My sister and I were talking recently (not that recently) about how we both felt like we didn’t really excel at anything in particular in school. We were both kind of generally decent at everything (she was really good at everything. Thanks for making me have to live up to those eleven A*s at GCSE, sis), but we both felt like school didn’t give us any inclination of what we should do with our lives. I think we chose our A Level subjects pretty much at random, or to be as wide-ranging as possible so we could then narrow them down later (ridiculous that you’re supposed to make these kinds of life-defining choices at 16, but that’s a rant for another day). Then when A Levels were done, we still didn’t really know. So we picked some more random subjects.
Not that being good at a lot of things is necessarily negative – of course it isn’t. But I’ve always been envious of people who were incredibly talented at one specific thing from an early age – kids who did their Year Nine work experience in a hospital, or volunteered at an animal shelter, or passed their grade eight piano exam at thirteen. It must have been so clear to them what they should do with their lives, what career path their internal makeup was pointing them towards. As for me, I’m still floundering. Wondering whether I should have done that law conversion course. Seems like a lot of paperwork and late nights. But those natty little suits? Yum.
I’ve carried this kind of mediocrity into my adult life, evidenced by my constant forays into different hobbies. My mum taught me to knit when I was about ten, theoretically to get me to stop biting my nails (now I just put my knitting down and go to town on my fingers in between rows) and I think my abilities plateaued shortly after. One of my friends in New York taught herself how to knit about six months ago and recently completed a perfectly fitted sweater with an inlaid pattern of flowers. How? I’ve knitted probably around fifteen jumpers in my life, none of which fit properly and none of which I wear (or even still own). Does this have something to do with the fact that I never knit a tension square? Probably not, no.
There was the rollerskating phase, when I wanted to be like one of those vibey girls on TikTok. That pottery class I took. The Russian language class. Does it stem from an unquenchable thirst for knowledge? Or is it a self-serving quest hoping to stumble, finally, on the one thing that I’m really, truly good at?
But why do you have to be the best at everything you do? I hear you saying. Why can’t you just enjoy the activity for what it is?
Oh, fuck off. And see below.
I think the fact that I keep hitting a (very low) ceiling in all my half-assed endeavours is due to a lack of focus. There are just so many things I want to do with my life I don’t know where to start. I want to be a commissioning editor at an independent publisher, I want to write novels, I want to write a comedy mini-series for the BBC. I want to write essays for the Guardian. I want to get a thousand subscribers on this newsletter and start charging for it so you bitches will pay my rent. I want to open a bakery in Hackney. I want to buy the abandoned public toilet building on the street near my house and convert it into a wine bar called The Pisser. I want to start a food truck business and drive around the world ripping off rich backpackers for plates of inedible swill. I want to live in L.A. and Rome and Mexico City and Norway. I want to own a first floor brownstone apartment in Fort Greene filled with mid-century furniture. I want to sell all my possessions and hike the PCT. I want to fall in love and get married again and have a real wedding this time, while I’m still young and hot*. I want to stay single forever and grow into an ageing bachelorette who only wears kaftans and drinks martinis and makes people look at my photo albums when they come to visit (I think I stole this image from Sam Smith’s Carpool Karaoke so I’m crediting it here just in case).
*My friend E sent me an angrily impassioned voice note after last week’s newsletter where I described myself as hovering around a 7, looks-wise. According to them, I am an 8, maybe even an 8.5. Something to add to my CV.
I could really just strangle my younger self, who was obsessed with being settled down and owning a house by the time she was 27, who craved stability and didn’t even want to go on a year abroad at university, and certainly wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been mandatory. She wasted so much fucking time. And now I feel like I’m scrambling to make it up, frantically spreading myself too thin across a million different projects that are all destined to fail because I can’t focus on one thing at a time. I worry if I focus all my energy in one place, I’ll miss all the opportunities coming from other places.
Sometimes I wish I had just been really good at biology or something. Not that there would have been no choices to make in that case, but the choices would have felt more finite. The idea that I can try my mediocre hand at basically anything – sometimes that freedom feels suffocating, because I worry I’m not using it properly.
BRB, going to change the title of this to ‘First World Problems’.
One good thing:
I talked to my friend’s boss while I was steaming drunk this weekend and I am 99% sure I didn’t say anything that’s going to get her fired. Score!
One bad thing:
On Tuesday I spent five hours on the bus getting to and from work thanks to the Tube strike. Hope you get that pay rise honeys!
No con-texts:
On the perm of last week’s fame: