Friday 5: The Lou

1. In the movie of your life, which actor plays your arch nemesis? Ooh, I don’t know! One could argue it’s the same actor who plays me.
2. What brought on your most recent case of the blues? I wouldn’t call it the blues, but here’s something I’ve been feeling weird about. They say that when you have a baby, your friendships with people who don’t have kids will change, but honestly, that hasn’t been my experience, for the most part. Most of my friends don’t have kids, but that hasn’t changed much. But lately, I’ve been feeling that difference more. I one million percent respect anyone’s decision about whether or not to have kids, but some days, it feels like there’s a massive chasm between me and some of my childfree friends and me, and not even because of the difference in lifestyles, necessarily, but because sometimes it feels like they can’t even understand why someone would want to have a child. And this part is probably more in my head as a result of a lifetime of overthinking, but then it starts to feel like your choice to have kids is being judged. I also think people are convinced life sucks after you have kids, and I absolutely understand that for some people, spending their days with a three-year-old like I do sounds like hell, but I’m having a good time.
3. What was the gateway drug (used figuratively, please!) leading to one of your obsessions or addictions (also used figuratively) today? The best example I can think of is getting into Good Charlotte as a teenager. I wrote a little bit about this about a year ago, but basically, some other girls in my class were in their alternative phase and were playing music during a class activity or something, and I absolutely loved what they had on. I wasn’t on good terms with them, so I couldn’t ask the song and band names, but I furiously looked it all up and downloaded it when I got home. I fell in love with Good Charlotte first–it may have been before this, I honestly can’t remember–but I discovered a bunch of other bands in the scene at the time. And I remember being on forums for bands like AFI, who I fell hard in love with, and people would complain about how Good Charlotte wasn’t really punk and all this stuff, but someone said they were a gateway to alternative music, and that was absolutely true for me. One band discovery spiraled into another, and even though my taste in music is really eclectic now, it does lean alternative, and although it’s quite possibly I would’ve found some of these bands eventually anyway, I wouldn’t love them now if I didn’t start with Good Charlotte. And that also led me to some of the greats, like David Bowie. I was familiar with his biggest hits, of course, but part of finding bands through other bands was following the trail of influences, and in the alternative scene, that typically means lots of punk, post-punk, and new wave. Really, if I don’t fall in love with Good Charlotte at 23, I don’t see The Cure live 20 years later.
4. In your field of expertise, what is generally considered a cardinal sin? Plagiarism. Being nasty to other creatives. For me personally, I also consider being very gatekeep-y to be a cardinal sin, things like thinking one form of writing has more value than another or being dismissive of certain formats, genres, etc. Writing, say, a novel has a very different skill set than, say, poetry, but I don’t think it’s fair to say one is harder than the other or better or worse. Or dictating who counts as a “writer.” There’s so much imposter syndrome and self-doubt among writers that I don’t think it’s fair to tell someone their time and effort don’t count if they’re not published, you know? I mean, think of the writers whose work was published posthumously. Ooh, also, arguing with editors. And I don’t mean disagreeing over edits. I mean like when people get rejected and respond with a screed about how dare they reject them and they don’t know what they’re missing and their work is so much better than whatever they’ve chosen to publish in its place. I think most people aren’t like this, but every so often, an editor posts a screenshot on social media…
5. How many people named Louis (or some variation) do you know? None!

From Friday 5.