I’m My Own Hero (But I Could Never Convince My Self That I’d Get There)

I don’t know how it works for other people, but I have archetypical versions of myself – there’s a part of me who will forever be sixteen and howlingly lonely, eating isolated in crowded high school cafeterias because that’s who I was at sixteen.

Likewise, at nineteen there’s an archetypical Ferrett who hosted Norwalk’s finest (and Norwalk’s only) Rocky Horror Picture Show, a slutty showman in endless dysfunctional relationships who compensated for insecurity with great bold flourishes.

But most importantly: Borders Ferrett.

At twenty-seven, I got my first corporate job, working for Borders Books, and that was the first time I felt like An Adult: I’d moved out of my parent’s house, lived in my own house (well, a rented half a house, but still), I’d made friends in Ann Arbor, I had a social life.

I was a grown-up.

And Jesus, I was a wreck.

I think of everything I didn’t do then – I didn’t exercise, which led to my heart problems. I didn’t go to the dentist, which led to my teeth problems. I didn’t write regularly, because what if my novel got rejected, what then? I didn’t call home enough, I didn’t take my psych medications…

And all those were things I wanted to do. I just… didn’t.

And I wish I knew why. I have some clues, of course – lesser willpower, fear of success, yadda yadda – but to a large extent twenty-seven-year-old Borders Ferrett’s motivations are opaque to me.

Yet over the past year, another Ferrett has arisen: Old Ferrett. I’m 51, that’s getting on in years, and yet here I am working out enough to have abs and going without sugar for two months, with six published books out and potentially more in the pipeline, doing woodworking while I smoke a good cigar and drink bourbon (on the non-power tools days) and also being in several long-term, stable relationships with still-smokin’ hot sex…

I would have been Borders Ferrett’s fucking hero.

And he would never have seen himself as being capable of me.

I think of my young Borders Ferrett and how he had everything he needed for success – I ponder every conclusion I came to that changed my life, and sure enough, someone had told me where I was going wrong. My mother knew what I was doing that made me unhappy, my Uncle Tommy did, my friends did…

Yet I was so attached to my insecurities that I fought to be weaker than I was.

And if I could go back in time to tell Borders Ferrett, “Hey, buddy, you can have everything you ever dreamed of,” he would have been a wildcat of rationales, telling me all the reasons I could never be me, even though I would have very concrete evidence in the form of me that I could one day be me.

(Pause to ponder how interesting time travel grammar is.)

And I wonder what I’ll be in twenty years, with luck. I hope my older self will be even more stronger and even more badass in terms of protecting his friends and fearlessly flinging his art into the world.

And, like me, I think Future Ferrett might have come so far that he’ll have forgotten the path.

I don’t think less of Borders Ferrett. He was doing the best he could. He didn’t understand, and it’d take decades of experience to slowly grind down those bad opinions of his, that negative self, those wretched habits.

Because honestly, half the reason I do as well as I do these days is that I’ve learned how to outsmart my own negative instincts. I have to work out in the morning, because I am a goddamned excuse engine, and if I get to 6:00 at night I know my bastard brain will manufacture an excuse to skip leg day. I have to write in isolation because if I think “Will people like this story I’m working on?” then I’ll panic, so I have to write my stories for me and me alone and just hope they kinda resonate. I have to know which days I can write controversial essays and which days I go, “Not my circus, not my monkeys” because I’m low-energy and will hurt myself if I engage poorly.

I wish I could convince myself. But I know I couldn’t, not in that short a span of time. It took months, years, decades of face-planting failure after face-planting failure before I finally learned, and who I am today is very distant.

But I would have been my hero. That’s nice to know.

Even if I never would have believed that was me.

I Hate It When People Recommend Music To Me

So I’ve gotten into one of my I LOVE NEW MUSIC rampages, which I do about every six to eight months – these temporary quests where I comb Spotify for all the hot tracks that I will be playing on repeat for the next few years.

But I hate it when people recommend music to me. You know why?

Because most people don’t actually recommend music.

See, I think “recommending” has an element of “I know you well enough to think you’ll like this” embedded in it – I’m not recommending a Clive Barker horror story to an eight-year-old, nor a sweet romance story to someone who only likes Clive Barker horror stories.

Yet whenever I’ve said, “Hey, I like this music, it’s kinda nu-metal with an edge of rap to it” people just blare out whatever they like regardless of whether it’s even close – “HAVE YOU HEARD THIS ACOUSTIC COVER OF A 1940s JAZZ SONG?!?!?”

It’s alienating. It’s like I’m not even there – that I’m just a mirror to shout enthusiasm into.

Now, of course that’s different from someone celebrating their own musical tastes – “I’m bopping to this new K-Pop tune” is both awesome and encouraged. But me opening up the door for “I like this stuff, what else is like this?” usually gets met with a bellow of “IT’S NOT LIKE THAT BUT I LIKE THIS SO FUCK YOUR PREFERENCES HERE’S MINE”

To which I’m like, “…do you sell people on bands with that approach?” It’s the ol’ “Construction workers whistling at hot ladies” trick in that I’ve never seen it work myself, but I assume it must succeed sometime… that, or it’s kind of terrifying how many people are doing it with so many shitty results.

But you! You I trust. Maybe.

Because so many people have asked, “What are you listening to, Ferrett?”, I compiled a Spotify list of my current favorite tunes.

What’s there is mostly pop and hard rock, but there’s some weird edges thrown in there because I am super-eclectic with tastes ranging from They Might Be Giants to deep Zappa to Home Free, and by Lord am I not expecting anyone to follow me down my path.

BUT. If you listen to a song there and go, “This artist has a lot in common with the vibes there,” then hit me up. I don’t really hate genuine recommendations. I’m just… burnt by the number of folks who blast their own radio in through my car window.

Anyway! A bunch of possibly new music for you! Go and look! (And friend me on Spotify if you like, for whatever that means. I don’t know what the benefits are, but some folks like it.)

You’re Not Demanding Things Of The Person, You’re Demanding Them Of The Relationship

I said this yesterday:

“Remember: There’s a ton of ways to do polyamory. It’s not wrong to demand what you want out of a relationships; it is wrong to demand that any relationships that don’t do that are somehow flawed.”

To which some folks asked, “Demand? Is it healthy to have a relationship where people are demanding things?”

My reply is that it’s unhealthier to have a relationship where people don’t demand things.

You are, whether you want to use the word “demand” or not, quietly demanding things in your relationships – baseline expectations that you probably don’t even think about, because they’re so non-negotiable you couldn’t consider a relationship without it.

“I demand that my partner doesn’t hurt me nonconsensually” is a big one for a lot of people, as is “I demand they only have sex with people of a legal age.” But even excluding those unthinkables – and you shouldn’t – there’s plenty of other baseline demands like “I demand they treat my job with respect” and “I demand they stay faithful in the ways I define fidelity.”

“But those aren’t demands, Ferrett….”

Really? Are they negotiable for you? Will you look at someone seriously threatening to cut your throat with a knife if you ever go out in that outfit again and go, “Well, maybe if they brandished a paring knife?”

No, there’s certain lines people can’t cross with you, or they don’t get to stay in your life in this way. That’s extremely healthy behavior.

That’s a demand.

The trick is that your baseline needs are not necessarily a demand of the person. There are certainly dysfunctional relationships where people find folks who are utterly not what they need in life and try to warp them to fit, like banging a piece of tin to wrap around an anvil. And that’s a terrible idea.

It’s true that good relationships are built on negotiations.

But good negotiations come from knowing when it’s time to walk away from the table.

As such, it’s good to think about your non-negotiables – and they don’t all have to be life-threatening. These are the things that will absolutely break you if you try to bend the rules on ’em, and they can be both extremely specific and seemingly trivial to other people.

For example, if someone I live with is out late, they have to call to tell me when they’ll be back, or else with each passing hour I can’t stop imagining that they’re dead in a ditch somewhere. I don’t care where they are, I just need to know they’re safe now and when I need to start up my worry-clock again – I panic, and all that panic vanishes the minute they text me “I’m at a party, it’s great, I’ll be back before 4:00 am.”

(Just kidding. My wife and I are elderly. We don’t go out to parties any more.)

But the trick with that is that I’m not necessarily demanding the person I’m living with has to change! (Though it’d be nice.) I’m saying, “This is a thing I require to be in a relationship where we live together, and if you can’t do that, then we can’t be in that type of relationship.”

That relationship can shift! I don’t worry about the people I’m not living with, so maybe that person moves out… or I do.

Likewise, if someone in an intense romantic relationship can’t provide your required level of intimacy or fidelity, maybe you downshift the relationship to FWB or even just F. Maybe your mom won’t stop tromping on your boundaries, so you shift that from “Weekly conversations” to “Monthly texts.”

If the person can change, great! But the demand is on the relationship, not the person.

Which is scary, because in romance, those demands can mean “We can’t date” and no one wants a breakup; it’s easier to try to browbeat someone into changing. And again, if they’re amenable, fine, but often altering a person to suit your needs is an act of harm.

And also… make super-sure that these demands are actually non-negotiable, and not just things you really like having. Would you actually leave if that happened, or would you just gripe a lot? It’s fine to say “My partner and I have to have sex every day,” but if everything else is wonderful and you’re only having (very hot) sex two to three times a week, is that a “demand” so much as “my ideal”?

Ideals are different than demands. Demands are what you need because you will break in fundamental ways without them. Ideals are what you’d want in a vacuum, but it turns out when you balance them out among all the other good qualities a relationship provides, you can kinda slack on one individual point when the rest is eminently satisfying.

And yeah, sometimes demands turn out to be ideals, and vice-versa! I never said this was easy. Learning how you function with other people is a constant process, not an event you graduate from.

Finally, maybe you don’t like the term “demand.” Fine, I don’t care what you call it – a necessity, a dealbreaker, the core stuff. But if you’re healthy, you do have ’em. And learning what those non-negotiable aspects of your relationships are makes you both wiser and more able to change relationships when they become unhealthy for you.

And if you’re angry that someone might require something of you to remain in a relationship with you, well, that might be a sign that there are certain relationships people shouldn’t get into with you. Good people understand that other people have boundaries for a reason. (Great people support and expand other people’s safe boundaries.)

My Latest Podcast Is Out, My Latest Newsletter Is Out, I’m Out All Over

1) My newest “And We Will Plunder Their Prose” podcast is out! How did Seanan McGuire write a very passive character in a very dynamic way? Find out!

2) My latest newsletter is out! This one’s called “Can You Control Whether You’re A Bestselling Author?, a.k.a. ‘Sins Of The Publishing Industry.'” And if you’re just starting out writing, there is some vital advice for you in there.

(Oh, and don’t forget that you can, y’know, subscribe to the newsletter.)

3) Don’t forget that I still have my Board of Happiness ™ that you can contribute to, if you have something that fits in an envelope! (Just send me an email, I’ll shoot you the address.) Here’s this week’s decoration, and it is indeed loading itself down with flair: