failing up

the tradeoff I made by prioritizing satisfaction

I’ve noticed that online there are two types of attitudes toward yuppie life (if you have most of your basic financial needs met) — people who resent their lives for lacking meaning and being too comfortable and wanting to trade up, or people being happy with their lives, but being a little apologetic about it and trying to “be real” about the problems they face. In both cases, there’s always an attempt to comment on such existential predicaments in some post-ironic way, which is the most low-hanging fruit way to process your journey.

If you’re under age 40, you basically grew up with a life that’s under surveillance — but mostly from your “peers”. Many of these people you also have probably never met, as they exist on the Internet in Tik Tok/IG/Twitter form, yet your attitudes toward your life even in private are informed by them all and vice versa. The judgment of your peers directly influences how you see the world, how you put bread on the table, the choices you make in your relationships, and what you choose to value; you can pretend like boundaries can save you from this, but accepting they will never protect you entirely is actually freeing.

Otherwise your viewpoint will continue to be thusly performative, because you are always prone to think about what you *should* want just as much as what you *do* genuinely want.

These brainworms really got to me for a while, but lately, they’ve stopped mattering. I was telling my friend the other day that I don’t feel happy with my life, but I’m deeply satisfied by it. And I’m no longer ashamed to say that, or even self conscious I could be seen as delusional.

On some level, I know it’s unbecoming for me to say that. I’m a single 29-year-old with no savings working part time at a bakery in the largest most expensive city in the world, yet I have the audacity to claim that I would be OK if I died tomorrow? My parents would be livid that I’d be okay with “just this” and being scrappy about figuring out my financial situation. My girl friends chide me about caring less and less about finding a partner and being celibate for an entire year while not consciously noticing it. My former classmates are mystified by how long I’ve gone without producing anything of note.

For those who’ve known me longer than the last two years, you are aware that for a long time my greatest ambition was to be a famous writer, and then it was to be a IG content creator/coach so I could escape the 9-5, and then it was to have my Substack/Twitter take off. It was such great cope, and then it stopped working and fell away like a shed skin.

I just noticed that all my accomplishments meant less and less to me, that all the validation in the world wasn’t hitting the spot, that the goal post was always higher and higher, and I realized my ego death from leaving journalism wasn’t over. And that’s when I realized I’d have to march straight to the fire and hold my feet up to it.

And suddenly, I embarked on a journey I didn’t even know I needed, where I became deeply preoccupied with loving every person around me free of charge, understanding them, listening to them, because suddenly in NYC, people wanted to share about themselves, they wanted to connect, and it became more and more clear to me that the more connection I got, the more I didn’t need the cope.

Sometimes I wonder if my writing’s declined in quality because I’m just so, so much less angsty. But I also haven’t had a panic attack in so many months. I no longer sit around wondering what the point of all this is, waiting for my life to feel fine, no longer dreading certain things happening to me because I won’t be able to handle them. Now, I’ve gained perspective that I always longed for that made me detached from the idea of worldly “success.”

What is notably gone though, is the shame. I have not struggled with shame for a long, long fucking time now. In the last year, the last drops of it have seemingly evaporated from my nervous system. I don’t cry anymore like I used to. I am not afraid of speaking my mind. Most importantly, I am not afraid at all of being soft with others, being patient and curious and giving the benefit of the doubt. I am not afraid of being single. If I don’t end up with the love of my life, I’ll be ok. I’m going to be a great mother figure to whatever children I meet, I’m going to be the help to the families who need it, and I’m going to be a citizen of the world in the way I know best.

Everyone who looks at my life — including my past self — might find me unconventional, marvel at my audacity, find me pitifully delusional even. And yet, I am proud to say if I’m a failure, I’ve failed up, not down! I have made my decisions, and my commitments, to what is genuinely important to me, and I don’t feel ironic about it at all. I don’t feel like tampering down that the people I preoccupy myself with loving (not impressing, but loving) now are all those who’ve shown me generosity back. These are my family.

All of the time I spent not having a formalized career or dreaming about my next big job move was devoted to self reflecting and listening to the problems of my friends, knowing them in a way I previously was afraid to know others. If my art suffers, that’s a paltry cost compared to what I gain.

I’ve climbed the self actualization ladder backwards by paying close attention to what I define as satisfaction. To me, the results were never going to matter. Even as I banged my head into the door to “success” over and over, I always feel in awe of all that I have been given. I can even turn my head to acknowledge it in areas such as romantic intimacy, which took me so long to figure out. But now I know how to put down my pride and my defenses.

Now I’m in a weird limbo and I have no idea what my career is going to look like anymore. I’m not even sure I want to have one anymore. Sure, I’m still working on this job thing. I want to be stable and not be completely broke. But what matters is how I’ll be a better person as a result.

What matters more now is how I will spend time having experiences that will refine me in embodying my principles. Working a blue collar job introduced me to people I never would’ve met outside of my yuppie bubble. I serve thousands of boomers, many who don’t even speak English, a week. I am wondering if I can figure out how to cat sit, nanny, bartend, tutor, and so many other things that will just make me a lover of the world.

I made my decision to focus on internal locuses of control (which I’m sure I’ll write about more as time goes on) because those tradeoffs have been so, so real to me. I’ve always thought about what pain I’d be willing to handle as I’ve lived my life, and now I’m starting to realize I’m getting better and better at handling more complex types of painful situations because my priority was learning how to get better at handling pain, period.

That is definitely getting better at “failing” in the grand scheme of things, failing up.