Ever Look at a piece of writing and think, “how’d they do that?” Well, in this series, I’m taking you behind the screens, past the paper and pen and directly into my writing process, from concept to final product. This is, “How I Write.”
I got the idea for my Perhaps the One Benefit of Jealousy post shortly after the incident that inspired it, in particular hearing that preacher’s words about living vicariously through others.
This whole idea of living vicariously through others is something that I realized I had a bad habit of doing a few years ago, which I wrote about it in a previously iteration of this blog. Yet, I wasn’t aware it was something I still struggle with until I heard that preacher that night.
Since I’ve trying to be introspective, I wanted to get to the bottom of living vicariously through people and I think this post helped me do that.
So for this addition of How I Write, I’m going to break the entire post done, section by section. Even though I thought about this post for quite some time before I wrote it, it was written last-minute, just two hours before I posted it (kinda like this one), and I haven’t read it since then. The bold writing below is an exact copy of my original post, which you may want to read first.
Let’s go over it together, shall we…
I recently had an experience that brought that scene to mind. It aired back in 2003. It was season 3, episode 18 of Girlfriends, they titled it “Runaway Bridesmaid.”
When I thought about writing this post, the scene in this episode of Girlfriends where Joan hysterically repeats, “I’m happy for her,” came to mind, however I didn’t know how to insert a clip so I just inserted the whole episode that I found on YouTube. The video quality is horrible, but I think the powerful point of being jealous of someone else’s success comes out just the same.
I was leery of using this clip because I thought that it may confuse, you, the reader, regarding the point I was trying to make about my jealously. Mine was not a jealousy that sought to sabotage someone else’s happiness, as Joan sort of does in this episode, it was one that was solely detrimental to myself.
Overall, I’m a fan of Girlfriends, particularly for the culture. And if someone wants to buy me a box set of all 8 seasons for Christmas, I won’t object, but there were many times when I wasn’t too pleased with the shows writing or acting.
Looking back, the second sentence in this paragraph is way too long. Also, that “shows writing or acting” should have been “show’s writing or acting.” That’s show’s with an apostrophe as it’s possessive. Stick with me, you’ll see that my grammar is not the best, but I try.
When I first saw this episode, back when I was 23, I didn’t think this scene was executed very well. It’s not like I didn’t already have my fair (if you can say that) share of traumas by that age, that would allow me to empathize with what Joan was going through. I think, probably as a defense mechanism, I just got really good at tucking shit away, moving on before I even realized the effects of the pain.
In that third line it should be, “that WOULDN’T allow me to empathize,” instead of WOULD. But I just thought it was interesting how when I first saw this episode back in the day, and even with the reruns I saw back in the day, I thought it was really weird that Joan kept repeating she was happy for her. I was also surprised that the disappointments, hardships and rejections I’d already experienced at that age, didn’t make me more sensitive to Joan’s plight. I was surprised at how judgmental and dismissive I was at that scene. The last line in this section is how I concluded I could feel that way.
And so I looked at this scene and thought it was overacted, and thought the message just wasn’t conveyed. Like I knew what they were doing, I knew what they were trying to convey, but I didn’t feel it.
Here, I’m justsharing what I thought about the scene back then.
Fast-forward 17 years – a lot has happened since then – and I’m up late at night, actually early morning, around 2:30am, just getting around to going to bed, when for whatever reason, I pick up my phone and look at Instagram right quick. The post that pops up is from Elaine Welteroth, the former beauty editor, turned youngest editor-in-chief in Conde Nast history, turned Project Runway judge, turned author was there on Instagram informing her followers that she got the job as co-host on The Talk, after just moving to LA like three weeks prior.
Clearly I’m a fan of long sentences. And don’t ask me about the grammar of this thing. It’s a lot going on here – I did my best.
And what do you think my reaction was, jealousy? Well, you would be wrong.
I’m not much of the jealous type. That’s not to say that the feeling never comes over me, but when it does, it’s rare and it’s mild, and it goes away quickly. I’m more of the type who would be happy for her.
As a matter of fact, I was so happy for her, that I congratulated her in her comments immediately. After seeing that good news, I didn’t even bother scrolling anymore. I put my phone down, turned the TV on, and began the process of trying to go to sleep.
Okay, so with these last four paragraphs I was trying to do a little comparison and contrast to that scene in Girlfriends. I let you know that a lot of time has passed since I first saw that scene, perhaps leading you to believe that I was about to admit that I was jealous of Elaine Welteroth, like Joan was jealous of Toni. However instead of saying that I was jealous of her, I say that I was happy for her, which is the line that Joan keeps repeating in that scene. This may seem weird given the fact that I later come out and say I was jealous. I think I choose this method of developing the post to show the insidious nature of living vicariously through others, and how you can let your emotions trick you into ignoring the truth.
I left the TV on a Christian channel and some time later, when I was half in and out of sleep, I heard a preacher saying something about the dangers of living vicariously through others. I remember him saying something like, “What are you so happy for? That blessing was for them not for you.” I dozed back off to sleep and didn’t catch anymore of his sermon. But when I woke up later in the morning, that part that I did hear stayed with me.
I think God speaks to us in so many ways, it’s not always through a preacher’s sermon, sometimes it’s through someone’s actions, or a conversation overheard from passersby. But this time, it couldn’t have been more literal. It’s funny, that the line I reference here is the only line I got from the sermon out of his entire 30 minute show, and all the other shows that come on throughout the night on that station, that’s what I overheard. And I took it as none other than a Word from the Lord.
It got me to thinkin’ about how happy I was for Elaine before I went to sleep. And I wasn’t Joan-from-this-scene happy, like I was literally, truly happy for her. But after hearing that snippet of that pastor’s message, “It didn’t happen to you, it happened to them,” I can’t help but wonder was I living vicariously through Elaine? Afterall, I don’t know her. And I don’t mean that in a Mariah Carey throwing shade sort of way. I mean it goes without saying that I literally don’t know her. I had no part in her success, and yet after reading her post, a feeling of joy swept over me that was so strong, you’d think I was the one who got the job as a new co-host on The Talk.
In this paragraph I wish I would have conveyed that I got to thinkin’ after I woke up later. I also noticed that I changed the pastors words from, “that blessing was for them not for you,” to “it didn’t happen to you, it happened to them.” Clearly I don’t remember the exact words, but the concepts the same. So in this paragraph, I’m really trying to be introspective and understand my feelings and where they are coming from.
Then I began to ruminate over it, going back and forth between my joy, and that pastor’s words, “that blessing didn’t happen to you, it happened to them.” And as I forced myself to uncover the truth, whatever the result may have been, I discovered, that like Joan, I wasn’t as happy for her as my emotions initially lead me to believe.
Notice I changed the pastor’s words again, even though I keep putting it in quotes – ugh! These are some of the setbacks that come with writing at the last minute. Anyways, in this paragraph I’ll really peeling back the layers of this thing, to get to the next paragraph.
I. Was. Jealous.
Whoop, there it is! I didn’t want to put this here. I actually wanted to save it for later. This post would have been totally different had I spent more time writing it. But given the time I allotted myself, I didn’t know how to take it out. I didn’t know how to make it flow. I felt I needed something there, even at the risk of being redundant so I just left it.
I think part of these misplaced feelings has to do with the fact that I’m a Christian, and my faith teaches me against jealousy. I truly believe in the saying that you hear amongst Christians, that “what God has for me, is for me.” But that’s a simple phrase for a complex act. There’s a lot that goes into that. Eventually one gets sick and tired of waiting.
Okay, there’s a lot in this little paragraph – I could write essay upon essay about. But let me try and break it down for you a bit. So, if you follow the teachings of the Bible, then you know that jealousy is not a good thing. However, I don’t think it’s so much feeling jealous that’s bad, after all, that’s natural, it’s lingering in those feelings and acting on them that causes the problem. For me, one of the things that’s helped me to keep my jealous feelings at bay is the idea that what God has for me is for me. Knowing that has allowed me to be happy for others when they get something I want, or they see a dream come true, because I tell myself what God has for me is for me, and if I don’t have it, it’s not for me, but it’s coming. I’m just waiting on it. But like I said in the paragraph, you get sick of waiting, especially when you see others fulfilling their dreams. And I thought what better way to explain that than a real-life example, that doesn’t involve fictional characters or celebrities that people could relate to, and thus came the following story.
I remember in 2006 when I landed a temp job as a sales assistant at a book publishing company. That job came right on time because I had just moved to NYC, I had no job and I was running out of money. The job was nowhere near a dream job, but it paid an okay wage and it was easy. After about a month they offered me a full-time position paying $27,000 a year for 35 hours a week, which was around what the temp agency was paying me. I’d managed to negotiate them up to $33,000. Then an incident occurred (I won’t get into it now) and they rescinded the offer. Meanwhile, I stayed on as a temp while they interviewed other people and eventually hired someone else for the position. After they hired a girl, I was tasked with ordering the office supplies for her cube before she arrived. Now I could have been bitter, and did a piss-poor job with the task, but instead, I flipped through that catalog and ordered the nicest items I could find: a Lucite pen holder and stapler, and all sorts of pretty things. I ordered her supplies as if I were ordering them for myself, and I told myself that one day I was going to work at a company that would be so happy to have me coming, they would also order me nice things.
I had a bone to pick with the first sentence, but again, I was short on time, and didn’t know how to fix it in the time allotted. I don’t know why I put it paid an okay wage. I guess it’s because before that job, I mostly worked minimum-wage jobs, or part-time jobs that paid more, but didn’t give enough hours to give me a $33,000 annual salary. However, even back in 2006, $33,000 in New York City was pennies. You couldn’t live on your own on that, you couldn’t really live comfortably. It would have been enough to get-by, living with roommates or like in a 5th floor walk-up. I remember they were building new apartment buildings where they had to a lot some for low-income, and they were going to have a lottery for the low-income, and I didn’t even qualify for the low-come because you had to make like $50,000. So yeah, that was one of the impressions I got of NYC, while I think it’s a great place for young professionals, the living circumstances are not easy. It’s like there’s no middle-class, you’re either rich or you’re poor, and both extremes are all around you, comingling. But anyway, I love this story about working at that book publishing company. At that time it was hard for me to go through, and office politics was something new to me, that I didn’t know how to conform to. I guess I look back on it with fondest because I’ve moved on, and it’s so relatable.
And I think that’s been my philosophy ever since then, perhaps a way of coping — one day it’s gonna be me. Yet here I am, over 14 years later, and I’ve never worked in an office that was that happy to have me. I’m still chasing my dream, looking to grab hold of that elusive one day.
It’s interesting, I’ve had so many jobs after that book publishing job, some in an office setting, others more retail, customer service. But every time I got a new office job, where I had my own desk, I always wondered, is this going to be the time where I arrive at work and they’ve set up my desk all nice and pretty like I did for that girl at the book publishing job? It never happened. I was always relegated to whatever was open, a desk that barely had supplies, and/or was still stocked with some of the previous occupant’s things. Or even better, a desk that wasn’t solely mine, and that changed with every shift. Nobody cared that I was coming. Then it dawned on me – and I didn’t incorporate this in this post – that I’m the one who’s supposed to create that office space of my dreams. I guess it’s already started with my orange filing cabinet. All this time I’ve been waiting on me.
In the meantime, and in between time, I’ve just been happy for “her.” The hers that have come before and increasingly after me. The hers that are older and increasingly younger than me. Any her that’s achieved her dream. Any her but me. Instead, through them, I live vicariously.
Here I’m just explaining how I’ve coped with not achieving my career dreams – being happy for others helped me deal with not achieving my dreams.
So while I continued to contemplate about why I was so ridiculously happy for Elaine, as if the job was going to me, I began to realize that maybe it’s because somewhere inside I believe that that type of opportunity (the opportunity to land a dream job) will never happen for me, and the only way I can experience that type of joy is to live vicariously through someone else.
First of all, that about does not belong there. It should just be “contemplate why” instead of “contemplate about why” – that’s so annoying. But here in this paragraph, I just got down to the nitty-gritty. Whether it’s my fault, someone else’s fault or a combination of both, I’ve experienced so many years of rejection, disappointment, betrayal and dreams deferred that I’ve often questioned whether or not my dreams would ever come true, yet I still wanted to experience some semblance of what it would feel like. I think that’s what living vicariously through others gave me. Interestingly enough, it’s also what gives me the characters in the scripts and other fiction that I write. So, let nothing be wasted. All thing work together for God to those who love the Lord😊!
It was a jarring revelation. It wasn’t that I was truly excessively happy for her, so much as I didn’t believe in me. And when I allowed that truth to settle in I realized that I was jealous, and that it was okay to have that feeling. Because my jealousy was basically letting me know that I don’t want to sit back and only be happy for someone else. It let me know that I gotta do what I gotta do to get where I want to go, so that I can also be happy for me.
What a beautiful revelation. This is how I got the title. Instead of allowing my jealousy to wish ill on someone else, or other negative effects of jealousy, it allowed me to see that I was not content just being happy for others, I also wanted to be happy for myself.
God didn’t create me to simply be a spectator of others realizing their dreams, He’s got some lined up for me as well. I just have to come off the sidelines, and hop onto this moving train. Next stop, my dreams.
Congratulations to all those who have the courage to pursue and achieve their dreams.
And I am still happy for you… I’m just reserving some of that joy for me!
These last three are kinda repetitive. They are just wrapping up everything I said earlier. They are just like the icing on the cake, with the hopes of leaving you with a little warm and fuzzies at the end of your read.
Welp, it’s been real ya’ll. That’s how I write. In this case, I thought about it a lot and then I just went with it.
Until next time.
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