After being let go from my underpaid job at a New York-based startup just before lockdown last year, I impulsively purchased a domain with the intent to start a blog. For a while I’d had vague notions of existing on the internet in some way. In college I came up with a web series idea to document the search for “urban cryptid” Frank Ocean in NYC, which evolved into a “nature mockumentary” about life in the concrete jungle. Determined as I’ve been to start a project, I have always had reservations — and beneath them, fear. As a natural ruminator, I plan my projects in all possible aspects, but often simply come short of taking action*. The shipping off of my imperfect mind children out into a harsh and critical world. I was reaching into an endless bag of ideas and inspiration, always riding some flight of fancy where I never actually took off and so naturally couldn’t land. So here I am, still preparing for lift-off.
Before starting this blog, I wondered who my audience was, what my message was, and if I was capable of capturing either. I struggled to come up with an appropriately pithy title that typified the entirety of my niche perspective. I still don’t feel even remotely ready, and I certainly wasn’t for what came next. Shortly after purchasing MyName.Com, of course, sh*t changed irrevocably. Systems and institutions a silenced several had long suspected to be deeply flawed could no longer disguise those flaws as incompetence, or their perks as essential.
I soon realized that finding a new job mid-pandemic was going to be more challenging than I bargained for, so I booked a cheap flight back to my hometown and spent many months draining any semblance of savings I had to honor my lease while living with my parents. Without much fanfare, and for reasons mostly outside of my control, my life in New York was over. So long to overpriced rent (and everything else), long nights, short stints, a low grade eating disorder and an atmosphere thick with pollution and cortisol. In my five years in the city, I earned my bachelor’s degree in psychology and film studies, worked as a personal assistant, a product photographer, bartended at upscale private events, taught STEM at summer camp, brought people coffee on film productions, and never once spotted Frank Ocean.
I flirted and squabbled and partied and gossiped and tried things I’ll never do again (and a few I’d like to). To be perfectly honest, sometimes I feel like I did everything wrong. But then again: how can I be sure, even now? And though many of my experiences were exciting and life-changing, I reckon many were simply distractions: from myself, the intricacies of the world, and even the nature of reality. My life isn’t a movie, or a hero’s journey, or even a completely subjective interior experience — not in New York or anyplace else. But I’ll delve into that metaphysical can of worms another time.
So enduring months of unemployment and an ongoing not-quite-quarter-life crisis, I began to view the shadowplay that was my life this time last year from an entirely new perspective, one that will take many months and years to fully process. Nothing will ever be the same, but nothing ever really was — unprecedented times be damned. Reality is always shifting invisibly before our eyes, and it’s a privilege to peer into the very soul of disparity without an ounce of awareness. So reality could be ignored no longer, and our good and great nation was revealed to be that dystopian government we were cautioned about the whole time. But again, another can of worms (I am prone to these).
As many have been quick to point out, even the perceived flow of time has been impacted by the pandemic. Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time with myself. With nothing in particular to look forward to, my thoughts have invariably turned inward, and more deeply rooted in my present reality. What can I do now that at least grants the possibility of success later, in whatever world I inherit, with whatever challenges are to come? I have dreams, to be sure. They’re ambitious and lofty and incomplete — and not unique by any means. We all wish for something, but I’ve started to wonder what separates those who cling to dreams from those who are content in their waking life?
Is it hours put for days and weeks and years without rest, doggedly determined to hold every second accounted for, never to be accused of an unproductive moment?
Is it a matter of meticulous planning, of knowing the right people and fearlessly seizing the right opportunities?
Is it hopeless to hope at all when it seems the successful people we worship were already destined as such? When it’s become more apparent than ever that we’ll only enjoy a fraction of the fruits of our labor if we keep feeding the same systems, leaning into the same hands we once believed were feeding us? Class mobility is, after all, at the heart of the American Dream.
I’ve wondered all these things and more, observing the behaviors of others and the machinations of our society — all while letting myself be pulled by language and rhetoric, seduced by whims and urges, engulfed by my baser senses. It’s not easy peeling off the mask that is what or who we think we should be, but the hardest part is merely finding the edges. Discernment begins by seeing the world with a little more nuance, questioning the roots of our most deeply held beliefs and biases. This in turn allows us to identify areas of self-improvement and internalize positive changes.
In many ways, the past year has felt like a Second Childhood: an opportunity older generations didn’t have the luxury of, such that they’ve been conditioned to internalize a different expectation of reality. The concept of one’s 20s as the epitome of youth is fairly recent, and the desire to acquire a spouse, kids, and a mortgage before one’s 30s practically outdated. Is it really so wrong to just wait and watch instead of going through the motions of “life one should lead”? Why follow a script if you don’t personally find the ending satisfying?
By most measures of success, I am a complete failure at present. Unemployed, broke, not currently in school, single, and living back at home. But then there’s the little things I am proud of, too. I’ve gotten over a gnarly crush on someone I barely knew, reaffirmed my strongest friendships, and begun to heal the deepest wounds from my childhood. My relationship with my family is the best it’s ever been — not because we have avoided conflict, but because we have pushed through discomfort and possible alienation to reach new breakthroughs in understanding.
It’s only now during my so-called Second Childhood that I’ve begun the radical experiment of living in the present, consciously enjoying my current situation regardless of any initial fear or discomfort. By necessity I have practiced emotional regulation, setting and enforcing boundaries, and — most importantly — being kind to myself regardless of my productivity or perceived market value. My worth is tied to my active existence, not to the way I am passively perceived.
Since quarantine I’ve continued my education: teaching myself to sew, stress-making jewelry, casually studying physics, pop culture, and mysticism, seriously reading the bible, and honestly examining the ways in which I suck sometimes. I’m actively working at becoming more whole without the usual crutches of working to merely be seen as better: more attractive, successful, intelligent, or any number of covetable qualities. In my experience, these things are never enough. Having felt undesirable and unlovable for much of my teens, I now look back and wonder just what was I thinking? Where did those opinions really originate?
Now I question everything, even things I recognize as fact. How do we know the good news and the bad news? Everything we do, know, and feel contains multitudes and dialectics, simply a bias of presentation. Two or more seemingly contradictory things can be true at once, and the idea of truly grasping reality is aspirational at best. I can be unemployed and also working really hard, or gainfully employed and truly lazy at my core. The United States of America can be a land of dreams and a shamefully ruthless imperial power, and it is. So who says dreams and reality exist in entirely separate realms? The idea of “manifesting” has its own sublime appeal I’ve seen many attracted to lately, as a form of self-propaganda much in the same vein as “manifest destiny.”
It was always highly unlikely we’d magically find Frank Ocean seated outside a cafe in SoHo sipping an oat milk latte (or maybe he’s a macchiato man?). Incidentally, one of my friends did end up randomly seeing him at a party, cool enough as he is to be privy to such circles. The friend who had searched along with me joked that despite our objective the true meaning was “the friends we found along the way.” She wasn’t wrong at all, as the search became more a running gag than an honest attempt. Just because the initially envisioned reality didn’t come to pass doesn’t mean the dream was pointless. Any plan is meant to unfold, not exactly as imagined, but as it intended.
Existence isn’t futile, but it isn’t absolute either. What can you do or think now that brightens yours or someone else’s reality, if only for a moment? Change starts locally. Be good to people you know, not just people you like or admire. Support that acquaintance’s small business, donate to mutual aid funds, offer a friendly ear or an appreciative comment to someone who needs it. Be the person you need others to be for you, the person you wish more people were. Good intentions are rarely enough if not backed by appropriate action. And the only way to find out is through accepting failure — welcoming it, even. Reality is full of such inevitabilities: darkness, death, duration.
Beyond that, what can you really control?
Sincerely,
Starsmirk 𒀭
*This blog post, for instance, has been in my drafts for months now.
STARSMIRK 