Not To Wither Away

Sometimes I look at successful young people with a combination of awe and frustration. One of my favorite albums of the summer is Snail Mail’s “Lush,” but I feel a tinge of guilt every time I remember that the frontwoman, Lindsey Jordan, is 19 years old. She’s six months younger than me. How on earth did she manage to release a critically-received album and then proceed to tour the world, and why haven’t I kicked myself into gear to do something similar? 
It’s really easy to compare myself to the Christian Pulisics and Lindsey Jordans of the world. Christian Pulisic is a 19-year-old American soccer player, perhaps the best in the country. I am hit with a wave of dread when I think about these people as if I have already missed the boat. These people are so laser-focused on their talents that they are living their dreams at 19. My grandfather tells me that success came for them because they had a dream and pursued it with all of their might until they reached it.
But what if I can’t pinpoint my dream? Where am I heading with my life? I think these are questions people ask at any age. I look at people like James Murphy, the vocalist, producer, singer and mastermind behind the band “LCD Soundsystem.” For the first 30 years of his life, he saw himself as a failure. He talks about how he once coasted on his talents but eventually got to a place where he looked at his life and said, “Wow, my life is not at all going the way I want it to go.”
In an interview, he said: “All my life I’d been precocious, and I was supposed to be smart, and I was supposed to be creative. I’d never been given any credit for being hard-working or being diligent, so all these credits were based on these attributes I had no control over. It’s like being tall. Like, congratulations, you’re tall.”
But then he released his debut single, “Losing My Edge,” and the rest of his absolutely astonishing music career followed. The song was about feeling upset at the young up-and-comers, the people whose lives seemed to be headed for success as Murphy himself felt like a deadbeat.
I think being fully content is to come to grips with the fact that most of us aren’t going to be noteworthy. Sometimes I sit in bed at night and think some really crippling thoughts along these lines: “I haven’t done enough. I need to write more. I am incapable of writing more; I will never write more. I will never even be able to write more and it’s basically too late.” It’s a spiral, and these aren’t always rational thoughts, but the fear of not doing enough and the fear of withering every day away is constant.
This isn’t even rooted in other people’s perception of me. I want to be at peace with myself. The best weapon against that creeping dread is just proving to myself that I am capable of doing things that require time and investment.
Last semester, I wrote two short stories that I am very proud of. I showed them to a few friends and relatives, and they liked the stories too. Will anything happen with these stories beyond this? Probably not. But the point is that I set my mind to something and did something I am proud of. What a feeling.
What if “Losing My Edge” had never gone anywhere? Well, James Murphy would still have written a great song. To be content doesn’t have to mean finding huge success. One of my best friends, Andrew, works at Costco. He works every day to do the things that allow him to be satisfied with himself even if his work is nowhere near glamorous. In a conversation we had with another friend who was considering suicide, Andrew mentioned his daily video journal:
“It’s a reason to try and make every day matter. I don’t care how significant or insignificant, just a way to make every day mean something…”
To do something you are proud of makes the biggest difference in the world. I am proud of my short stories. I want to look back at every day with a sense that I did something worth doing. Do I have the laser focus of Lindsey or Christian? I don’t think so, but I am working on making every day one that I didn’t waste.
Collin Hall is the publisher’s grandson and editor of The Tartan, Gordon College.