Chasing unchase-able things

I wanted, for a long time, to be famous. This feels like a silly, inconsequential thing to want, but there it is.

I didn’t want to be FAMOUS famous—the thought of always being recognized whenever you go out has never not been thrilling and also terrifying at the same time—but I wanted…something. Recognition, yes, but also something else. The sense of having Risen Above, or Done Something, or Having Become a Power To Be Reckoned With, as though by being on TV or in the news you somehow become a kind of superhero. I wanted people to know my name but also to have the opportunity to sink into obscurity whenever the mood struck. (This is why being a writer is the perfect career for this kind of path! I mean, no one stops a writer on the street unless you’re Roxane Gay or Stephen King.)

This was, and is, still a silly thing to want. And when I look at it closely it makes sense in a very basic, psychoanalytic kind of way. Of course being famous, having some kind of cultural pull or sway—of course the tiny Amanda-that-was would have wanted that. What better way to best those playground bullies than by eclipsing them all in the way that our culture seems to value most? What better way to say to those people who sneered at me all those years ago than by saying, look at where I’ve gone. Look at where I am. So there.

If I’m being completely honest, this is also part of what motivated being on Twitter. This also sounds silly and inconsequential. I’m cringing as I type. But beyond the community pull and the ability to reach so many like-minded people—the fun chats and moments for connection like bright stars in the decade that traversed my 20s and 30s—there was always this, at the bottom. Let’s get that follower count up, Leduc. Let’s get your name out. Let’s get your work out. Let’s see how many people want to listen to what you have to say.

I suppose this is always part of what motivates a writer, really—that desire for connection, for putting something out into the universe and hoping someone sees it, sees you, and signals back. Some of us writers are more introverted than others, but it’s an element I think most of us can identify with. This hunger for an audience, even if that audience itself is only ever small.

In this month and a bit since I have not been checking my Twitter feed a billion times a day, life has felt so much smaller. In both good ways and bad, I suppose. The quiet is GLORIOUS. The lessening of despair equally so. It’s hard to have faith in the world when I log in and see one crisis after another just scrolling through my feed. Turning that switch off has felt both irresponsible and revelatory in ways I’m still trying to balance! Irresponsible because: should we all be on there, bearing witness, trying to push for brighter times? Does one have an obligation to be shouting on social media and organizing in the face of atrocities like this?

But also revelatory because I am reminded, once again, that the world also exists outside of (and also alongside, within, without) social—no matter how loud the screaming. (Of course it does, you fool, you say. If you were smarter, you’d have known that already.)

Well. I am not smarter, as it turns out. In fact with every year that goes by I feel like I know less and less—like growing up and growing older and now approaching forty has been a process of grabbing knowledge and gaining it and then eventually just understanding that even this is an illusion, of sorts, that you have to let go of everything at one point or another.

As it turns out, I really like the quiet. It has been all kinds of wonderful to step back from that particular window to the world and remember what a day is composed of. The minute moments that connect you with the world. Hearing that milk froth into my latte. Stepping outside into a bright warming (yay!) day with the dog. Even the sound of Sitka’s paws as she pads along on our walks. The sound of the breath as it whooshes in and out of my lungs. I’ve so rarely noticed these things before in this kind of way.

These days I walk around trying to balance that knowledge, these gentle gifts, with the growing sense of despair I feel when I think about the world. Despair, resolution, calm—I don’t know what to call this either. I think we are headed for some terrible times, but then, arguably our time on this blue planet has always been terrible in one way or another, the same way that it has also been unquestionably joyous.

Is the world awful? Yes.

Is it unbearably beautiful, even so?

Also yes. All we can do is pick up each day and keep doing the work in one way or another.

Now imagine all of this in a Twitter thread. I’d have lost my audience five whole minutes ago.

I hope you’re keeping safe out there, friends, and protecting your hearts as well as you can.

Currently reading: The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders read the stars, by Duane Hamacher