Thought Bananas 13 | instead of running away or ignoring it, I would double down
Ambition vs. Vulnerability, My Path to My Job, Oral Surgery, and Damon Lindelof
Last Wednesday around 11:00pm I was panicking in my home office.
I had just published Thought Bananas 12, and then shared the links with excerpts on my Facebook and Instagram stories.
I have about 2,500 friends across Facebook and Instagram, the majority of whom did not know I had aspirations to be a writer.
Facebook and Instagram shows you who “saw,” your stories. So for thirty minutes, I felt intense apprehension and anxiety as I saw the names stack up. “So and so viewed your story.” I started to think about the tension between Ambition and Vulnerability.
Ambition is the desire to achieve something–usually something that correlates with prosperity, power, or fame.
Vulnerability is opening yourself up–you show part of yourself to people even though you risk being hurt.
I was making a statement by posting my writing to a bunch of people who know me but didn’t know I want to write. That statement would be like:
“Hey, look at me. I’m doing something different and new. I’m making art and it’s fun and I think it’s pretty good. Although I’m not actually sure if it’s good or if you’ll like it. I’m also not sure how to ‘sell’ you on the idea and so this bid for your attention feels awkward. I would love it if you let me know if you like it or if you have concrete feedback on how to make it better.”
I realized that if I want to write something great–and I do–then cultivating that ambition means also being vulnerable. I cannot offer something up to be consumed without risking people hating it. I also cannot offer myself up as a writer or artist without risking people thinking I’m silly or a bad writer or self-indulgent.
To make something great, I have to open that work and myself up to inspection and feedback, even if it’s critical. I want to set an example. Once I realized that the anxiety of opening myself up was here to stay, I decided that instead of running away or ignoring it, I would double down on it. I’d address it in the introduction to the next newsletter. Then I’d go one step further.
I am opening myself up even more and making an even more awkward bid for your attention than before. If you read Thought Bananas and like it, or if you want to support more people stepping out and awkwardly embracing their ambition through vulnerability, I’m going to ask you for a small but important favor:
If you’re reading this in your email inbox, go to the top and click the title of the story so it takes you to the website.
At the top of the story is a bar that looks like this, although with a different date under my name:
Hit that “heart button,” at the top. It may ask you to sign up, but if you’re subscribed you’re already “signed up,” just enter the email address you put in.
That thirty seconds will do a lot for me and it helps other readers to find my writing.
I’m so grateful for the positive feedback, but even the positive feedback can be tricky sometimes. More than one friend has said, “it’s so cool you’re putting yourself out there, you’re the man in the arena!” This is great to hear, but is it as great to hear as, “it’s so cool that you’re writing hilarious, breathtaking, incisive stuff—I can’t get enough?” Not really, but that’s OK.
It will take practice to write the stuff that makes you laugh and cry and think. And it’s not just about getting the reps in, but about putting the work out and making people care. So thanks for reading this, thanks for “hearting” the post, thanks for caring, and thanks for diving into this issue:
🍌Quote of the Week
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
🍌In the Newsletter This Week
Original Writing: My first in a series of essays about my job as a professor, plus two essays from the archive—one about the name of this newsletter, and another about my misadventures in crypto.
On My Mind: Oral surgery and the joy of a soft food diet.
My Favorite Things: Damon Lindelof TV Shows
Crowd Work: Check out my new front page!
Original Writing
🍌The Best Job I've Ever Had Started Me at $965/month.
I’ve grown over 600 businesses in the last six years. Most of the best things in my life have come when I didn’t follow the default script, and my job is included in that. This is the story of how I ended up at my current job, and how—even though it seemed like a departure—it is in line with the things I’ve always valued.
I plan to write more essays about my work as a Professor, some reflective like this and some more informative. I would appreciate it if you would go and leave your thoughts on this essay in the comments.
🍌Why is your newsletter called Thought Bananas?
This is the earliest essay that I have still published online. It’s about how I came to the name Thought Bananas for this project. I want to share it here for any new subscribers and also as a reminder to myself:
I wanted a newsletter name that sounded clever and made people think of, “Insightful Takes on Serious Issues,” but all the names I came up with made it way too easy to take myself too seriously.
Taking myself too seriously makes it easy to generalize and draw premature conclusions. I begin to worry about the serious, respectable, usually unsuccessful stance of sharing the right idea, rather than the messy, embarrassing, usually entertaining process of finding the right idea.
🍌Subreddit, Celica, Scam
This is an essay reflecting on my last ten years learning about, earning, and losing cryptocurrency. It is one of the first things I put online and the tone is very different from what I’ve been writing lately. (I thought the tone was funny and a little snarky, but of my good friends whose opinion I respect told me it was written in “annoying internet voice.”)
I wanted to share it here because I think it’s still pretty good. I also want to share it for a select group of friends who I’ve been writing with and who have been considering
On My Mind
🍌Oral Surgery and the Joy of a Soft Food Diet
Two weeks ago I wrote about the upcoming year or so of medical care I have. Last week, I had a small preview of this when I got a wisdom tooth pulled and a bone graft on my upper jaw. The pain wasn’t that bad afterward, but it did make me a little foggy for about a week.
The best metaphor I have is this: it’s like when there is a program running on your computer slowing everything down, and it is only mildly inconvenient, but it is still frustrating beyond measure because you keep forgetting about it and you cannot figure out where it is.
I am grateful however, because it made me realize how much time and energy I will need to devote to recovery after the big double-jaw surgery next year. Plus, I have been having to eat “soft foods.” It’s been borderline embarrassing discovering how much I actually like yogurt, canned soup, and applesauce, among other things. Seriously, when was the last time you had applesauce? It’s delicious.
My Favorite Things
🍌Damon Lindelof TV Shows
I don’t watch a lot of TV on my own. Generally, when I watch TV, it’s with my wife. She has a very specific regiment of 8-12 sitcoms that she cycles through re-watching: The Office, Friends, 30 Rock, Golden Girls, Seinfeld, Modern Family, Parks and Rec, and a few others. (I tease her about this but I actually love it.) Aside from this, before my daughter was born, I almost never just sat down to kill time and watch TV.
Since my daughter was born, I started watching more TV when I would be staying up with her late at night or getting up early to feed her. I watched The Sopranos for the first time while bottle-feeding her. I then went back and started filling in other gaps I had missed in “prestige TV” shows. Doing this made me realize that 3 of my top 10 favorite shows are made by the same guy, Damon Lindelof.
The shows are Lost, The Leftovers, and Watchmen. I love them all because they have a magical realism sensibility to them. They have important fantasy and science fiction elements, but these aren’t spacefarers and dragon-fighters. All the people feel like real people who just happen to have supernatural things happening to them.
I also like that Damon Lindelof has been able to make such interesting, different types of shows—but they all have his signature style to them. This is something I aspire to in my writing.
Lost is a show about a bunch of people whose plane crashed on a crazy island. It’s hard to categorize—like a science fiction mystery soap opera. I remember watching the show on my iPod video after downloading it on iTunes (holding my iPod video an inch from my face thinking to myself, “this is the future!”). The first 2-3 seasons especially are so uniquely compelling, unlike anything else I can remember watching before and on a re-watch it’s held up very well.
The Leftovers has a lot of the same character sensibility, plus a sense of mystery and “what the hell is going on?” that you get from Lost, but the tone is so different. The premise of the show is that 2% of the world’s population just up and disappears, and the world does not carry on very well in their absence. The show is about grief, and the tone is so different from Lost. Even though Lost addresses some adult themes, it feels cartoonish compared to The Leftovers. (Bonus—aside from maybe the Succession theme, The Leftovers’ theme might be the best ever on television.)
Finally, The Watchmen is totally different from the other two shows. It’s in an alternate present based loosely on the movie and graphic novel of the same name. It is similarly in your face the way that The Leftovers is about grief, but this time about race. (It’s about racism, but I’m not spoiling anything it’s pretty obvious right away.) It’s also very serious and touching while being campy and violent at the same time.
I was super excited when I read he is working on a new series called Mrs. Davis. About it, some TV studio bigwig said:
A series like Mrs. Davis is exactly why we love making television. The brilliant minds of Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof have concocted one of the most innovative, undeniable concepts imaginable. We are so thrilled to be going on this wild ride with them.
I strongly recommend watching Watchmen or The Leftovers if you haven’t seen them yet. Start with Watchmen unless you can handle a show that is beautiful but also a downer. Also, Lost is always great for a re-watch (or a first watch if you’re one of the dozen people who didn’t see it the first time).
There is a unique pleasure in finding out one artist is behind a lot of your favorite art. Who are some of your favorite working artists, who work on different things but have a signature to their art?
Crowd Work
In standup comedy, crowd work is when the comic speaks directly with the audience. This section is a place for us to directly engage one another.
The best place for me to hear from you is in the essay comments section.
Click the essays and stories so you can “heart” or leave a comment. Even just commenting ‘love’ is great, as it helps other people find my writing.
That’s all for now—see you next week!
Thanks to everyone who edited, proofread, and gave feedback on the writing in this issue. And thanks for reading Thought Bananas!
Second recommendation for Leftovers in a week. How did I miss this show while it was running? Ahhh, raising dragons!
I just baked some banana muffins. I am waiting for them to cool down. It is totally awesome timing to be reading "Thought Bananas" at this very moment.