Someone suggested I ask for advice questions and I can’t believe it, but I did. Below you will find a question about wanting. I loved this question. Feel free to send me your questions, too! I have mastered nothing, but I absolutely love to talk. I’ll give you my opinion any time you want to hear it.
Q) How do you figure out what you want? You, personally. What’s your process— if you have one?
A) I have very few memories before the age of 12 and what I can remember most clearly, for most of my life, is wanting. I am an expert in knowing how to want.
Very young, I knew there was something incorrect about my home life. My dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict and I knew that to be dangerous to me, as his child. I did not see my dad all that much for most of my life and then eventually I did not see him at all. I wanted that to be different. I wanted that to be different with all of my little kid body, all of the time.
I am terrible at unknowing. What I want the most is to know. Ambiguity makes me froth at the mouth, tremble in fear, and for some reason—hate myself. My dad was always maybe coming, at some point in time. I wanted to know if he was coming and when he would come. I wanted to see him. I liked my dad— he was drunk or high, yes, but also very fun. Usually my dad did not come at all. I still want to know exactly when and how something is going to happen, so much. That wanting is not a choice. It lives deep inside of me.
At home with my mom, where I was most of the time, I learned to deeply yearn for safety. My mom was mentally unwell, and she treated me accordingly. I stopped sleeping very much when I was very young. When I stopped sleeping, I learned to want to close my eyes and turn off my ears. I learned to want to not have to listen for my mother’s rage. I wanted to sleep forever; for the entirety of my life I have been tired. In the absence of sleeping forever, I wanted to wake up with an alarm clock and hit snooze a few times. I wanted to have the morning routine of a normal teenager. I wanted my room to have a lock. I did not want anyone to hit or to yell. I wanted to sleep so badly. I still sleep poorly, and I still want to sleep well.
Wanting to know and wanting to be safe are instincts, I don’t have to think about them because essentially, those two wants raised me. Those two wants are my parents. They lead me to every step, every decision, even when the decisions are bad or don’t serve me. I want to know what is happening, I want to be safe. Figuring out what exactly is going on and how to be safe at ages 9, 10, 11, 16, 26, 36, 40— is very difficult. I think safety might be a complete illusion, I think safety might not exist. No one really knows anything, when it comes down to it. I really do try, though. Aiming to know and to keep myself safe keeps me engaged.
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Aside from those two things, those innate childhood wants that still live inside of me, I am driven by adventure and I am driven by freedom. I have a thousand ideas at any given time and about 500 of them are executed swiftly and with a complete lack of precision. I always say that “go for good enough” is my life motto, and it really is. I am pretty okay at many things, I am great at nothing. Mastery is not meant for me in this lifetime because mastery does not hold my attention. I need stimulation. It feels so uniquely and grossly American to need capital F-Freedom, but mastery would require a focus that removes me from my freedom, and so I am not likely to achieve it in this lifetime.
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I have built a life that leaves room to want. I can work more if I need more money, I can not work at all if I need to walk many hundreds of miles or shit around by the sea or sob under my covers. I think building a life that leaves room to want is an extreme privilege. For me, this privilege was partially born out of many hundreds of hours of writing. Being a person on the Internet has given me every client I’ve ever had and being a person on the Internet has required my writing. But would my writing compel if I was not white, thin, able bodied, “hot”? (Allegedly hot - I feel like a cross between a noodle and a muppet so don’t expect anything particularly sexy from me). I don’t know! I have the privilege to want because of so many things. It is not a privilege that I take lightly.
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The way that I decide what I want is mostly to see what sticks. When I want something, I want it NOW. Time passes and I either continue to want it now, or I never really think of it again. I have wanted to open a queer gym, scream in punk bands, write a book, long distance hike, live alone, have a little dog, travel to Italy, learn enough Italian to get around, become a booked out web designer, have friends so tight they become a family, learn how to make rugs. I have done these things. I have also wanted to live in a tiny house, live out of a van, live Internationally, get a second dog, buy land, start eating fish, play the drums, expertly cook extremely elaborate meals with ingredients I can’t pronounce, bikepack, be a therapist. Some of these things I might do— some of these things I will even probably do. Some of these things I absolutely and definitely will not. The things that do not hold my attention long enough to execute are passing urges. I let them go, like little paper boats floating down a tributary.* I like to say goodbye to ideas sometimes. Sometimes letting go is the thing that feels the most free.
I let myself forget ideas on purpose. I am exhausted, as I have said and I’ve been exhausted since the day I was born. I have immense freedom to want, but I do not have immense energy to do so. I let that be true— that I am a creature driven by wanting and that also wanting sometimes gets me nowhere. I believe in many lives. I can want certain things this life, execute the next. I probably wanted things in my last life that I am absolutely nailing today. I have a reputation for doing so much, so fast and that’s something I like about myself. I wouldn’t want to execute it all this life, though.
I want to leave myself something to look forward to.
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*this is a Cheryl Strayed reference- IYKYK. I’m looking at you, Vanessa Pamela Friedman.
Okay, holy shit it’s been a good time in writer/reader land for me. In the past two weeks I read both All Fours by Miranda July and Women by Chloe Caldwell. Both of these texts are incredible, seminal even. Reading them made me feel amused, resonant, horny, annoyed, curious and delighted. READ THESE BOOKS for the love of fucking god. Then let’s talk about them, Okay? Okay.
On this very day, I am putting the finishing touches on a website for Genevieve Hudson. Genevieve is an author I already admired, I read Boys of Alabama last year and absolutely loved it. When they reached out to me I thought “hehehehehehhe wow this cool person wants me to make their website, that really is so nice”. Cool is an illusion but I continue to think they’re cool and you should definitely read their book! The website will launch today-Tuesday, July 25th- sometime late morning or early afternoon. When it does launch, you will find it here. If you click that link and find it looks like the image you see below, then huzzah the new site has launched! If it looks different, keep checking back. I really like this one. I think you will, too
Thanks so much for reading, I will write you more soon.
-Luca