green monster recommendations #1

all the people i've been jealous of lately

I’ve written about being a power hog before—someone who is finely attuned to where power sits in any situation (and in whom) and the flow of that power—and one of the corollaries of being a power hog is being a Really Jealous Bitch. When you are as desirous of power as I am, it’s inevitable that you are also a really jealous person. (Can you even desire power without being jealous of others’ power? Is that even a possible orientation?)

Being a Really Jealous Bitch means feeling jealous early and often. When I see someone announcing a big accomplishment in publishing nowadays, like writing a bestseller or having their book greenlit for a film/TV adaptation, my first thought isn’t, Wow, good for them. My first thought is, I hate them; good for them. These thoughts come to the same complimentary landing spot, but the intrusion of jealousy in the first instance is emblematic of a Really Jealous Bitch.

A Really Jealous Bitch, however, does not mean harboring deep and unwavering resentment (although some RJBs definitely do and are worse off for it). I’m of the mind that being a Really Jealous Bitch can tell you a lot about yourself, if you let it. We can’t control how we feel, but we can always control how we respond—so why not let how we feel inform how we plan to respond? Turn those negative feelings into guideposts?

Jealousy, that initial frisson of hatred, is important because it’s us directly telling on ourselves. The you that is underneath and addled by all your fears, insecurities, and traumas communicates to you through jealousy. How? We only ever feel jealous about things that we want for our own lives. Think back to the last few times someone told you about an accomplishment they were proud of. Were you jealous each and every time?

Probably not. For example, many of my friends had babies in the past two years. If I were also trying to get pregnant during this time, each announcement might trigger intense feelings of jealousy in myself—but because I’m not, I feel only a fleeting lukewarmness when I see them or their social media posts. Like when your manicurist moves your hand over to soak in that small cup of water after applying cuticle serum—mildly pleasant but ultimately forgettable.

Another example—some of my law school classmates and ex-colleagues are beginning to make partner (both equity and non-equity) at their respective biglaw firms. I would have thought that I—the consummate Really Jealous Bitch when it comes to school/work/career matters—would have been overcome with the green monster, but it turns out that I, in fact, felt the same lukewarm sensation once again.

And it’s not like I achieved inner peace and stopped being a Really Jealous Bitch. I still feel jealous early and often. And who have I been ridiculously, tormentingly jealous of lately? So wracked with jealousy that it’s almost hard for me to speak about these people publicly, lest more people discover how great they are—but I have to anyway because they are too damn great???

Presenting: Green Monster Recommendations. Recommendations from my very own green monster, that Really Jealous Bitch.

zoe thorogood—award-winning graphic novelist, author, and artist.

I was in Colorado over Labor Day weekend because my law school roommate got married in Crested Butte. Nathaniel and I spent two days in Denver beforehand, getting our money’s worth through eight hours at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station, accidentally walking into one of the best speakeasies I’ve ever been to, and exploring the narrow, dusty aisles of MUTINY Information Cafe. It was at MUTINY that I picked up It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth* by Zoe Thorogood, an auto-bio-graphic-novel which was nominated for the Eisner Award (like the Oscars for comic books) in multiple categories.

Those crests! Those buttes!

The comic depicts six months in Zoe’s life, detailing her depression, her loneliness, the role that art had in her life, and her various internal selves—storytelling across multiple mediums even within the book. One page looked like a cinematographer’s storyboard, one looked like a screenplay, one was just a long text message to the reader. I devoured the book on my flight back to New York, and the moment I landed, I googled her.

It was worse than I could have imagined.

I knew that she was young (she mentions multiple times in the comic book that she’s 23 at the time), but her comic was also a wild success. She’s been hailed multiple times as the “future of comics,” which I can’t help but agree with. Oh, and she’s hot. (It’s truly a sign of how insidious beauty culture is when I find myself actively hoping that someone I’m jealous of turns out to be conventionally unattractive.)

There’s a part of me that always begrudges younger writers, artists, and creators, because I myself did not have the balls or compulsion at their age to pursue anything creative. At 24, Zoe won an Eisner for “Most Promising Newcomer” and was tapped to write the comic spin-off for Life is Strange (one of my favorite video game series!!). At 24, I was one summer associate in a class of 95.

And I know there is different value in both of those pursuits, but if you gave me a choice, I would have dropped everything to be Zoe. Which is saying something, considering she discusses her crippling loneliness and three entire years (!!) during which she wasn’t in a single social setting.

(And if you would drop everything to be a summer associate or a biglaw associate, embrace that! It’s not so important what it is that you want, just that you know what it is—and also know that it can change.)

For me, Zoe represents the life not lived, the life that I had even wanted to live before I inherited my mom’s financial traumas and could no longer look at creating in quite the same way as before. I sometimes think about AU Cece, working on the pilot of her own show after years in various writer’s rooms. Or maybe—and let’s be real, more likely—living in LA with three roommates, trying to get hired as yet another writer’s or production assistant, and wondering if she had been wrong to pursue the broke artist life instead of biglaw.

I don’t know. But Zoe’s comic book made me smile, made me tear up, made me feel some type of way—and from my jealousy, I know that more than anything, I want to do that for others.

laura kennedy—writer and interviewee on substack’s the grow series.

As I try to figure out if it’s feasible to make a living as a writer/creative, I’ve been obsessed with reading On Substack, the platform’s newsletter with announcements of new features and tips for how to grow and eventually monetize. In one interview, they interviewed Laura Kennedy, an Irish writer who worked in traditional media before switching primarily to Patreon (and eventually Substack). The post features a screenshot of her Substack analytics (322 paid subscribers and 3,035 total subscribers).

Being the nosy person that I am (maybe it’s an only child thing? I never quite knew how my peers lived unless I was super nosy), I immediately became curious about how much the interview would grow her Substack. Turns out, she gained approximately 2000 new subscribers following her interview.

Our total subscribers had been similar before the interview, but her feature from Substack created a meaningful “moment” for her newsletter—and I was pierced with jealousy. Nearly doubling her subscribers over a few days? Why did Substack pick her? Why didn’t Substack care about me? What does she have that I don’t, three tits? (I promise the link is SFW.)

After spending an hour in my den of envy, poring over Laura’s posts to see what the big deal was, I calmed down enough to reflect more on why I became so obsessive. What did subscriber count mean to me? Why did her moment of relatively viral growth threaten me so much?

Well, dear reader, I came to the conclusion that it’s probably because I’m worried about my financial future (yet again). Near the beginning of every month, when rent comes due and I’m about to do my monthly bookkeeping and pay my quarterly taxes (yes, that’s a thing when you become self-employed), I am gripped by both the presence and specter of my financial traumas.

In It’s Lonely, Zoe has a depression monster; in my life, I have an anxiety gargoyle. Even when my anxiety gargoyle isn’t preening in front of me, it’s circling above, and I distinctly feel the chill in temperature as its shadow glides over my skin, over and over again. It never quite goes away.

And in these moments of financial panic, I hate everyone who appears to be making consistent money doing creative things. I am so jealous of them, it hurts. And it doesn’t matter that I have invoices that will be paid, it doesn’t matter that most of my book advance hasn’t been paid out yet, it doesn’t matter that I have been laying the groundwork for generating future revenue—in that moment, the only thing that matters is that I feel profoundly unsafe. My anxiety gargoyle lands next to me, beady eyes glistening, terrifying mouth pulled back wide in soundless laughter.

I used to think that my core fear was failure, but now I know that’s not quite right. I didn’t mind trying and failing when I was younger (memorialized in all the scars on my chin and body), and I certainly fail all the time in dance class now. What I fear, in reality, is what tends to come after failure—humiliation. The gawking. The laughing. The online ridicule disguised as discourse, concern, or snark.

So when I came upon one of Laura’s essays, reading:

The embarrassment [writers] feel asking people to pay for, or even read, their work. The grating feeling that it’s ‘cringy’ or desperate to get behind something they’ve made and put their shoulder to it… It’s not just writers. So many of us carry an urge to make or to do something, and experience this urge in painful friction with a sense that the world is either against us or indifferent.

In a culture, family, time or world that shrinks you, seeing the value in your ideas, your work, and yourself is a radical act of power. Insist on that value.

I had wanted to hate Laura so badly when I saw her feature. I had wanted to open up her newsletter and criticize every post, her grammar, her structure, her face. But as I read her essay about how to overcome our critical internal voice, feeling as if she were directly speaking to me, my Green Monster begrudgingly handed over its admiration. Dammit, Laura, you win, okay? You win. ◆

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