i’ve been thinking about what it means to live a small life vs a big life. these are probably not the best terms for it, but it’s what i’ve got right now. to me, the definitions are as follows: a small life is a slow and private life. one where you kinda mind your own business and take care to make the bubble of your existence—your family, your home, your friendships, your hobbies—comfortable and satisfying. you don’t post on social media much because your life is for you and your loved ones. you are maybe more concerned with impressing your co-workers or neighbors than you are like, some random follower in Oregon. you spend your time on projects that are mostly for you: journaling, scrapbooking, cooking, something like that. And then a big life is more outward focused. for the purposes of this exploration i don’t mean like, a desire to become a celebrity or something. but a desire to be seen and recognized for your work on a grander scale. this might be the people who want to open a business or build a social media platform or publish a book or record an album. there’s this desire to connect with others through something greater than themselves, or like this need to reach people beyond the sphere of their own experiential awareness.
‘small life’ and ‘big life’ really are not the best terms, because it makes a ‘small life’ sound somehow inferior i think, but i don’t mean that. i’m thinking about this because i really see the appeal of both, and i feel pulled in both directions in different ways, and i see now, typing this, that the answer is ‘it doesn’t have to be one or the other!! you can have both!!’ but my brain does not do well with gray areas. i feel like it takes so much more energy for these opposing lifestyles to co-exist.
when I lived in LA, life felt bigger. i was eating the best food i’d ever eaten, at restaurants that served amuse-bouches and had the waiter come and fold your napkin for you if you got up to go to the bathroom. i was at a movie theatre watching an indie movie next to colin farrell. i was paying $5 for comedy shows starring a dude that was a year away from being your favorite side character on an NBC sitcom. vanderpump rules was filming outside my fuckin window yall!! phoebe bridgers and conor oberst were hobnobbin in the balcony seats at the national show! im reading this with some self-awareness like, ok brag queen??, but this was honestly just life there (privileged for sure, but i think not unusual for white, middle class life). it was exciting, and most people were very trendy and beautiful, and it felt like people were doing things and stuff was happening and i could do things and stuff could happen to me, too.
the first time i came to ann arbor, i remember sitting in our hotel and journaling (with a crippling UTI that i attempted to cure naturally and which failed, thus perhaps granting me some sort of bacterial clarity that i desperately needed). peter and i knew that we were feeling ready for a change. after being quarantined during the pandemic, we stopped going to restaurants and shows the same way. our friends got important degrees and jobs and coupled up and we started to see them less. our favorite thing to do became reading and writing during the day and watching bad movies and drinking wine at night. did we need to be in a super-trafficky, super expensive city for that? and yet! colin farrell! i journaled about the people i admire who live there. even stupid little things, like the hosts of the Real Housewives podcast i listen to or melissa broder, my favorite writer. i have loved hearing cool, creative women talk about their lives, their lives in LA, and thinking, “oh, i’ve been there,” or “i know exactly where she’s referring to,” or laughing extra hard at their semi-funny throwaway comment because yes, i too totally have an opinion about the local XYZ.
again, i self-consciously read this back and am like, that sounds insane. i hope it doesn’t. or maybe you just have to be in it to get it. something about being in the midst of so many creative people and trendy places just made me feel special. and possible. and on the cusp of something. i was afraid that moving somewhere far from that would make me irrelevant or boring or out of touch. but as i scribbled in my notebook while my urethra burned away, i realized, being around action doesn’t make me special. I make me special. conor oberst still doesn’t know who i am (ugh). what, am i like, cool for simply seeing him? what am i gonna like, text my friend about it? and she’s gonna text me back, that’s so cool! and then im gonna tuck my phone into my pocket, smile smugly into an empty room and spend the night thinking about how fucking cool i am? is that my “big life” in LA?
so now i live in michigan and i enjoy cooking local vegetables and i follow a bunch of small farms on instagram and i drink whole milk with the cream top and i still wear clothes from reformation sometimes but i don’t feel they’re well received and i am writing a novel and i am publishing this diary and i do kind of hope i get more followers because i think it would help me sell my book one day and i do feel jealous of the restaurants my LA friends post about and i still get the references the Housewives podcast hosts make and i am doing some small projects just for myself and for no one else to see and i am doing other projects for you and for other people to see and i am trying to believe that small or big are not better than one another, that both really can be pretty beautiful, and the important thing is what I am doing, no matter who or what is around me.
i made a quiche this morning and didn’t post a picture of it. i wrote 337 words of the novel i hope you read some day. both felt nice.
when i worked at an unnamed production company colin farrell once came in three hours late for a meeting, looking so unlike himself (read: scruffy, in a fedora) that i didn’t recognize him and was like bro who are you and how tf did you get onto the warner brothers lot….he was very kind tho!
i am a ‘big life’ girl i think. i have this deep need to be perceived, for better or for worse. something in my little heart is convinced that if i can just show myself to the world, if i can get it right, if i can put myself out there, take enough risks, etc. someone will find me and see me and love me and then all my feelings of loneliness will disappear! of course this probably isn’t true and most of my loneliness is relatively unfounded anyway. but writing for me has always been in search of connection…i feel compelled to publish as much as i feel compelled to do the writing itself.
THIS !! Not a word wasted