Get a GRIP

And other pep talks I've had with myself this winter

So here’s an exciting piece of news: I got into my grad program! An MA in History, here we go, let’s do this, rock ‘n roll, etc.

And I’m excited! But I had to do a little reprogramming to pivot from “removed-as-a-means-of-protecting-myself-from-disappointment-in-case-I-fail” to “Jesus Christ, THIS IS A COOL THING YOU CAN BE HAPPY ABOUT.”

I am not great with happiness! Sometimes I resemble this man a little too much!

I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. From the tender age of my first tangible memories, I’ve received good news with a pause, certain there’s a caveat. A great mark? I’ll tank the next thing and let everybody down. A cool writing opportunity? The editor will eventually discover how mid I really am and re-assign it to somebody else after I’ve submitted it. Admittance to grad school? I am but one paper away from certain failure and letting the entirety of the history department down. I am nothing if not always bracing for impact.

But can I be real? Living like that fucking sucks. It’s not fun! It’s a coping mechanism I used a lot when I was a wee child/teen/20-something that stopped serving me long ago, and I KNOW THAT. It’s a useless emotion! A pointless tactic! A genuine symptom of my super-fun OCD/ADHD combination that has no business in the real world! Because this is the truth: something bad is almost always certainly going to eventually happen, but something good is ALSO almost eventually going to happen. That’s the way life works! “The universe” isn’t keeping a running tally on the wins/losses of your life and then awarding you and/or docking you in response. I can try my best and venture forward and respond to developments and that’s about it. Fun and joy need to be a part of it.

I was thinking about that a lot thanks especially to this icon:

Alysa Liu, man! The personification of joy! This young woman walked away from her sport because it had become joyless and bleak and she wanted to do it on her own terms. And then what does she do? Exactly that. And clinches a gold medal. And warms everybody’s hearts. And re-introduces the type of approach to a thing that she loves that we would all be better for adopting ourselves when approaching the things that we love.

I love school! I love writing! And I’ll be damned if at FORTY GODDAMN YEARS OLD I suck the joy out of both for fear that at some point I won’t be perfect, that I’m not doing it “right,” or that somebody might be better. Somebody will always be better. And that’s great for them! They probably worked super-hard! And if they didn’t, that’s fine too because, as Sesame Street reminds us, we are all very different and no two people are the same and that is beautiful.

This week, I got a paper back that served as the catalyst for this revelation. In school, like any industry, you’re in a bubble. Everything revolves around the bubble, and life outside the bubble seems very far until the semester’s over or summer Fridays ramp up or you find something else to do. Did I do badly on the paper? Absolutely not, but at some point I’d started accepting only A+s as the only indicator of my value as both a student and a person. So I spiralled! I questioned whether I was even smart because I didn’t get an A, and as I heard myself going on and on and on about this absolutely reasonable mark, I had a flashback: the 2010s when all of us wee baby freelancers began contrasting/comparing who we were writing for, who got a book deal, who didn’t, who’s going there, who’s friends with whom, and all became consumed with being perceived and received in very specific, static ways. WE WERE NOT HAPPY. Most of us look back on our twenties and early thirties and wonder how we even got through it! (The answer: jury’s still out, baby! Youthful resilience? Maybe?) It was exhausting and it was tedious and also very, very annoying. So this week, I annoyed myself right up into a realization: get a fucking grip, girl.

To start, marks are arbitrary and school and work can be a wonderful places, but no place can or will determine the value of anybody’s inherent worth. But most importantly, the things we pursue as actual dreams — whether academia, filmmaking, opera singing, or ice skating — are not supposed to be a cement block that drags us down to the depths of despair. Alysa Liu came back to skating under the banner of doing it her way. That is an ethos I want to embrace and never lose touch with. You can do the things you love in a way that brings you joy. Perfection is such a fucking buzzkill.

So after my mom told me to “stop being a baby bitch” (IYKYK), I told myself the same. Grow up. Calm down. Take a chill pill. For crying out loud. Getting the privilege of being in a place I love and pursuing a dream I have is another square of the quilt I mentioned last week: always in-progress. And there’s no room for self-policing and shitty self-talk and comparing trajectories at the quilting bee. That shit is tired and irritating, and is as far removed from joy as I can possibly think.

And maybe your week was the same! (Enter: full moon lore, mercury retrograde, that thing where all the planets line up, the fact that Winter 2026 has been cruel in its relentlessness.) And maybe you had to do a little recalibrating because you got stuck in the bubble or lost in the grind or forgot who you were. So this is my pep talk to you (based on what I needed to hear): do not forget yourself, the lessons you’ve learned, the skills you have, the abilities you carry, the importance of your friendship, the kindness of your heart, the grit you’ve accumulated. Nobody else has any of it in the same amounts, and that honestly rules. You don’t need to brace for impact or assume that achieving one thing has now summoned the universe to fuck all your shit up. (The universe doesn’t really care, bro! Have you seen what’s going on in the world? I don’t think it has time to be all, “Hm — grad school? Time to humble a bitch!”) You don’t need to take somebody else’s achievements as a sign that you aren’t doing enough or that somebody is better. Somebody will always be better at something, and who cares. It’s fine. I’m tired. We’re all tired. Frankly, if the thing you purport to love (the hobby, the passion, the dream) has become devoid of the joy that brought you there in the first place, it’s time to Kelly Cutrone yourself, take a beat, and come back.

Or, as Kim Cattrall once famously said:

(A note: unfortunately, bailing when something isn’t fun doesn’t usually apply to the paid work we all need to do to survive in our capitalist wasteland. So this is not a “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life!” essay, and I promise nothing I write ever will be.)

Slice of joy: I am living for the Kelly Cutrone-issance courtesy of the Laguna Beach/The Hills/The City nostalgia. Please watch the “If you have to cry go outside” orientation she gives her staff in Kell On Earth. Also please note that her assistant at the time is none other but Andrew Mukamal a.k.a. the styling genius behind Margot Robbie’s entire Barbie and Wuthering Heights rollouts.

Pet peeve: I forgot to turn the music down in my car when I got out of it last time so when I turned my car on the music came on at full volume and it scared me and I made a startled noise (not a scream, but something very high-pitched?) which really ruined the vibe of the entire situation. Fucking embarrassing, to be honest.

Recommendations: This isn’t even spon-con (though I would happily take any money offered to me for an endorsement, let’s be serious), but I have returned to Pizza Hut as my go-to pizza destination and honestly we were all right as children to have our birthday parties there. Bury me in Original Pan Pizza, and light a Tiffany’s Pizza Hut lamp on my grave.

Okay! That’s it! I have another paper to write because I save all my work until mere days before its due! THAT’S THE ANNE DONAHUE WAY.

Talk soon!

• A.