Barbara Sher has famously said that “you can’t get enough of what you don’t really want.”
When you want to go on a nice long hike, you won’t be satisfied by sitting at the coffee shop writing, no matter how many treats you give yourself. When you want to read trashy novels, you won’t be satisfied by reading high literature, no matter how good they are.
You can get caught up in what you think you’re supposed to want, and then feel restless and dissatisfied when you get it, because it wasn’t what you really wanted.
But instead of recognizing that it wasn’t what you really wanted, you blame yourself or think that if you just keep pushing through, you’re going to love it sooner or later.
If you’re dissatisfied, you aren’t getting what you want
It’s risky to acknowledge what you really want, especially if what you really want doesn’t fit the narrative you’re trying to live or that the people around you are living.
It turns out I’m a much bigger fan of popular culture than I am of “high art.” When I was a graduate student in English, I felt guilty about watching romantic comedies and liking pop music, because it was all about the Coen brothers and musicians I’d never heard of.
My then-boyfriend was obsessed with Keanu Reeves, but that was different because he somehow shoehorned Reeves’ acting into Deleuzian theory. Another friend of ours was obsessed with Arnold Schwartzenegger, but that was different because he wrote papers about him.
I didn’t want to analyze it, theorize about it, or write about it. I just wanted to enjoy it. I kept a lot of what I loved to myself.
Aesthetics are small potatoes when it turns out you don’t want academia and everyone around you thinks it’s the brass ring. When the story is that the academic life is wonderful and flexible, but it’s just stressing you the hell out, trying to talk yourself into seeing it as wonderful and flexible isn’t going to make you happier about it.
The only way to be satisfied is to go after what you really want
If you’re unhappy, take some time to think about what it is you really, actually want. Not what you’re supposed to want, or what you think you should want because you’d be a different kind of person if you wanted it, but what you actually want.
When you can name it, you can figure out how to get it. But if you don’t acknowledge it, you’ll remain dissatisfied. And this life is too interesting and rich for that.
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