All I do is try
On Taylor Swift and mere mortals.
It’s a pattern I know well. I’ll publish an essay like last week’s musing on glimmers, feel happy with the results and pleased with the kind response from readers, and take a few days to focus on other pressing work tasks.
Then I’ll return to my personal writing — this time, with a sinking feeling that I’m incapable of following up one winning essay with another. I was riding high, for the briefest of moments. Now, I’m here: staring at a blank page, aware of the ticking clock, wondering why this all feels so hard.
There are, of course, many reasons why it’s hard. Right now, I’m writing these words while my daughter plays with her toy laptop next to me. I’m typing (or, at least, trying to) while she hits the same button, over and over. Mon-key! Mon-key! Monkey! the toy screams. I feel like screaming, too.
She hits another button. Monkeys are very smart!
I have a headache. I look at the mishmash of words I’ve written so far. I do not feel very smart.
I didn’t want to make this about Taylor Swift, but here we are. I have officially become the last writer on earth to enter the Taylor Swift discourse.
I have friends who idolize her and friends who dislike her. I fall somewhere in between — a fair-weather fan at best. Still, it’s been impossible to escape T. Swift over the past few years, from her record-breaking tour to her record-breaking movie and her record-breaking number of Records of the Year. Her outfits. Her makeup. Her songs. Her real-life rom-com that’s playing out everywhere you look.
I don’t have as many illuminating thoughts or hot takes about Taylor Swift as others, but I do regularly consider how exhausting things must be for her: to be on top, to stay on top, to make dominating the top seem both effortless and fun.
Perhaps that’s what separates mortals like me from unstoppable people like Taylor Swift. I look at her level of success and imagine the exhaustion. It doesn’t inspire or motivate me. It simply makes me tired.
Each week — or, let’s be honest, most weeks — I open up a blank document to write another essay for this newsletter. Weekly essays. That’s my promise, to myself and to you.
Some weeks, keeping that promise is relatively easy. Other weeks, when time is tight and my inspiration well is dry, meeting that vow is harder. And on a decent number of occasions, I skip the promise entirely, opting instead for a discussion thread or throwback post.
Still, I try. I try to keep that promise. I try to write something worth reading. I try to offer up a few helpful words.
Did you know that the word “essay” can be a verb? It means “to try.” How fitting.
“You know she has an entire team of people helping her do everything, right?” Billy reminded me as I brainstormed today’s newsletter with him.
I was babbling about how I’ve been trying to be more gentle with myself when it feels like I’m falling short — as a writer, a worker, a mother, a partner, a woman. This is one of those weeks when I feel like I’m failing on all of the above. I told him it’s hard to let go of my perfectionist tendencies and give myself grace when I’m bombarded with images of Taylor Swift, breaking records left and right and raising the bar of how perfect a human can actually be.
She is redefining perfection. And, like Billy reminded me, she’s doing it with the support of lots of money, lots of privilege, and a giant, behind-the-scenes crew. To even begin to compare myself to someone like Taylor Swift is absurd. But there’s a reason this newsletter is named what it is.
On Saturday, I laid fresh mulch in our garden beds. The whole process — going to the store to pick up the mulch, hauling the mulch, pulling weeds, spreading the mulch, pausing to chase my toddler, hauling and spreading more mulch, putting everything away, and taking a much-needed shower — ate up most of the day. By the end, our front yard looked as close to perfect as it can this time of year. But that perfection took a ton of time! It meant that other things I could have done instead, like working on today’s newsletter, would be far less than perfect.
Several years ago, a catchphrase circled around social media: “You have the same amount of hours in the day as Beyoncé.”
It was meant to be inspiring ... I think. Again, it just left me feeling tired. Beyoncé also makes every bit of success and magic happen with a giant team of people working in the wings. (I bet she even has someone to help her spread mulch in her front yard!)
It’s not just Taylor Swift who’s making us feel bad. It’s Jeff Bezos and his literal mountains of cash. Kim Kardashian and her refusal to age. Beyoncé and every shimmering thing she touches. Patrick Mahomes and his answer to whether the Chiefs are now a dynasty: “We’re not done.”
It’s celebrity culture. It’s society’s insistence on idolizing massive, at-all-costs success stories. It’s our own complicated relationships with shame and struggle, wanting to hide the less-than-perfect sides of ourselves.
To no one’s surprise, the plan to write on my laptop while my child played with her (loud, repetitive) toy laptop did not work. I soon gave up on writing and played with her instead. We made a fire, took turns stacking towers, and painted with water.
Billy has now taken our kiddo to run some errands while I get some uninterrupted time to write. I also want to squeeze in a walk. I need to take care of a nagging work task. I should probably shower at some point.
I will do the best that I can. I’ll complete what’s possible. I will try to be happy with the result. It won’t be perfect, but it will be what I can do — on my own, with the hours I have.
If I had a giant team to help, I might be able to come up with a solid conclusion to this essay. I might have enough time to pull all the threads together and make sure that dinner is on the table tonight. (Because, of course, there would be someone else to make meals for us.)
Instead, I’m reminding myself of that lesser-known definition of essay. Or, as one pretty-perfect person put it, “All I do is try, try, try.”
I tried. And sometimes that’s the best that we mere mortals can do.
xoxo KHG
I wonder why we have such unrealistic standards for ourselves...
Taylor Swift: "Hi! It's me! I'm the problem, it's me."
As a kid I thought I would want to do something important when I grew up, be in the history books. But the older I get the more I want just a small, normal life. Everything else feels too tiring. Of course I have the tension of wanting to do and be more than my day to day but without the well paid background crew, I try to focus on cultivating as much ease, contentment, and grace as I can as I bounce back and forth between obligations and creative work.