“And if I go, I’m goin’ shameless, let my hunger take me there”
August 28, 2013 § 1 Comment
A little while ago, a friend commented on one of his friends’ posts on Facebook, congratulating her on getting an article published in a major magazine. Her name was not familiar. We had never met. I’m sure she’s a lovely person. Or a total cunt, I don’t know, I don’t know her.
I don’t know why this showed up on my feed, since it was on her wall, and we only have one mutual friend. But regardless, we were suddenly connected by Kevin Bacon degrees, which meant by some obscure way or another, I knew her. That meant I had to read her published article, and I had to go full Michiko Kakutani on her ass.
I read it twice. That’s a lie; I read it three times, and with each review, I felt a reluctant heat behind my ears intensify. The first time, I thought, what the fuck, this was worthy of being published? This was good enough for this magazine? The second time I read it, I examined each paragraph as if I were a gemologist, picking out the most minor of flaws. There was nothing particularly noteworthy in her article, I concluded. No specific style, no unique voice. The article lacked substance, and the very meat of the story felt barren. I made rationalizations in my head that the magazine needed a filler, some fluff piece to take up some space. She probably knew an assistant editor that granted her a favor. Yeah, that was probably it, it happened all the time.
Before I could calm down, I found myself googling this chick, this no talent hack. Okay, so she earned her degree at an Ivy. So? Plenty of ordinary, slightly above average folks went to Ivy league schools. Her writing was proof that she wasn’t part of the demographic of extraordinarily achieving superstars. I found her Twitter and read a page worth of tweets. They weren’t clever or witty. She called herself a foodie and a “mom” despite not having any children, which I concluded meant she had multiple cats. It was pretty clear that her personality was as vapid as her writing. And, she had a wonky-ass looking nose.
That burn behind my ears lingered for weeks. In fact, it started to spread to my shoulders and my chest, like some sort of emotional leprosy. I didn’t write once during that period. Each time I tried, her stupid face would hover over the screen, taunting me. I kept checking her Twitter, twisting my fingers for news that her insipid article was retracted on the case of her having sperm brows. It didn’t happen. In fact, she tweeted links to other articles that were being published (on a much smaller scale, for local vendors).
It’s an odd conception, to feel such potent doses of hatred towards a total stranger. And it’s toxic as hell, because it begins to contaminate so much more than the artificial layers of your consciousness; it starts to seep into your insecurities, exposing them so openly when you’ve tried so hard to hide them in between the cracks of your façade. And the worst part is, I knew what I was feeling from the moment I saw that Facebook post. I stared at it square in the eye but allowed it to come inside anyway.
Jealousy is the uninvited guest who crashes the party. It’s spiteful because it’s been deemed an outcast, so it does what it can to taint the mood of everyone else. It turns into an SNL skit, as it sits with you on the couch and ruins conversations. It’ll stand next to you at the refreshments table, compliment you on your new expensive dress, and then tell you about the thousands of malnourished children and how it only takes forty cents a day to keep them alive. Oh, your mom has been diagnosed with cancer? It had an uncle with cancer once. He died.
That’s what jealousy does. Once it appears, it will pollute you with reckless abandon, especially if you’re pretty fragile to begin with. It detects vulnerability like a shark in the water. It manipulates your self worth. It dilutes your confidence. It diminishes your abilities, your skills, and your achievements. It suffocates you with evil thoughts and words, aimed at both you and your aggressor. Jealousy will FUCK. YOUR. SHIT. UP.
There’s the finest of lines between allowing jealousy to turn your soul black, and using it to fuel your ambitions. One tiny trip can place you on the wrong side, so it’s imperative that you know where your feet lie. But the one redeeming quality to jealousy is that it’s also just as easy to get out, no matter how deep you’re in with it.
Pretend like you’re playing Jeopardy, and you’ve selected Obstacles for $1000. Whatever clue is behind that block, you know the answer: What is, my insecurities, Alex. If you can get your anger and jealousy to subside for a minute, you can find the roots of why they appeared in the first place. Chances are, they weren’t buried that deep to begin with.
When I reread the article the third and final time, I didn’t find it as clichéd and stale as I originally had. It read like a news report, because it was one. It wasn’t a fair comparison, between her and I, because she was more of a journalist, and I am most certainly not. Our writing styles, our audiences, and our goals for writing were vastly different. And this was a well-known and respected magazine, so her draft was more than likely combed through by a proficient editor, who deemed that it was an article indeed worthy of being published. Was I better than the magazine editor? No, of course freaking not. It wasn’t a horrible article. It was articulate, well written, and served its purpose.
What triggered my hasty initial response was not due to this relative stranger being published, but rather, my lack of doing so. When I had read her article, I was hitting a particularly rough patch, where I could barely write a grocery list. I hadn’t submitted a thing in months, and here she was, showing bravery where mine had scuttled off to a corner. Hating on her achievement wasn’t going to relieve me of my creative block, it was only going to heighten my distractions (this resonates).
For the sake of repentance, I liked her article through the magazine’s website and left a generic comment about it being well written. And then I returned to my own writing, where I think I wrote two paragraphs before I retreated to the floor with Instagram. Relieving myself of the jealousy didn’t undo the funk I was in, but I wasn’t drowning in it any longer.
I’m a big fan of feelings and shit. You want to be pissed off? Be pissed off. You want to break into hysterics at a Target parking lot? You break into hysterics at a Target parking lot. If it helps alleviate any sort of anxiety, I say it’s better to express yourself than to hold it all in. But when your emotions start to interfere with your personal growth, that’s when it’s time to reign in it a tiny bit. Sometimes, you have to think of your emotions as invisible muscles, and you have train them to improve overall functionality. Jealousy isn’t a horrible thing; it keeps you humble, and it can help you stay hungry. But you have to provide a little discipline so that it knows where to go when it materializes. Declare your dominance, and make sure it knows who’s boss.
After my jealous episode, I’ve definitely gotten better at controlling the ugly. When upcoming writers I admire hit milestones, I don’t see red anymore; instead, I observe and learn. When I feel the urge to compare, I choke it back down because I’ve trained myself to understand that that gets me nowhere, that it’s not constructive in any way to me. Word by word, day by day, that’s the one way I’ll get to where I need to be.
Do you boo, do you.
soopastryheart 
Haha, great last line. Glad you’re writing more since I get to read more 🙂