Whatโs The Best Story You Tell About Yourself?
๐บ๐พ๐ฎ๐ผ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ธ๐ท ๐ฏ๐ธ๐ป ๐ฝ๐ฑ๐ฎ ๐ฌ๐พ๐ต๐ฝ๐พ๐ป๐ฎ๐ฌ
Really did not expect my London event on Thursday to hit capacity in 5 minutes โฆ! I will try to open up some more spots!
A shake-the-table moment of my early twenties was reading Carrie Fisherโs Star Wars diary. Fisher was young, hard-headed, and having a clandestine affair with an irresistibly aloof Harrison Ford. Someone told her that who you choose to be in a relationship with is what you think of yourself. โSo Harrison is what I think of myself,โ she said, her tone as apologetic as it was deadpan. A shake-the-table moment of my early thirties happened just a few weeks ago, when someone cautioned me against having a friend set me up on a date with a mutual: who someone sets you up with, the person had said, is what they think of you.
I am confronted with myself all the time, but I am only occasionally girded enough to actually face myself. Itโs the same way I have written over 500 (!) posts on this newsletter and a dozen magazine cover stories plus so many more Vulture blogs and features and yet โฆ I would rather die than leave a restaurant review under my name, the only name I have, on Google or Yelp. Last summer I got lunch with some colleagues and we were offered a free round of drinks if we showed the waitress that weโd left a positive review on Google Maps. โItโs okay,โ I said. โIโd actually rather pay.โ Itโs never a story I tell about myself, but it feels rather revealing.
The stories I tell about myself are almost always related to what Iโm watching or listening to or reading. My mom tells a story of me performing a Patti LaBelle song on our fireplace, Iโm almost certain in a wig, and I lost my balance. โPatti LaBelle โฆ fell!โ I said, resuming my performance. Andrew would say that โEuphoriaโ had the opposite effect on me than it did on everyone else, that I found one manโs 8-minute hateration quite soothing and empowering. It feels like a big unlock that in high school I would wake up at 5 AM to watch 1940s screwball comedies and melodramas before school. Even then, at 15 and 16, I couldnโt really be convinced that knowing the Pythagorean Theorem would ever materially benefit my life. All those stories add up to what I believe about myself: that Iโm bossy and nosey and determined, that Iโm drawn to performers and performance, that real critique is rich and passionate and often artistic. And that I just love a good double entendre.
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Now that Iโm re-reading my diary and being confronted with just how much I have (and mostly havenโt) changed, Iโm curious: what are the stories you tell about yourself? What are the moments you hold up as evidence of how you move throughout the world?
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