🇩🇪 Wichtige, persönliche Durchsage bevor es losgeht: Ich habe zwischen den Feiertagen (yay) erfahren, dass ich das neue Jahr in Kurzarbeit beginne. Ist blöd für mein Konto, heißt aber auch: Ich kann wieder mehr freie Aufträge anzunehmen. Also, wenn Ihr (oder euer Arbeitgeber) Unterstützung bei medialen Projekten braucht, schreibt mir an verveletter@gmail.com. Ich kann Podcasts produzieren, Newsletter-Konzepte entwickeln und natürlich texten. Einblicke in meine Arbeit findet ihr u.a. auf Torial. Ich freue mich, von euch zu hören!
“They were no longer young, but they do not feel old. Life is still malleable and full of potential. The openings to the roads not taken have not yet sealed up. They still have time to become who they are going to be.”
This quote appeared on the first pages of Anna Hope’s novel Expectation and it felt like the days between Christmas and New Year’s were both the best and worst time to read this. This is the time of year where we take stock of the past year, and maybe even of our lives so far. Where we look back to see how many possible exits we have missed by now, dream about what our life would look like if we had said Yes to this and No to that, finally gotten on top of that savings plan or established a meditation practice.
What would 12-year-old you think of where you are today? Would she be excited for the future ahead of her, or rather disappointed? What would December-2019-You think? Did you set any goals, even resolutions at last New Year’s and how did they pan out?
I suppose during this time of year, we find ourselves more than usual in that liminal space between expectation and reality, a space often filled with regret and disappointment, but also with hope and excitement. The worst part of it is though, as Anna Hope points out, that we don’t only have to account for our personal expectations, but also of society’s expectations of us. As the mother of one of the protagonists, a former women’s rights activist, exclaims early on: “We fought for you. We fought for you to be extraordinary. We changed the world for you and what have you done with it?”
It leaves her daughter and the reader with an impossible ask: In a world where you can do everything your (grand)mother wasn’t allowed to, how dare you not reach for the stars? How dare you not try to be everything?
Over the course of the novel, when the three protagonists struggle with their thwarted ambitions and each hunger for what the others have (because the grass is always greener, you know), we come to realize: A world that (seemingly) allows you to be everything, ultimately sets you up for disappointment. If there is an infinite number of lives you can choose from – can you ever be content with just one choice?
Plot twist: you can. If you manage to separate your own personal dreams and ambitions from the expectations imposed by your family, peers or society. And if you realize that no life you could have chosen for yourself would have brought you unlimited happiness.
To recover from the intense and very close to home read of Expectation, I dove straight into Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (I’m on holiday, can you tell?). The two novels are connected by the theme of regret, however Haig is much more uplifting – and quite philosophical. His protagonist Nora attempts suicide and ends up in, yes, The Midnight Library. Here she gets to undo all of her past regrets (there are many) and gets to try out every possible life she could have lived.
It’s a fantastic premise for a novel, because Nora experiences what we all dream of – we all spend way too much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other, more accomplished, more popular, versions of ourselves, losing sight of what’s great in our current life. Don’t you have at least ten different versions of your life ready in your head to jump into if given the chance? I know I do – and in each of them I am happier than in my current one (because what’s the point of daydreaming otherwise?).
Without spoiling the ending, the final sentiment of the novel is so beautiful that I don’t want to paraphrase. After Nora tried hundreds of different lives, without finding one she wanted to replace her original life with, she concludes:
“It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out (…) Of course we can’t visit every place and meet every person, or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available (…) Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies.”
Somewhere on social media I recently saw a post about a very special kind of New Year’s resolution: to decide which feelings you want to feel more of in the coming year and then look out for them in everyday life and lean into them. I find that a beautiful idea, which also seems like a good decision-making-tool. Because what I noticed when I examined my own regrets over the past week was that I don’t regret any of the decisions that I once whole-heartedly believed in – even if they didn’t pan out as I wished they had.
pop culture pleasures
Obviously: If you also at times struggle with regret or feeling like you have let yourself down, I cannot recommend the two books discussed above enough. Expectation is definitely the heavier one, though deeply relatable, while The Midnight Library is a very comforting feel good novel. I for one will now go and read up on philosophy about parallel universes.
Author Jami Attenberg wrote a great Guardian piece about moving places constantly and only buying her first bed frame at age 44. She explores the concept of home and whether we can ever run towards something without also running from something.
Y’all know I love a good portrait and this one in Elle made waves just before Christmas: Meet former Bloomberg journalist Christie Smythe, who blew up her entire life (job, marriage, great apartment etc.) for a guy called Martin Shkreli, one of the least-liked men on the planet. Who she met while exposing one of his schemes, by the way. And who has now somehow broken up with her by means of this article – from jail? It’s bananas.
Brandon Taylor took the Smythe story as an example to analyse why women – no matter how strong and independent – will make absolute fools of themselves while trying to please indifferent men.
I pinned this insightful agony aunt column a while ago but realized I never shared it: Brandy Jensen gives you some hard truths and explains why there’s no justice in love and no such thing as closure.
🇩🇪 Yasmin Polat hat für die taz einen fantastischen Text über den ewigen Struggle mit der Selbstliebe geschrieben und sie spricht mir aus dem Herzen. Vor allem diesen Bullshit, erst dann liebenswürdig zu sein, wenn man mit sich selbst hundertprozentig im Reinen ist (und somit selbst Schuld an allen gescheiterten Beziehungen ist), kann ich schon lange nicht mehr hören. Jeder verdient es, geliebt zu werden, immer. Aber lest selbst.
This is all the recommendations I got this week, as I’ve been in holiday mode, which means: books, books books. No podcasts, no Netflix. But here’s original footage of a kitchen Alpaca, which I’d like to add to my 2021 Christmas wishlist:
Before you go: To kick off the new year, I would love for you to tell me what you think about this letter and fill in this super short form (six questions only!). Totally anonymous. Thank you ❤️
Oh, and please send me your Netflix recommendations which are not Bridgerton.
Until next time,
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