Why does it feel like the moment you try to put all your effort into something, you lose the sense to do it immediately? Like writing this email or learning to surf or sitting down to write a screenplay about a zombie high school marching band? Such a great idea at first (okay, maybe not that last one), but then you try too hard to nail it down and the reason you wanted to do the thing in the first place seems to just slip through your fingers.
So my question is: what the fuck's with that?
Once commitment has been made to doing a thing (take for example, writing this email), what is the force that keeps us from nailing it down?
Is it the fear of judgement? What will 22k people think of my email? Internet trolls are real and vicious and perfectly rational to fear.
Is it the indecision itself? The too-late realization that I could have talked about literally anything else?
The fear of comparison? Does my story not measure up to those of great discovery, enlightenment, and hopefulness? Or even worse, is my story boring compared to that of a great tragedy?
Or the worst fear of all: that I'm actually horrible at writing emails - worse at it than anyone else in the world and I'm not even aware of it - and therefore, by default, I'll send the shittiest email.
What I'm trying too hard to get at is: why is anxiety such a bitch? It gets in the way of accepting failure as a truth that all humans face. And while it is narcissistic in nature, anxiety deflates instead of inflates. It allows for space instead of taking up space. It makes try hards try harder.
But I guess my final question is: is being a try hard such a bad thing? Could I have filled my Listserve email with someone else's inspirational quote? Yes. But, and here comes the nachos-sauce-from-an-amusement-park level cheese, if only one other person reads this and feels the same way, I guess that's the point then. I guess the answer is: not always.
In a city as big as New York, and a world as big as ours, you'd think it'd be an easy answer. But as a millennial twentysomething, I'm still trying to figure it out.
******
Some suggestions:
Band: Morning Teleportation
Song: Die Vampires Die from the musical [title of show]
Book: The Secret History by Donna Tartt
TV Shows: This Is Not Happening on Comedy Central / Rick & Morty on Adult Swim
I love all your stories, I read them every week and look forward to all the ones to come!
Shout out to Sydnee and Kat for the Listserve hook up.
Ava
[email protected]
Manhattan