Doing it badly.

turns out my aesthetic doesn't need to be aesthetic, after all

I’m awake before the seagulls again. How annoying.

Even they know it’s too early to be spiraling. But I guess I now depend on these wee hours to mentally construct obsessive and elaborate plans for how to control all the things I cannot, but feel like I should be able to. How to move most efficiently through the day, smoothing life out into a one dimensional space - one without ridges or gales to slow me down. Don’t bother me, I’m sorting how to fit it all in, and I’m laminating the illusion that I have to.

It’s a fun game, really; calculating how much more you can get done since you’re “up anyways”. At the very least, the justification that I’m using my time exceptionally well feels marginally satisfying. So there’s that. Anyways, I’m not sure exactly how I got here, but my list of tasks has become a thing of smut and hot foreplay in recent years. This thing I use to feel good (high, even), despite knowing the goodness isn’t at all real or withstanding. Actually, I’ve noticed the faster I move the faster it feels like I need to move, which doesn’t feel good at all. I guess it’s the chase that gets me high. Afterall, everyone loves a good chase. Besides, the more stuff I try to stretch my day around, the more I convince myself that I should be able to make it all fit - that there is surely a way to Marie Kondo it all into place. And if you’ve ever Marie Kondo’d anything, you understand the addiction of it.

There’s a piece to this that’s confusing, though. Actually no, hah, it’s really not. It’s very simple, but its annoying as fuck so we don’t bother with it. A universal truth that we actually can’t be everything we want to be in this life. That a lot of cherished, romanticized ambitions are going to need to be abandoned (and grieved). That there are balls I need to drop and roles I need to fail at and people I need to disappoint. And my ability to find myself in this lifetime depends entirely on my ability to accept this truth so that I can choose the few things I really do want to pull close and tend to.

I know this applies to more than just us millennials - it has to, though truthfully it seems like gen z has this way more figured out than we do, so let’s call it millennial burnout, shall we? Anyways, it’s a real thing. And it can’t be fixed with adult coloring books, yin classes, anxiety baking or overnight fucking oats. We need to stop, honey. We need to stop trying to run through every door that opens to us. We need to stop abandoning our needs for the comfort and convenience of everyone else. And recently, I’ve been thinking we need to let ourselves be really bad at more stuff. At least the things that bring us the most joy, because arguably, letting yourself be terrible at something is probably the fastest way to squeeze more juice from it.

I’ve been playing with this a bit lately, and what I’ve found is that choosing ahead of time what I’m going to let myself be bad at makes room for it to exist in my life in a bigger way. It eats away at the grimy sticky layer of expectation and judgment and avoidance that keeps me seeking the high of planning, instead of the high from actually being in my life. As an example, I find great joy in watercolors. I love their unpredictability, their refusal to be tamed. I respect how unwilling they are to bend to my vision for what they should be, and instead flow wherever they wish, usually creating something I never could have planned out ahead of time. Their nature teaches me something new about myself every time I give myself over to the pleasure of exploring them, and as a byproduct, myself.

Along the way, something as simple and joy-filled as watercolor became waterlogged with an expectation that only lovely impressive works should flow from the tip of my brush. So if I didn’t feel inspired, in the mood, or at the peak of creative agility, I either avoided my paints or struggled with angst against them. The potential for an impressive outcome overtook my joy. I was trying to force magic in place of what once was messy, nonsensical play. How tragic. What would it be, I wonder, to exist in a world where we feel free to share in the spaciousness of a day spent painting, where everything created was unremarkable, and yet, somehow, satisfyingly glorious.

So tell me, love…what is something you wish you could do badly just for the unrequited pure fucking pleasure of it? Can you feel the incessant tug of what outcome it could lead to…the role it might help you master…if you didn’t give up on becoming great at it? And what if you were never meant to stand in that role?

What if this thing is in your life just to make you feel alive? 

Or what if you’re meant to be mediocre at it so you can get on with finding the things that make you feel alive?

For me, right now at least, I know I don't need to become one of the great poets of my generation, even though I would love to be; it’s enough to let myself love the way words taste and feel as they tumble forth. It’s enough if something I write makes you feel something stirring…that you might follow it tenderly towards something forgotten, and that in doing so you might steal a quiet moment from this loud and busy world to remember what it’s like to be close to the depths of yourself.

I know I don’t need to always have a perfectly clean, aesthetic apartment, even when dusty floorboards prick my brain and scattered remnants of a week well lived urge me to indulge them. I also don’t need to be an impressive cook, nor do I need to be creative or elaborate with my meals. It’s enough to feel the simple joy I get from buying fresh herbs and farmstand eggs and squeezing lemon on everything. It also feels just as amazing to eat toaster waffles for dinner when that’s all I have the energy for.

I know I don’t need to improve daily on my yoga mat, hell, I don’t even need to sweat on it - it’s enough to light a stick of dollar store incense and connect with myself, my energy, in unfussy way. Similarly, I know swimming faster or more efficiently than I did last week isn’t necessary either, it’s enough to just feel the water hug my bones and hold me for a little while. It’s enough to give myself over to the slip of it, allow it to search my body for pockets of holding that need to be coaxed, softly, to release.

My god, this idea that we shouldn’t waste our time, that we need to make the most of every day and live it as if it’s our last, that we need to live up to our full potential and do something incredible with our life cloaks us in shame, thick and unrelenting. It makes rest feel impossible to access. It attaches contingency to every speck of pleasure we feel. It makes being fully present something we have to schedule. It makes us reliant, always, on what someone else might have to say about how we’re choosing to spend our time, never learning how to trust what feels intuitively best for us today - just for today. I have no clue what I’m going to need tomorrow. I can’t plan for her, she deserves agency — the grace and dignity to choose for herself.

So then, I’m trying to let myself do more things badly and look for the joy in it instead of the purpose (as often as I remember to, at least, which means accepting that this is also something I’m going to do badly a lot of the time). And I’m trying to discard the things along the way I realized I was only doing to get somewhere I thought I needed to be. The things that make sense only when I hold them up next to those living a more aesthetic, socially impressive life than my own — the hot girls living out their hot girl summer. Fuck that. Give me cheap a one piece swimsuit with a saggy bum and a goggle tan and floofy hair untamed from frolicking at the sun all day.

I’m no longer impressed by the 22 year old millionaires or the book deal at 27 or the YouTube star who can retire at 31. Where’s the widow who decided to become a first time author at 77 and wrote a memoir sharing lessons from his life of hardship and passion? Where’s the silicon valley tech startup bro who chose to give up happy hour martinis to move to a flower farm and open a ceramic studio? Where’s the 19 year old splashing away in the 6am aquacise class because she loves the awkward thrill of it? Where is the trust in ourselves to know what would make us feel the absolute best regardless of what the rest of the world has to say about it?  

All I know is that since I decided to stop trying so hard to be good at everything I do, I have painted and swam and danced and wrote more in the last 3 weeks than I have in the last year. I’ve taken a bubble bath in the middle of the afternoon and I’ve spent hours lying on my dusty floor, doing nothing but just feeling emotion surge in and out of me, letting the tears come and fall and come again. All I know is even though it feels hard to shift how I engage with time, to push the productive stuff and not judge myself for laying on the floor when I could have been cleaning it — there’s something to it. There’s more joy to be had this way. And for now, that’s all I need to know.