Is This Thing On?

Spinning out about the concept of self until I forget who I am

Sometimes when I speak out loud I feel like I have no control over what’s coming out of my mouth. Like some little minion in my head takes the wheel and goes on a meandering monologue I just have to ride out until the minion decides it’s safe for me to take control again. As if the emotions from Inside Out are going on manual mode instead of autopilot, sending me into a dissociative state that I’ll wake up from whenever they think I’m ready. It still feels like they don’t think I’m ready.

I probably could have read this mantra over and over instead of writing this essay. But here we are.

I’ve been thinking about the concept of “the self” a lot. Probably too much. Especially too much for the type of existential anxiety I face on a loop every single day. It’s mostly because I’m currently in a class all about creating personal narratives, and how to use parts of yourself to tell a story. But that seems kind of hard to do when you have no concept of who you are or how people perceive you, all because you feel like minions are controlling your every move and you’re just floating through life, being carried from milestone to milestone without any real concept of why or how you are doing these things.

The year I was born, David Samuels wrote a rambling meditation on 30-somethings who don’t seem to care about anything (himself included) called “In the Age of Radical Selfishness.” Samuels tells stories of studio executives, TV writers, actors, people who spend $2000 on a suit from Barneys. All of these people, he posits, are taking the easy route in life: A detached, weightless existence that is selfish in its sheer lack of commitment to basically anything. After weaving through many a tangent, Samuels concludes that the self “isn’t real,” but rather “a necessary illusion that allows us to function in time…The self is the root of selfishness, and selfishness is what makes us unhappy.”

The essay itself is pretty self-indulgent, with Samuels making sweeping statements about a generation (specifically Gen X), while actually only speaking about a specific, privileged subset. The subset that went to Ivy Leagues, or have rich parents, or have a Manhattan apartment sitting empty while they’re in their high-rise, ocean-view apartment in Miami. Why would someone want to grind it out in the harsh, unforgiving New York magazine scene when they could be lounging by a pool in the Hollywood Hills, making a million dollars a year for writing one episode of TV, he wonders? The thing Samuels seems to forget, though, is that most of us don’t have that other, cushier, easier option. Many of us grind it out because we have no other choice. Or trying to do anything different feels like you’re abandoning the only part of yourself you’re sure about: The part that wants to write and wants people to listen.

I always say that when I’m older, established, wealthier, wiser, I’ll move back to California. But only if I can do it in the exact way I want: in a bungalow (that I own—a pipe dream at this point) in Laurel Canyon, surrounded by nature but close enough to the city to have a Hannah Montana best-of-both-worlds situation that is more gratifying than say, having a house in the Catskills you can go to to escape the city. The ability to hermit for days isn’t as depressing as doing so in an overpriced apartment that barely gets any sunlight when there’s at least some great scenery to accompany my wallowing.

I’ve come to cope with the fact that, if I really want to try to make this whole writing thing happen for myself, I probably won’t be able to make that ‘60s-inspired dream (as unrealistic as it already is) into a reality. More likely than not, I’ll be renting for my entire life, coasting between one bedrooms, chasing down publications for payments they owe me on stories published months ago.

Sometimes I think about how much easier everything would be if I even had the sheer gall to pivot into one of those do-nothing-but-make-a-shit-ton-of-money jobs. But then I think about the reality of clocking into some corporate comms job for some firm I’m morally against, some firm that doesn’t care if I live or die. I’d be able to buy that house in the canyons, sure, but I’d probably also feel like my soul was being sucked out of me by the minute.

But then I get this overwhelming sense of shame and embarrassment for even considering pursuing something as inherently selfish as writing about myself and the world around me. Because really, who cares what I have to say? I’m just some girl from Long Island who, apparently, has some inflated sense of self-confidence to think people would want to read words she’s vomiting into the void (words like the exact ones you’re reading right now).

I think about this a lot as I sit in the class which forces me to think about the parts of myself that can be made into a compelling narrative. I try to string some sentences together or pick out one of the many different selves I’ve been in my 25 years that I wouldn’t feel horrible diving deep into and sharing with the world, or at least with my professor. I do this all while simultaneously trying to ignore voices in my head discrediting anything I might want to say, or questioning if I’m even accurately remembering all the events I’ve lived through to get to where I am currently sitting.

I’m rewatching Succession right now, I think because I needed a reminder of the business-is-life type of person I am desperately trying not to be. There’s a line in Season 2’s “50 Years of Logan Roy” celebration episode (Dundee) that gets overshadowed by Kendall’s “L to the OG” dumpster fire. Shiv points out to Logan how he doesn’t like thinking about the past. Logan replies “The future is real, but the past, it’s all made up.”

Logan Roy thinks there’s too much past. And yeah, I agree with him.

I go through phases of thinking about the past more than I think about the present, or even the future. It’s probably the nostalgia-obsessed Cancer in me, but I’m always cycling through ‘canon events’ in my head, looking back at photos or reading old texts or Notes App entries to confirm that certain situations unfolded in the exact way I currently recall them. Sometimes I feel like if I don’t do that, all of the past events in my life will disappear, or didn’t really happen. Other times I feel like the me I am currently is not the me that experienced everything in my life up to this point. It felt like something short-circuited in my brain around the age of 20, and suddenly a different person was brought in to carry me through the rest of my days. Am I just explaining the concept of maturing? Probably. But that doesn’t stop The Thoughts.

I think about the areas of my life that could make for good stories: tumultuous breakups/toxic relationships, my touch-and-go relationship with my mom, my eighth-grade bully, my eating disorder (which is actually connected to generations of women in my family doing different things to make themselves smaller), losing all my grandparents before I turned 20, even times I blacked out in a much too public place and embarrassed myself in ways I will never remember, but other people will probably never forget. I think about the different labels or categories of person I fell into as I grew up: band nerd, jock, try-hard, stan, wannabe lawyer, Child of the Internet. All of these labels oriented me in terms of knowing who I was, giving me an idea of myself so that I didn’t have to spend time mulling it over. But after a while, the archetypes slipped away and I was left with just me. And who was, is, this “me”? Fuck if I know. Hence dissociative-minion-brain-control mixed with existential dread mixed with a deep-seated feeling that I will never amount to anything.

Then I go back to Samuels, and how he thinks that thinking about yourself too much is the root of existential anxiety. And yeah, sometimes when I’m spinning out about how I got myself into whatever uncomfortable position I’m currently in, I know I’m getting too meta with it. There is such a trait as having too much self-awareness, and I’m pretty sure I have it. No wonder I feel like minions control everything that comes out of my mouth. Enter Jemima Kirke’s “I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much” to make this whole essay one big moot point. Is avoidance the key to peace? No, but it provides a nice reprieve.