failure to launch

I have started powerlifting. It’s been almost a year. My coach told me to sign up to a novice competition, so I did, and then he told me that preparing for this competition will almost certainly teach me how to fail. The more I train and the more exhausted I am and the more I try to lift heavier and heavier weights, the more I’ll fail to lift them. It just won’t be possible. Apparently this is a normal part of competition prep, but it did not impress me; I’ve already had more than enough sessions where I’ve crawled out from under some bar or couldn’t figure out which handle to use on the machines. It’s been a year! When do I stop being gym baby and start being a big, strong gym adult?

But the more I watch powerlifting competitions, the more I see how much failure features, even for the pros. Huge lifts are attempted and barely make it off the ground; arms shake to press weight overhead, and it seems like the lift is good, then it’s ruled out on a technicality. This particular competition, more lifters failed their final deadlift than completed them. Part of me thinks, how mortifying, and part of me wants to join them and just crack on.

I dunno man. Failure is boring! Or more accurately, being obsessed with failure and trying to avoid failure is boring. And exhausting. I told my partner that I spend most of everyday either thinking about how much I’m letting down everyone in my life or trying to avoid that very same thing, and she asked me in response, ‘Every DAY?!’ I’m tired! And slightly mortified at having failed at breaking out of this cycle, at caring about failure so much.

Because if I’m honest,¹ it’s not only my personal failures that are at the centre of my morning and midday and late-night ruminations. It’s the interpersonal failures. The collective ones. The failures of friendships, the failures of parents, the failures of movements. I’m getting older and I see the same shit happening, the same shallow conversations, the same arguments, the same spinning in circles while people are murdered and the world burns. It’s hard not to become cynical! Sincerity is starting to feel lost to me, at least in writing, and I fear the other parts of me might start to abandon it too - which in turn makes me despair, because I worked so hard to become less like the sardonic teenager who earned the nickname Daria and more like the earnest and honest person I wanted to be (and wanted others to be, too). Being cynical is too easy; resisting it feels like I’m on my last set of the day and I’m sweaty and my thighs hurt and I want to go home and I’m questioning why I even started to do this in the first place, but on repeat every day for the rest of my life.

What to do with all this anxiety? This rage? Isn’t this the same thing I’ve been asking myself for the last five, fifteen, thirty years?² Like Solange I feel like I’ve done it all: drank, danced, slept around, got a job, stayed in bed, moved states, moved countries, quit my job, deleted tumblr (!!) then started it again. And like you, dear reader, none of it brought me any relief. Mostly it’s just made my shoulders super tight from so much laying down and scrolling.

So crack on. Get back on the mechanical horse. That’s why I’m here, writing a newsletter again. Somehow the memo that Tinyletter was closing passed me by and landed in my spam folder, so my previous newsletter is lost to the internet void.³ It doesn’t really matter; I’d struggled to write there for a while. Another failure. I hate the idea of selling myself as someone who is either immune to failure or someone who fails so much, publicly, that it becomes their image,⁴ part of their claim to authenticity, being so real, realer than the rest, so real that you should believe me and pay attention to me and maybe even pay me!

But I can’t avoid the fact that some of the things I like the most in the world are writing and thinking about myself (not in that order). So why not join in on sending words out into the world? Why not reflect on the words I’ve read and place them somewhere I won’t forget them? Why not put on my best performance of writer at work, deep thinker amongst the masses, person who can see through it all even though she has no fucking idea what is happening and is subject to the same forces as everyone else?

It could be worse. At least I’m not on Twitter anymore.

Things I’ve read

I’ve been struggling to read. More failures! Every time I read it feels like I’ve just remembered to breathe for the first time in months. Dunno why I insist on holding my breath.

• Peripathetic: Notes on (un)belonging by Cher Tan - made me feel like writing nonfiction might be worth it (and even fun!); made me feel less alone with all the strange little things I do and all the strange little thoughts in my head. Unsurprisingly, some of its many themes are linked to what I’ve written here so far.

• Next on my list are books for research: Queer City: Gay London from Romans to the Present Day by Peter Ackroyd, Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman, Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (which I’ve started but haven’t finished) and How Football Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer. What am I researching? I’ll leave that up to you.⁵

• I also bought a bunch of zines at Other Worlds last week, including ‘Making Art as an Anti-Capitalist’ and a printed version of ‘How to Prepare Yourself for the Collapse of the Industrial Publishing System’. Haven’t read them, but maybe some day soon.

• I go on reddit.com/r/rupaulsdragrace every day. Sue me!

Things from me

Seeing as it’s been so long since I wrote, there’s a lot! But some of my faves:

• Wrote this very … intense? essay for Soft Stir about finding a place to exist between life and death. Glad I wrote it, but trying to write about less despondent topics now!⁶

• Interviewed director Jub Clerc for The Big Issue about her film SWEET AS. Mostly enjoyed it because it was my first ever proper interview and it felt like a good easy conversation - Jub and I started off by laughing over me wearing her cousin’s earrings (which a friend had sent to me the day before). Because I’m so slow I don’t think you can get a copy of it anywhere, but here’s a photo so you know it happened.

• Still proud of this review of Claire Coleman’s Enclave, because it was the first time I reviewed something that I struggled to finish reading/watching. Reviewing other Aboriginal writers/artists still feels vexed for me, but I think I did the best I could here to be compassionate and fair while still lending a critical eye to the text (which is what we’re all always asking for!)

Until next time, take care.

Ellen