The Wedge Between Pleasure and Pain

Castles in the Sky #53

The car in this story from the LAST time this same tire popped.

At least the soap in the mechanic’s bathroom is good. It takes all the grime off my hands in one rinse.

It’s the first good thing that happens in a long, bad day. I have been slammed all day with three waves of problems. First is a royal rumble of logistic problems: personality conflicts at work, a splitting headache butting into every conversation, a thunderstorm putting my plans in a headlock, an unmanageable schedule body slamming my to-do list, an upcoming trip giving the People’s Elbow to any sense of calm I might otherwise have, and on top of all that I have nothing to write about for my blog tomorrow.

After the first wave of problems is another wave, which is really just one meta-problem over and over again: none of the other problems are really that bad. So I feel terrible about feeling terrible. I’m ashamed that I’m complaining about a busy schedule, embarrassed that I’m so dainty that I can’t focus through a headache, frustrated that I can’t just enjoy my upcoming trip, and exhausted from brainstorming for my next blog article.

And these are just my relatable problems. The third and final wave is just two big, idiosyncratic problems. The first is that I have an acute shame around not having a nice car. This kind of covetousness is nonsensical and against all my stated and lived values. But I can’t help but feel it. My wife and I work really hard to put my daughter in a good daycare where the majority of the parents drive nice cars, but ours are just workhorse late model Hondas, one of which has paint scraped off the bumper I haven’t gotten around to fixing yet. 

And today my wife got a flat tire in the carpool line, so I had to drive up to school and swap cars with her. Then I had to lay on my back on the wet pavement under light rain, and change the tire on the car that has the scratch on the front bumper while other parents drove through carpool in Mercedes and Range Rovers and Ford F-150 King Ranch trucks.

My other idiosyncratic problem is Drake. Yes, international pop star and rapper Drake. The guy who is tied for fifth place for the most #1 Billboard singles ever. The most popular rapper on planet Earth who isn’t having a psychotic episode. He is dropping an album at midnight tonight so the guys working in the garage have his music blaring over the sound system.

In 2013, I was friends with a girl who had previously dated (and allegedly was still dating) Drake. She told me that he and I had a similar sense of humor and similar way with people. Instead of taking this as a compliment, for some reason it ruined my ability to ever really enjoy Drake music again. Once I knew that we shared some quality in the eyes of an objective third party, every time something good happened to Drake it made me acutely aware of how I wasn’t a multi-platinum globetrotting sex symbol rapper. Which is hard because Drake is insanely talented and a lot of good things happen to him.

But, the soap at this garage is pretty good. I am soaked, sweaty, and grimy as hell from changing the tire. But I am surprised at how quickly this soap takes the tire grime off my hand and out from under my fingernails. My hands become so smooth that they slide right over each other and start to re-form the grooves in my brain.

It is good to have a full life. Houston needs rain and this thunderstorm will be great for the front yard garden my wife just decorated for Halloween. My headache is gone! I might drop some balls at work while I’m on my trip but I probably won’t, and if I do, I have a great team. And on the off chance something goes wrong, I will probably forget in six months, but remember this trip for the rest of my life. 

And maybe I don’t need to have a perfectly manicured essay go out every week. My second most popular essay ever was a first draft I wrote in forty minutes. There is some value in sharing a few unfinished thoughts every once in a while. I am blessed to even have a car, and especially to have the time and money to just pick up and get a new tire when I need one.

Plus, I only needed to get this tire fixed urgently tonight because my sister is flying into town tomorrow, and I am lucky that she wants to see us as often as she does, and has a kid just a few months older than mine. It’s also just nice that my family is close enough to want to see each other and that people rely on me enough to ask for things like getting picked up at the airport.

And finally, I should even be happy for Drake. I probably listened to him more than any other artist from 2013 to 2016. Not everybody can be an international pop star. I used to joke around with this busboy I knew when I waited tables through grad school. We’d laugh til we cried sometimes and we never would’ve been friends if I hadn’t walked in one day singing Legend off Drake’s mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. I have a ton of memories like this: Drake was the soundtrack to my twenties,

So I ask myself the question I ask whenever I envy someone: “if it was in my power to snap my fingers and give this person everything they have, and what I have wouldn’t be affected in either direction, would I do it?” And the answer with Drake (and pretty much everyone I’ve ever asked this about) is an unequivocal yes. (You’re welcome, Drake.)

And I laugh at myself. I was really hard on myself earlier for feeling shitty. Should I congratulate myself now for feeling better? No, probably not. It was the soap! So I go into the bathroom and wrench the soap dispenser off the wall, ripping out the bag of soap and shoving it in my pocket. “This is how I’ll wash my hands every time I don’t feel good from now on,” I say, sprinting straight to my car outside so they don’t see the soap dripping down my leg.

Just kidding. I leave the soap where it is. On the drive home I realize that everyone’s life has problems and everyone’s life has pleasure, and the wedge between these two things is perspective. So I can choose to dwell on the problems I listed, or I can deal with them as they come up and instead dwell on things like picking up my sister from the airport, or listening to my favorite Drake songs in my car, or taking my daughter around the house every night around 7:00 PM to say “night night” to everything, or even finding a soap that actually washes all the tire grease off my hands on the first try.

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My name is Charlie Becker and I’m a writer, teacher, and bookseller. Every Friday, I send out Castles in the Sky, a newsletter where I write the weirdest that feels right. If someone emailed this to you or you found it on social media, go here to learn more.

Rabbit Holes

Rabbit holes are diversions and digressions that I think add to the main essay above.

The First Online Writer

Originally this essay was going to be about authenticity on the internet and when it is and isn’t a good time to share unvarnished truths. I took a lot of inspiration from the essay below by

Michael Dean

about one of the—if not the—earliest bloggers on the internet, Justin Hall.

It’s a really interesting deep dive on Justin Hall, who was sharing completely unvarnished info dumps from his life like twenty years ago. It highlights how writing online can be a way to build a personal legacy and build fame, but these both come at a cost. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, I highly recommend it.

The First Online Writer

Top Five Underrated Drake Songs

Writing this got me thinking about all the different Drake songs I like. I’m partial to the 2013-2017 era and these are the top 5 songs I think are really great that casual listeners may not know.

#5 Legend

#4 No Tellin’

#3 Uptown feat Bun B and Lil Wayne

#2 Trust Issues

#1 Too Much feat Sampha

Bulletin Board

Recent Writing

The responses to the last two essays I wrote were way more than I could have hoped for. I am farther than a niche than I’ve ever been, but I feel closer to “the source,” than ever. Check them out to see what I mean and tell me if they resonated with you.

Online Friends

Before I started writing online I had no idea how social it would be, but a huge part of my journey has been the friend I’ve made.

I am part of one writing group that meets on Zoom pretty regularly to talk about what’s going on in our lives and our writing. I was the last to join but they’ve been very welcoming. And recently, one of the members wrote a gratitude post where she name-checked the rest of us.

Yehudis Milchtein

is an inimitable old soul with an eye for the profound and a really big heart. Check out her post below and then poke around her other work.

To My Writer Friends

Thanks for reading!