Who do you intend to be?
How a person decides exactly which version of their life they want to live
I read Parker one of my favorite essays from Tiny Beautiful Things last night, over dinner. The essay, titled The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us, was originally published on The Rumpus in 2011 and is ostensibly about whether or not to have children. If we’re friends you’ve heard me talk about it; if you’ve read my writing regularly over the past decade you’ve seen me reference it. I think about it all the time; it is one of those texts that helped shape the way I see the world, helped make me into me.
I do not love the essay because I am conflicted about whether or not to have children. I am not conflicted about this particular decision at all — I do want to have children, very badly. But I’m interested in the question under the question, which is, quite simply, how a person decides exactly which version of their life they want to live, and in doing so, how they give up the lives that do not belong to them, at least not this time around.
Cheryl Strayed states it more clearly in the essay: “And so the question, sweet pea, is who do you intend to be.”
I haven’t written this newsletter in six months. I have tried to write it many times during that period: multiple unfinished drafts live in the cloud, gathering metaphorical dust, never to be published.
Various things stopped me. First I was preparing for my wedding, then I lost my job, then I was getting married, then I was job hunting, then someone I love very much got sick, then it was summer, then... then, then, then, then, then.
Life was happening, I suppose I mean. I didn’t make time for writing. I was busy living, and also, I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say. Or perhaps I just didn’t want to say anything. I have shared so much of myself through my writing for almost twenty years now. Maybe I just wanted to be quiet for a little while.
I read Parker the essay last night because we were talking about the logistics of the lives we might live together. Our brains work differently, and every day we’re learning how to, as the Indigo Girls said, love each other well. For me, that means respecting my routines, my strange anxious habits. For Parker, that means celebrating her big dreams, her impulsive joy. We want so many of the same things — love, an expansive family, adventure, clean floors, endless tomatoes all summer long — but we don’t always envision the exact same path to get there.
What if we moved to Canada and started a sheep farm? What if we stayed right here in Portland in this very house until we die? What if we lived in Alaska? What if we traveled to every state? What if, what if.
Cheryl writes to the man wondering if he should or should not have children: “There will likely be no clarity, at least at the outset; there will only be the choice you make and the sure knowledge that either one will contain some loss.”
Being alive is realizing that with every choice you make to say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. Maybe that’s not being alive exactly; maybe it’s growing up. My friend Barb loves to listen to personal finance podcasts and she’s fond of repeating a phrase she’s learned from them: “You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.”
“And so the question, sweet pea, is who do you intend to be.”
Losing my job at Autostraddle was incredibly unpleasant. I haven’t said much about it publicly for a variety of reasons, but I will share that it was painful. My brilliant co-workers Shelli, Ro, and I were told our positions had been eliminated via a Slack DM, which I don’t recommend as a way of letting your employees know they’ve been let go! Though I was technically an independent contractor for Autostraddle, my role as Community Editor was treated as a staff position. Materially, it made up a large portion of my income, and emotionally, it held a lot of space in my heart and my brain.
Though I think, in retrospect, it was past time for me to leave Autostraddle, losing my job in such an unexpected way jolted me. I’d been asking work-related (and, by the nature of who I am and what I get paid to do, art-related) questions in therapy for months — What do I want to do for work? Am I fulfilled being an editor? How does writing fit into my life? Why haven’t I finished the revision of my novel? Should I be doing something completely different for my career? Do I want to be emotionally invested in the ways I make money? How much money do I need to make to be comfortable? Do I have a job or a career or a life or all or none? — but suddenly the little thought experiments my therapist and I did together every week were way more serious. What do I want to do for work!!! my brain screamed at me. “WHAT DO I WANT TO DO FOR WORK?!?!” I asked Parker. WHAT! DO! I! WANT! TO! DO! FOR! WORK!
The question haunted me as I job hunted, as I met with friends to talk about options, as I asked for help, as I considered other options. So many people suggested I turn on subscriptions for this newsletter. Some friends brainstormed ways I could lean more entirely into teaching. I wondered if being my own boss would be fruitful, if I really wanted to be a small business owner when the business was essentially my brain and its ability to pump out meaningful words regularly. And then there was the small voice in that very same brain that whispered: What if this is a sign to get out of media? What if this is the moment to separate your writing from your work? What if you don’t want to get paid to share your thoughts? What if you do something else entirely?
I have made my writing (and my teaching) my work. I have made, in some ways, my life my work. All artists do; I’m not special. But the truth remains: I started writing about my life on the internet when I was 12 years old. I certainly did not mean to make any big choices about what my job would be when I did that. Somehow, and in many ways that are very lucky, that’s how it turned out. I’m grateful. I’m also not sure what would have happened if I’d taken a different ghost ship. What would happen if I still could.
Today I found an Instagram post from June 2019. It’s a photo collection from some time I spent in Southern Oregon that year, on Barb and Susie’s land. The first photograph shows off half a dozen eggs, some blue, some white, one speckled brown. I’m holding them in my hand and you can see my little Birkenstock-clad feet hovering beneath them. The second photograph is a bouquet of freshly picked flowers, also held in my hand. The third photograph, a sea of garlic scapes, waiting to be harvested. The fourth, pinkyelloworange snapdragons. The fifth is a video clip of the sun bouncing off the trees, the perspective making it clear I was lying down in my tent when I filmed it. And the final photograph in the series is a selfie: me, four years younger, with a daisy tucked behind my ear. I’m so much younger — I do not yet know what a pandemic is, my dad is still alive — and yet I look so similar. I’d already read The Ghost Ship essay hundreds of times.
The caption is sweet. I wrote: “The truth is, no matter how much time I spend living rurally, I will always be a city girl in that it will always blow my fucking mind to collect eggs from the chickens, arrange fresh flower bouquets, harvest garlic scapes, water the garden, wake up to the sun streaming into my tent, and waltz around with a flower behind my ear. The real country queers and land dykes can laugh at me, that’s ok, I deserve it! I’m happy tho!”
I sent the photo and the caption to Parker, along with a message:
You help me do so many of these magical things right from our own (city) home and it’s very special, heart emoji.
What I meant, the love note behind the love note: I never imagined this would be my ship. I couldn’t see the way all the choices I made (and all the choices I didn’t make) would lead me here, to my very own version of my ideal life. And also: I cannot imagine where our ship will go next. Maybe Canada, maybe Alaska, maybe nowhere but here, this very plot of Portland, for the rest of our days until the end of the world comes for us all. But wherever our ship goes, I choose you. That is my choice. And in making that choice, you help me reach a million other choices I thought were beyond my wildest grasp.
“…Who do you intend to be.”
I can be someone else entirely when I am with her.
I started a new job one month ago. I’m the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a feminist Jewish culture site. The work is interesting and meaningful. My co-workers are hilarious and kind. It is a full time position. I work east coast hours, so I start at 7am and end at 3pm. That means I go to bed by 10pm every night so I can get eight hours of sleep. I love everything about my new job.
Twenty-two year old me would think I’m boring now, but that’s okay; her ship isn’t here yet. She has the whole ocean out in front of her, and she doesn’t know that after ten years of waiting on outstanding invoices and stressing about self-employment taxes every April, the freedom of working for herself won’t feel quite so free.
I did not leave media. I have not broken up with Instagram. As much as one version of me wants to be quiet, to stop writing, to live a solitary life with my wife and my chickens and our intimate joy, there is the other version that simply cannot shut up.
More kindly to myself: I like using my writing as a way to think (thank you, Joan Didion). I like sending my thoughts out into the world and seeing if anything resonates, if anyone writes back to say yes, me too. I felt that. I see you.
I am rusty at writing this newsletter, showing up in your inbox with my thoughts and my feelings and my observations. I do not know if I’ve found the end, if I’ve woven all the pieces together. The majority of work at my new job is editing personal essays, and I often find myself pointing out the stopping places a few paragraphs or a few sentences before the authors themselves get there. We so often keep going just a little bit longer after we are already done. I guess that’s a metaphor, but it’s also a craft trick.
If I were editing myself as I am now paid to edit so many others, I might’ve suggested I stop just one paragraph ago, on this line:
I like sending my thoughts out into the world and seeing if anything resonates, if anyone writes back to say yes, me too. I felt that. I see you.
But I’m not editing myself, of course. Part of the practice of this newsletter is to edit myself less, figure out who I “intend to be” more.
I’ll end with Cheryl’s conclusion instead: “I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”
But wait, one more ending.
Picture me reading this to Parker over dinner on our patio last night, enjoying the slight chill of the end of summer evening, savoring the September produce from our garden and the farmer’s market. Picture me, worrying. Picture her, dreaming. Picture me, gathering the dirty plates to bring inside. Picture her, putting the chickens to bed.
This is our life.
This is, for now, who we intend to be.