Shit in One Hand, Want in the Other
In which my father's favorite phrase turns circles around my head
The wife and I watched a 2015 Ryan Reynolds movie last night. Like most RR films pre-DeadPool, we found it scrolling through HBOMax, pausing on a thumbnail image because we both leaned in closer, eyes squinting - “Is that Ryan Reynolds?”
It was. We hit play.
It was about a gambling addict, his muse (our boy, Ry-Ry), and an obsession with Rainbows. It was… surprisingly heterosexual, but I digress. The thing that stuck with me about the movie was RR’s character - how he claimed not to care about whether he won at the poker table. That it was his secret to success. Apathy.
Sounds a little like a cop-out, right? But if you’re in the publishing industry, it sounds like wisdom.
I grew up the eldest of five kids, all of us teeming with want—toys, sure, but also attention and validation and my own goddamned room. My father used to tell me, Shit in one hand, want in the other, and see which one fills up faster. The benefit of hindsight is that I can look back on the memory with a critical eye. I can see that he was frustrated and angry, not with us, but with himself for not being a better provider. But that doesn’t make the want (then or now) any less potent.
When They Drown Our Daughters was released last summer, I had life-changing expectations for it. That they didn’t come close to reality isn’t abnormal. In fact, the attention it got (and still gets) is probably better than I should have expected.
But that want runs deep. It makes focusing on other projects impossible. It burbles to the surface the layers of imposter syndrome, peeling them back one by one like skin.
Want it supposed to motivate us. But for me, it’s more of a hindrance. What if I fail? What if I never get the things I want?
Maybe the poker muse had it right. Maybe if I wanted less, I would do more. An empty hand, after all, is more productive, than one burdened by a load.