what do i really want!
a little slice of my current early twenties malaise for your consideration
I can’t tell you about the last time I’ve ever openly, full-throatedly wanted something. It feels embarrassing, it feels cringe. It’s so earnest and a little bit starry-eyed. If I genuinely want something and pursue it and fail, people will know that. I’ll know that. I can blame a lack of success on a lack of effort now, instead of a lack of discipline or a lack of sheer talent or capability. Better to lean back in ironic detachment, to stay in my little rut and make a home here. It’s not that bad, I tell myself. I feel okay, and maybe that’s all I can ask for.
When I say “wanting” here, I am referring to unbuyable aspects of life, mostly associated with work in some form. I could (and maybe will) write this entire newsletter with the same opening paragraph, but replacing “wanting something” with “wanting someone.” That is a separate but highly related kettle of fish.
It’s easy to look at the people who have achieved the things that you want — critical acclaim, admirable talent, political capital, financial stability, prestige, a platform, whatever — and attribute it to some innate chosenness or special quality.
But that’s reductive, and honestly untrue. The people who find meaningful success in their chosen endeavors usually surpass some threshold of ability, but beyond that it’s not that they are the best or perfect person, but that they actually went for it. And they continued to go for it, to want what they want and to take the steps necessary to achieve it. This is not an argument for pulling any bootstraps; there are unfathomable amounts of luck often undercounted in our lives.
While in hindsight the narrative seems to build inevitably and linearly, it’s important to remember that people are working without knowing whether their work turns out to be anything. Purpose is there whether or not success is. In an age of instant gratification and quantified feedback, I find it incredibly difficult to genuinely embrace that.
Had you asked me outright whether I think I have self-respect, I would have tentatively answered yes — I have a decently solid sense of self, I have demeaned myself for things and for people in the past and have learned (the very hard way sometimes) to not do that.
Yet I wriggled with discomfort reading Joan Didion’s “On Self-Respect” as she defined self-respect as knowing the price of the things you want, and being willing to pay it and to accept the accompanying risks. I can’t even admit to myself much less others what it is I want from my life without immediately qualifying, doubting, retracting, hedging. I struggle with the idea of pure wanting.
I could attribute my own risk aversion to being the child of immigrants, to a lack of generational wealth and psychological safety, to belonging to an altogether precarious era. I wouldn’t be entirely wrong in identifying these factors, but I would once again be furnishing my disappointing little home in the rut of not-even-trying. There is a constant tension when it comes to grappling with sense of agency — it is vital to recognize the systems and contexts that constrain our choices, that underpin the possibilities of our lives, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of our hands. An easy pitfall is to look around at the structures of our society and end up resigned or overly deterministic.
I’m not always sure whether or not I want a house or a spouse because I do, or because of the immense messaging and pressure from all sides. I’m not always sure that I like writing and am doing it for myself or if I’m doing it because it’s something people have told me I should keep doing, or if I like the idea of being someone who writes, and the associated intellectual vibe.
To some extent none of this matters; I can never divorce myself from the water in which I’ve always been swimming. There is no unadulterated, definitive version of me against which all desires can be confirmed or dismissed. To pretend otherwise is a diversion that extends my lease in Rutland.
The phenomenal Andrea Long Chu says that “Desire involves cutting a lot of things out of the world, so that you can imagine a space where your object is going to give you a thing that you want it to give you.” How am I to locate self-respect, to want something and be willing to pay the appropriate price for it, when wanting itself has been misplaced? I feel it becoming harder and harder to cut things out of this world that contains a surplus of filler and useless fluff; it’s like using children’s safety scissors to cut through canvas cloth.
It’s getting easier and easier for many of us to passively consume, to nod along, and be swept away in the tedium of everyday life. Numb is more familiar a sensation than energized or hopeful in this day and age. I often read or watch media and end up wondering, “What do I do with this?” while also knowing that the answer to that is the whole process of living. One thing I am certain I want is better than numb, better than a nonchalance developed out of fear, better than wondering what I want and whether I could get it.
(THE ASSIGNED READING IS BELOW THIS!! IF YOU’RE IN LINE STAY IN LINE!!)
In an incredibly savvy move, Substack released its Chat feature right as Twitter has come crashing down. If you want the occasional ~exclusive~ Cornelia picture or to satiate my near-endless desire for interesting conversation… pop in!
I have this fear of asking questions or engaging with audience that is a mix of anxiety that nobody will respond and I’ll look stupid and also a concern that I will accidentally commodify my whole identity and reduce it into endless, seamless performance.
So you can either join the chat and ameliorate the first concern while accelerating the second, or don’t and do the reverse! I win and lose either way!
How to get started
Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Chat is only on iOS for now, but chat is coming to the Android app soon.
Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.
That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.
Assigning You Reading
Jia Tolentino on acid chicken. Dealing with diet culture post-divorce.
There’s no way to self-destruct without collateral.
We have to demand more than Medicare for All. All care for all people.
It’s worlds all the way down. This essay is how I learned of the existence of all four of these books written by big directors.
Love a good best friend essay.
Actual students on school boards! Yes!
I hadn’t thought about Jennifer Lawrence in a while, and really enjoyed hearing about and from her again. How reality TV (specifically, The Bachelor franchises) and memoir each deal with reality.
Is politics generationally cyclical? (A listen)
Love this!!
"The people who find meaningful success in their chosen endeavors usually surpass some threshold of ability, but beyond that it’s not that they are the best or perfect person, but that they actually went for it. And they continued to go for it..."
So true, and both inspiring and challenging! There's a certain comfort in accepting failure -- you don't have to dare to begin. But the best feeling ever is committing to giving your big dreams the work and time and bravery they require. My poetry professor would always say "You're a writer as long are you are writing. But when you stop, you're not a writer anymore." You can have published nothing or everything; it's still the act of DOING the thing that matters most, not any static claim to an identity.
So glad to have found your work through RFQ, keeeeep it on up :) <3