Why should it not be you?
Hi friend!
I have to start with a confession: I stole this subject line. Well, borrowed. Credit where credit is due, it's the title of a Medium piece that hit my inbox last week and made me click, think and go💡(this is a light bulb emoji, in case your email client isn't working with me). In that order.
Admittedly, "Why not you" by Ayodeji Awosika is a very, very American self help article and should be taken with a healthy dose of salt. Yet, it poses a question nobody has ever asked me, including myself. Why not me? Why should I not win at life?
"Has someone with less talent achieved more than you? Without question. Has someone with less intelligence done so? Certainly. Even if people do get lucky on their path to success, why can’t you be one of those lucky people?"
🎧 Coincidentally, a day after I read the article the new CTRL ALT DELETE episode dropped. Actress Susan Wokoma is Emma Gannon's guest this week and they somehow land on the topic of loving what you do and really leaning into your career. A millennial woman like Wokoma being so vocal about how hard she works for success – and how much she enjoys it – is a pretty revolutionary act.
As women, we're taught not to brag, to be humble and place the needs of others' above our own. As millennials, we're taught to be cool, to not care about careers and to get our validation from running marathons or keeping house plants alive. I personally have tried both, but neither has given me as much of a sense of purpose as my job(s). I love to create stuff that has an impact on people. I can totally geek out about my work, and I'm good at it – but for the longest time I thought just having any job in the field was the definition of "made it!"
Until this year. I was lucky to start working with someone who seems to have not one single limiting belief in his body (a man, obviously). He's been championing me to set more ambitious goals, dream big and – which is where we come full circle – ask myself: Why not me?
Well, I'm happy to report that I have launched that project and I'm ready to throw everything I have at it. You heard it here first. (I'm still running, but no marathons. And I still try to keep my plants alive, but the emphasis is on try.).
What I want to say is: It might be me, it might be you, if we never try we'll never know. I'm not advocating burn outs. In fact, Susan Wokoma says that accepting that she cares so very deeply about her work automatically gave her a much better work/life balance. Also, not liking what you do for 40 hours per week – that's not healthy either. If you dread mondays, you need to get out. Soon.
🌊 Moving on. Shortly after I booked my annual winter surf escape, the NYT introduced me to yet another dark side of the sport (remember, we already covered sexism). How dark this time? Nazi dark.
In a hefty opinion piece, author Daniel Duane exposes how the shiny Californian surfing culture is entirely built on white-supremacist racism. Look at the members of the original wave-riding cultures around the world, he says, and then compare them to the poster boys of surfing culture. Notice something?
"It doesn’t take much imagination to recognize the blue-eyed, blond surfer ideal for what it is: a white racial fantasy rooted, like most such tropes, in spurious claims of authentic connection to land."
Duane unpacks California's history of institutional racism, eugenics and explains how the first commercially made surf boards had swastikas burned into their tails. Ugh.
⭐️ #popculturepleasures. Since I've been knocked out by the first cold of the season this weekend, I've been mostly tied to my couch (except for going to see "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" at Hamburg Film Festival, a brilliant, mesmerizing costume drama with an all female cast – highly recommend!).
Luckily, the most hyped-up Netflix show of the year was released just last week and I could binge my way through all eight episodes of "The Politician" in two days. Does it live up to the hype? No. No show ever could. Is it a sharp and dazzling masterpiece, which is worth clearing your schedule for? Absolutely. Ben Platt's comedic timing is out of this world, and we don't have to talk about his singing. The costumes and sets are fantastic – and the actual plot? I'll just second this Vox review:
"There’s a vague sense of visiting Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory while somebody in your tour group reads their Twitter feed out loud and another person sings Sondheim."
Long story short: I loved it. Let me know if you watched it and what you think.
🇩🇪 Wer ein bisschen deutsche Lektüre sucht, dem möchte ich diese zwei Stücke über Fern- und Heimweh und alles dazwischen ans Herz legen:
Margarete Stokowski hat einen Liebesbrief an Finnland geschrieben, den ich sofort so unterschreiben würde und der in mir große Erasmus-Nostalgie heraufbeschworen hat. Ich war kurz davor, einen Flug nach Tampere zu buchen, nur um zum Pyynikki Turm hoch zu wandern und die besten Munkki (finnische Kardamom-Krapfen) mit dem stärksten Kaffee der Welt runterzuspülen.
Lisa McMinn dagegen hat für Vice einen sehr berührenden Text über zwiespältige Gefühle zum Heimatort geschrieben. Irgendwie hat man nie richtig reingepasst, aber emotional kommt man dann doch nie so ganz weg davon. Like, wer's kennt.
🐴 And finally, here's the video which had me crying with laughter (and the neighbors quite possibly worried) on Thursday night. The footage of a pony stubbornly eating its way through the decorations at a horse show, completely unimpressed by its handler, hit veeery close close to home. I've been this girl, my Dad's been that girl, the only thing left to say is: Ponies build character. And they both have, and require, a great sense of humor.
Have a lovely week,
Anna