to strangers! It’s all part of MULE SUMMER SCHOOL!

🍉 Please don’t stop helping the children of Palestine.

🏳️‍⚧️ Please don’t stop protecting trans kids.