Yearning

What if you catch whatever it is you are chasing?

Years ago, I had a dog named Mickey. She was a great dog. Part lab, part Boxer, she looked like a friendly lab but was fierce, protective, and powerful.  When she was young, she didn’t understand how strong she was. I was walking her on her leash along the beach. A large Dalmatian, off leash, came charging up to us aggressively and before I knew what was happening, Mickey had the Dalmatian on his back and her teeth on his throat. She looked up at me as if to say, what now? I pulled her off and the Dalmatian slunk off in canine embarrassment.

This past week Matthew Perry died at 54. This New York Times article said “It seems to have been hard for Perry. “I wanted to be famous so badly,” he told The New York Times in 2002. “You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn’t think what the repercussions would be.”

I pay attention to celebrities with problems with drugs and alcohol because I am a non-celebrity who had a problem with alcohol. There’s nothing yet to indicate that drugs or alcohol played a part in Perry’s death, but I notice. In fact, when I got the news about Perry I was reading an old article about the death of James Gandolfini, another talented artist who struggled with addiction and died young at 51, ten years ago. I remember because we were the same age.

“If a little is good, more is better.” That’s something I heard when I got sober, it was meant as a joke, but I was confused, because I didn’t think it was ironic, I thought it was real. Like, doesn’t everyone think that way?

Why do we chase what we chase? Why do we want what we want? For alcoholics, there’s often a compulsion, a belief that this thing we are chasing will fix everything, it will fill up those ragged empty spaces and make it all ok again. The childhood wounds or bullying, the feelings of not-enough-ness or loneliness.

For artists, there is also the imperative to create what you were born to create, which can be an expression of what is good and important and vital to your identity.

For alcoholic artists, those two drives can get muddled.

Overwork is a compulsion that is generally celebrated. Many excesses are condemned by our culture, buying until you’re in debt, gambling compulsively, disordered eating in all its manifestations, craven grabs for power.

But if you work seventy hours a week you’re a self-starter, a go-getter. I always cringe when I see ads for foodstuff that you can eat quickly at your desk. Like, really, it’s a badge of honor that you can’t step away from your work for twenty minutes to make yourself a sandwich? You’re going to pay lots of money for a packet of food you hardly even have to chew? So you can code more?

I’ve worked long hours, away from my children, to move forward in a career that ultimately treated me quite badly. The recognition and the financial rewards didn’t show up for me. I bought the lie that if I worked hard I’d get the financial security I wanted. And that has not been my story. And now I’m processing that, unwinding the complicated braid of resentment, regret and guilt.

One day I let Mickey off the leash. The tide was out, and she ran out onto the tide flats. A large seagull watched her coming, and did some seagull calculation about how long it would take a dog to cover the distance. Only Mickey was faster. She was so fast she was like a blur, and she caught the seagull just as it was opening its wings. Dog and seagull rolled over together, and Mickey got back on her feet and looked back at me again, surprised. Like, what now? The seagull took that opportunity to take flight, and Mickey resumed chasing it as the bird lifted off the tide flats to safety.

I’ve been trying to get my fiction traditionally published for decades. To no avail. I keep writing, I’ve written three good novels, one recently. I’ll keep chasing that goal. I’ve accepted that I can be a writer as long as I’m writing, regardless of if I get published. And I take a surprising amount of comfort that I have a small but loyal cadre of readers of this substack, and a ridiculously high open rate for this newsletter. That small fact is like a touchstone that I return to often. Some people even pay to read this thing that is available for free.

My book is coming out this winter, it’s about intentional decision making. There are some useful ideas in there, and I hope people will find it helpful. It is getting published, for real, I am getting paid for it. It’s non-fiction, which is something I only started writing a few year ago. I’m excited about it, and about learning about how to market a non-fiction book. But I do find myself looking around and thinking what now?

The BBC included this Perry quote, which was what got me thinking about this.

“In 1986, after moving to Los Angeles, Matthew Perry was convinced fame would wash all his problems away. "I yearned for it more than any other person on the face of the planet," he wrote in his candid memoir last year. “I needed it. It was the only thing that would fix me. I was certain of it."

It’s a kind of brutal creed.  There is a thing outside of me that will fix me. And I will need more and more of that thing. Convinced that satiety is just around the corner. Greedy for it. Yearning.

I recognize that. It’s such a persistent, compelling narrative.

But now I wonder if maybe not getting what I thought I wanted was a kind of grace?