first born, second best
alternate title: chronic silver medal syndrome
hey y’all,
happy belated autumn equinox and happy libra season. lately i’ve been enjoying a cold brew with pumpkin munchkin creamer from dunkin and a spot of pumpkin cold foam. i absolutely love pumpkin, and i won’t let the irony epidemic rob me of that! but, i will be doing it ethically at home rather than buying from the decaying siren.
my 31st birthday is coming up, which is totally bizarre. i feel a particular fondness for the other ‘94-liners in my life, as we all experienced the strangeness of turning 30, and now the permanence of turning 31. we truly will never be younger than this again. it might seem silly if you’re older than us, and maybe you didn’t experience it this way, but it’s a mindfuck to realize that this is all there is and it’s all you have, so you better make the most of it.
one of those ‘94-liners is my dear ali, who i facetimed this week. we’re both in transitional stages right now with our careers and personal goals — clear visions but a gap in resources and accomplishment. in other words, we’re still on our way there but at least we sort of know where we’re going. we were reminiscing about college and decorating our first adult apartment together for halloween. for both us, the fall is when we sort of “begin” again. we start planning our goals, we get new stationary, we try to level set.
she’s one of my favorite people to have long conversations with, because she is very grounded and honest. i was feeling guilty about trying to build the life i want under these present fascist conditions, but after talking to her i was reminded that to live is to rebel. every little joy i craft for myself matters. every time i choose to write this newsletter instead of wallowing silently is a little tiny rebellion. it’s not enough to free us, but it’s enough to keep us going every day.
so, with the fragile confidence i have from that call, i will be vulnerable. on the tin of sweet tea & kalamansi, i wrote that this is an experiment in vulnerability, and i haven’t been living up to that. in fact, i have been slipping slightly on my weekly schedule, because i have been filtering my words through a hyper critical lens. feedback and polish are important, of course, but you can’t edit something that doesn’t exist. good art is vulnerable, both in contents and in process.
my hang up is that i want my work to matter. like, so incredibly badly that it keeps me from doing it at all. i sometimes feel like nothing i make will ever matter. i can’t even decide on what the criteria for importance is. i know the real answer is to just make things and put them out there, and it’ll get easier just by doing. but god, i’m so embarrassed! especially when i think of all the friends who have supported my new creative projects over the years. how many times can you ask your friends to hype your latest pipedream?
i change up my website like once a month, probably, to try to capture what it is i’m attempting to do/be. i try to summarize it into a one-page bio, and create the right number of headers so that you won’t get overstimulated. i’m doing UX, when what i want to be doing is changing the world. i just am called in many directions, and i have always struggled with brevity.
the throughline is this:
i want to heal the deep wound of subjugation in our species, i want to teach people how to love each other through struggle, and i want to move you with my art (words, or clay, or otherwise). that’s my big 3, and it’s always about those 3 things.
the problem is, these are all things that have a monetary value in our economic system, and none of them are very high. some consultants make it big with retainers and fortune 500 clients, but for the vast majority it’s a side-hustle at best. the harsh reality is that i need to eat, i need healthcare, i need housing. just like everyone else. but the deeper problem, i’ve discovered, is that i can’t look the hard truth in the face most of the time; the hard truth that i can’t stomach failure anymore. if you’ve ever had a late night conversation with me, you’ve heard this story before:
when i was in kindergarten, my teacher asked all of us what we wanted to be when we grew up (insane question for 4-year-olds). i said i wanted to be a rockstar, and i realized recently that i still do, deep down. i chased artistic excellence, until my senior year of high school. yes, it was my childhood, but 12 years is a long time to pursue something. i had worked my ass off in music, theater, and journalism. i was told to specialize, but i refused to release my passion for all 3. i wanted to be the next pete wentz, aaron tveit, and christiane amanpour.
i excelled at all 3 for 3 years, consistently coming in at second place, behind a senior. i played solos, i got supporting leads, i built sets, i won state awards for my news stories, i went to journalism camp, i revitalized our broadcast news program, i broke news before our local papers, i learned to play 4 different instruments, i published poems in student magazines. i thought for sure, all that hard work and success would be rewarded my senior year.
when the time came, my band director, theater director, and journalism teacher all kept me in second place. first chair flute went to a freshman. the musical lead went to a junior. editor-in-chief went to another senior who had just joined the paper the year before. my band director said my play style was “clinical” and that i didn’t have a natural musicality. my theater director said i was too stiff, and my characters weren’t believable.
my journalism teacher said i have what it takes, but that i spread myself too thin. she didn’t believe i could be the editor-in-chief without dropping everything else i was doing. she said she’d change her mind if i quit theater and band, and dedicated 100% of my extracurricular attention to the newspaper. otherwise, she couldn’t rely on me. i was furious, as i’d been achieving excellence for the last 3 years, while maintaining other interests. what else could i have done to prove it to her?
so, you know what i did? i quit it all. up until my senior year of high school, i had planned to go to school for arts and culture and dedicate my life to my crafts. i haven’t played a musical instrument since i was 17 years old. i haven’t been in a play since i was 16 years old. i quit writing for 12 years, and though i’ve returned to the pen, i do so with shaky hands. i thought if i abandoned these foolish, childish dreams and focused on a “real career”, i would be cured of my desire to create.
much like i tried to convince myself that if i just forced myself to conform to the womanhood that had been assigned to me, i would be cured of my transsexuality. our culture expects us to be ashamed of our childhood wounds. i chastise myself, almost daily, whispering: “grow up. aren’t you over this shit by now?” take it from me, conversion therapy of any variety does not actually work. even if you’re doing it to yourself.
now i find myself stuck in a new version of silver medal syndrome. i still achieve great things, no matter how many projects i’m working on. i don’t feel the desire to “find my niche”, because i can do multiple things really well. and yet, i still find myself having to prove it to people. i still find myself questioning why i should even bother, if no one will invest in me. i realize that the origin of these questions is the mirror. it is me who is not invested in myself. i don’t actually believe that i’ll make it.
i was in my hometown recently, and i went to the beach alone at 11:00 o’clock at night. this particular beach access has witnessed more of my existential breakdowns than my husband (purely due to how long it has known me). i always convene with the ocean when i start to feel like i’ve lost control of my life. lately, i always feel like i’ve lost control of my life. the fall of the empire certainly isn’t helping.
this time, i let the black waves hold me quietly, while i whispered my prayers to the moon. there was lilac heat lightning in the distant horizon illuminating the shadows of rolling clouds. it was a balmy 70 degrees, and the I.S.S. drifted across the stars, distinguishing itself from the other static twinkles.
i dragged myself back to land and laid air-drying on the cooling sand, my bare chest tingling from the breeze. i remembered how hard-fought this chest was, and all the places i’d been before i had it. i tapped into the part of myself that existed before all the pressure and the shame. the starry-eyed small town boy who worshipped at the altar of his dreams. the version of me that fiercely believed in myself above anything else, even if i hadn’t hatched yet. he didn’t care what anyone else thought of him.
in my adult stupidity, i thought i’d achieved maturity by caring about my reputation. your reputation might as well be currency in our exploitive, productivity-driven society, so it makes sense that when i started needing money it started to become a priority. somewhere along the way, maintaining an inoffensive, insignificantly pleasing reputation became more important than doing things that mattered to me.
in the end, i think it is up to us to determine what matters. i want to be cured of my silver medal syndrome. what an incredible gift to be among the greats, if you make it that far. so few people do! right now, i still feel like if i’m not first, i’m last. i still feel it’s not worth the effort unless i achieve greatness out of the gate. but, at least i know that isn’t rational or realistic. i can begin to untangle my feelings of inadequacy, and my compulsive desire to be uncontroversial.
i’ll leave you with this resonant take from caleb hearon on artistic achievement:
how you spend your days is how you spend your life. you can call yourself whatever you want. no one sane is going to check your credentials as a writer or an actor. you can say you’re a writer and an actor all you want, but if you actually want to do those things, if you actually want to write something that gets into the world and impacts people, at some point you have to sit down and fucking write.
you can sit around all the time, waiting on someone to put you in a room. but if all those days leading up to that pivotal thing happening — if all the time between knowing you want to do something and getting to do it at the level you want — if all that interim period is spent wishing someone let you do it instead of just doing it, it’s never going to happen.
you have to get lucky, for sure. luck has to come, there’s no sane person who would ever tell you they succeeded in entertainment without luck coming, but, you have to be prepared when the luck comes. if the luck comes, and you’re not ready, it won’t last.
— so true, episode 20, 32:28: sabrina brier believes in magic
xoxo,
kuya von
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