Hi everyone, this is me Sophie! Feeling glad to be here today.
In casual conversation, the mention of the word “audition” brings a slight chill to my spine. A familiar feeling is churned up from somewhere deep, deep inside the crevices of my stomach: a feeling that encapsulates the idea of intense preparation. Looking back, I lived for the actual process of preparing for a goal or an event that lay ahead of me. Middle-school era flashbacks of belting out a note in the shower, wondering if I was even hitting them at all? Having no clue if I was mediocre or terrible at singing altogether! The moment when your parents leave the house so you can record yourself singing to listen to (and in my case, cringe at) it over and over again. Running over my lines, what part I wanted to go for, overanalyzing what my chances were of getting them, counting down the days until it was THE day, THE moment that I had to show all my dedicated hard work in under 5 minutes to prove my worth to someone.
Thinking about the moment arriving so many times that by the time it truly arrives, it doesn’t even feel like you’re actually experiencing it. It's preparation that really is crossing the boundary into obsession. Perhaps in my case, it was some of the earliest evidence of perfectionism to my own detriment. Either way, these are the shards of my past as a theater kid (in middle and high school at least); the lead up to the big audition being one of the most nerve-wracking yet somehow gratifying adrenaline rushes that I could experience.
I’m thankful I left that part of my life behind, as I feel I can now retrospectively understand the parts of myself that loved participating in that culture and the creative outlet it filled for me as a young adult. However, the feeling of preparing intensely for something really has stuck around, and just translated into different contexts.
A pattern emerges here in which...yeah...I can feel affirmed that it’s the journey and not the destination that’s the most important, duh, that the preparation is oftentimes the most exciting part for me. In a positive light rather than an anxiety-induced mania, I look forward into the future, I look to the lights at the end of the tunnel. When I can’t see them at all, that’s when I’ve found myself in a depressive moment. I’ve been thinking lately about how some people seem to live off of the adrenaline of deadlines and some cannot deal with them at all. I’ve read two separate articles touching on this subject within the last couple months that brought up some interesting points about the concept of deadlines I’ve been considering since I read them...Lauren Oyler writes for Tank Magazine about it. (If you can get thru that paywall ughh)
Rachel Syme for the New Yorker says “Everywhere you look, people are either hitting deadlines or avoiding them by reading about how other people hit deadlines. This may seem like a sly way of marrying procrastination with productivity (you’re biding your time learning how to better manage your time), but, no matter what, it’s an exhausting treadmill of guilt and ostentation, virtue signalling, and abject despair at falling behind.”
Being obsessed with deadlines is largely a symptom of the productivity obsessed culture I’ve grown up in, one in which workism reigns supreme. Attending a university in which I learned to bond with classmates solely over how much work I had to complete in not enough time really just groomed me for continuing a lifestyle that lives to work for the next accomplishment, application, or deadline to complete work in sight of. It’s the nervous feeling of singing in the shower for the audition-- again and again and again on repeat! I want to try and stay self-aware about the difference here between self-inflicted productivity anxiety and external sources that pressures us into that anxiety—today I’m kind of talking about a mix of the two rather than one exclusively. And it’s true, that there are ways to resist these pressures, whether they are internal or external…
So, in thinking about this, recently in my adulthood I’ve come to realize how much pleasure I get out of keeping a schedule, writing down my to-dos (I know I’ve mentioned this before), love to cross them off after they’ve happened that day or that week, the incredible feeling of having, yes, achieved the goal of the moment. I like how the grains of salt add up to a mountain, the feeling of making progress, being prepared, showing up with your homework done, hitting the mark exactly where you should’ve, that becomes addicting to me. Is it for recognition? Is it being a teacher’s pet, long after you need to? Is it simply innate?
Either way, the result of all of this organized “work” definitely doesn’t always lead to happiness, as we all know. For me, when the need to be organized and check things off of a list veers into the “MUST FINISH” feeling rather than the “TRY YOUR BEST TO FINISH” feeling each day, I’m suffering. Living a life based on achievements does feel hollow, so I’m trying to find the balance in between those things.
This is not a “work is the opiate of the masses” rant, I have to acknowledge the deeply dysfunctional capitalist society I’m operating within, and I’m trying to find where work fits within that framework in my own life. How do you let money and productivity not rule your life and decisions when you’re someone who genuinely loves staying busy? I’ll be BLASTING the answer to that question to you all immediately when I discover it…
:-0
Love you all
Sophie
This week I was very lazy and distracted, but in the absolute best way possible! So no links to share… but this entire album by musician Leeyuh Neptune, which is absolute FIRE!!!!!!!!! Please Listen You won’t be sorry…
Oh and Lil Nas X’s new music video…. : - )
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Hi everyone!
My plans to work on this newsletter in a stepwise fashion have failed me, and I sit writing this on Tuesday night after I went to look up “presentism” and became absorbed with today’s Google Doodle; a video game in which I am an anime cat competing in a series of athletic competitions. Here’s me on my way to a first place marathon win:
Planning / preparation / looking ahead… can mean lots of things and I approach all of them with varied levels of enthusiasm and responsibility. Doing things that I am supposed to be doing when I am supposed to do them? No no no--I am sick and get off on procrastinating all that I can, because there have been very few times that it hasn’t worked out in the end and I do (unfortunately) enjoy the rush of a scramble. It puts my mind in a forced state of focus that can be difficult for me to achieve otherwise, and I have a long-standing romanticization of the classic all-nighter due to a sophomore year spent taking caffeine pills at 1 a.m. in the library.
Long-term future vision, spending time thinking about the life I expect to lead when I’m in my thirties, forties, etc., also isn’t something that I naturally take to, and at the supple age of 25 I feel too young to be in possession of a ten-year plan. Though, this sometimes hinders me from pursuing direct avenues since the destination feels so blurry, and once in a while I feel jealous of people that can point to something and say “this is what I’m aiming to achieve and this is what I will need to get there”. Kudos to those of you out there! We need you.
This then brings me to my favorite form of planning and preparation, which is getting ready. Preparation for the shorter-term plan feels full of delight in such a specific way, and I always want to hold onto it for just a little longer because that state of anticipation is so thrilling! Anything can happen when the world awaits, and the time spent pre-event or pre-travel always feels like a bit of a bubble from which I subsequently burst forth into whatever the immediate future holds. Growing up, my siblings and I would be allowed the special treat of picking out what we wanted our cereal to be the morning of the first day of school, and in the grace of breaking from a flavorless KiX hellscape I always chose Lucky Charms for the straight-up blocks of sugar marshmallow. In my adulthood I’ve held on to this practice in many forms, and always relish the day-of-departure breakfast and road trip snack buying. Hanging out in the airport pre-flight is another top-tier state of being.
Getting ready implies a destination, a new experience, possibility and growth! It has always led me to the most amazing people and the best meals I’ve ever eaten because I woke up and said yes to doing the day and all that that entails. It reminds me of a truly joyous Ask Polly article I read this week on How to Be Exuberant. A couple of excerpts:
“Sleeping forever is death. And when your daily prayer is “Just give me a break, give me some peace, land me somewhere I don’t have to work as hard, where everyone loves me and I have everything I want and I’m perfect, finally,” what you’re really worshipping is THE END.”
“EXUBERANCE makes room for the world. Exuberance sets the table like there are kings and queens coming to dinner. Exuberance is humility that’s energized: AS LONG AS I DON’T MATTER, I MIGHT AS WELL HAVE FUN.”
I hope what I’m trying to say here makes sense, but at the bottom line all of my most favorite experiences have had a ‘before’ and in knowing this I pull on my pants and say let’s fucking gooooOOOOOOOOOOO!
love you xxx
jess