if i was eddie vedder, would you like me any better?

"eddie vedder" by local h & the comparison game

They say “comparison is the thief of joy,” but I always let it hit me real bad in restaurants. I get terrible food envy. If it’s somewhere I haven’t been before and I don’t have a go-to dish, I often like to let someone else order first and then I just copy them.

Like the other day — I’m on a family vacation right now, and my in-laws both ordered this complicated-sounding Mexican burger thing. I was like listen, we’re out of town, let’s not reinvent the wheel here. I’ll just stick to a club sandwich. Can’t go wrong with a club sandwich, right?

Only my sandwich ended up being kinda sad (it looked like what I could’ve made at home with some cold cuts and Wonder bread), and meanwhile they were almost LAUGHABLY over the top raving about their burgers. They were so good. You wouldn’t believe how they made this. The salsa — oh yeah, the salsa is what really makes it! And did you taste the — yes, oh my god, it’s incredible!

While I looked down at my sad little sandwich.

Anyway, this is all to say that it’s List Season, where left and right there are Best Of lists coming out. It can be a rough time of year. If you’d asked me a month ago, I would’ve said, oh yeah I don’t give a fuck about lists, but then suddenly a bunch come out and you’re not on them and you’re like, ohhhhhhh actually I must’ve cared a little because this doesn’t feel great.

It’s also hard to talk about. If you DO make a list, then you’re excited but also conscious of possibly making someone ELSE feel bad if you post about it. (I believe people should celebrate their accomplishments!! I just don’t always remember to consider myself “people.”) If you DON’T make a list, then you don’t want to say something that makes it seem like you’re salty or hurt or entitled or fragile or whatever. This isn’t even getting into the fact that some lists are political with very real reasons to be salty about them (how are any lists of best romance in this day and age SO white, for example???).

Even writing this newsletter, I’m a little afraid because like, I don’t want you to think that all I do is sit here with my sad little club sandwich and think about what lists I didn’t make! I don’t! But since those feelings are very real and creep up on us all (. . . they do, right? creep up on us all? especially if we’re on social media?) — I thought I might share a few of the things that help me if I’m in the throes of them.

And I thought I would do that through lyrics to Local H’s “Eddie Vedder,” because (a) it’s a great song; (b)I listened to As Good as Dead about three times through on the drive up here; and (c) I mean, why not, I love me some parameters.

I don’t need another friend/I’ve got too many friends

Don’t be afraid to lean into your laziness or antisocial tendencies to make yourself feel better! If you made the Goodreads Choice Awards, you’d probably have to make a bunch of graphics and remind people to vote all the time, right? What a fucking drag!! If you got selected to be a Good Morning America book club pick, you might have to Make Yourself Presentable to be filmed for their social media. No thank you!!!! Every single accomplishment means MORE WORK for you, and who wants to do MORE WORK?! Not me!*

*this is a rationalization lolol obviously I could probably dig to find a little motivation for Good Morning America although no promises on the makeup front

but turnabout’s fair play

Here’s another thing to ask yourself: would you trade with someone else? Not just for that one award or accolade, but all of it? Would you trade the way you write, the way you see the world, the characters you’ve created? This always calms me right down because the truth is that I wouldn’t. Not for anyone — not even for writers who I deeply deeply admire and sometimes think, man, I wish I could write like that. I truly love my characters so much that I’m glad *I* created them. I get to spend as much time with them in my brain as I want, and I think that’s pretty cool.

(This doesn’t work as well with food orders, by the way. I would’ve traded that club sandwich in a heartbeat.)

you go ahead, as good as dead

Another strategy is to be completely dead inside! I’m just kidding. This one sucks.

But sometimes if I’m feeling the lows, really feeling the lows, I do try to be grateful that I’m feeling anything at all. Like at least I care, you know? If you’ve ever gone through a period where you just didn’t care, truly nothing could move you for good or bad, you know it doesn’t actually feel that great to be numb. Sometimes you need to feel your feelings! Diamondbacks Manager Torey Lovullo gets it.

if I was Eddie Vedder, would you like me any better?

I know the theme of this newsletter is don’t compare yourself to others, but here’s where I say DO compare yourself! It helps me sometimes to think of my favorites in other fields other than writing, just to put things in perspective. My favorite baseball players are rarely the ones who are shoo-ins on the All Star ballot, for example. I fucking love Local H and I’m glad they’re the band they are. I don’t want them to be Nirvana or Pearl Jam or any other contemporaries that were more “successful,” even if I like those bands, too. I have no idea what their album sales were or whether they were nominated for anything or whatever — I just know that I love this album. So the next time you feel bad that you’re not Eddie Vedder, tell yourself, “I’m Scott Lucas from Local H, and that’s okay.”

Except, you know, feel free to replace the affirmation with whatever names are more pertinent to you. Although I do love the idea of people saying, “I’m Scott Lucas from Local H, and that’s okay” into the mirror every morning without even knowing who that is.

that’s it, I quit/I don’t give a shit

Sometimes you DO need to quit! Not necessarily forever — this heading is making it sound extreme but that’s just the limitation I signed up for when I decided to use exact lyrics. But if something is making you feel bad, it’s okay to step away from it and go touch grass or do something else or whatever else you need to do.

This trip has been really nice, for example! We’ve been going on walks and listening to tour guides make cheesy jokes and playing poker and generally having a good time. My husband started teaching me “Eddie Vedder” on guitar and I do really enjoy having something I can be a “beginner” with, that I’m learning for the pleasure of learning without it being tied to my professional identity or money or anything else. (At least for now! Wait ‘til I add that third finger to my power chords!!!)

Literally AS I WAS DRAFTING this newsletter, I did have a few friends message me to tell me that With Love, from Cold World made NYPL’s Best of 2023 List! Which I am obviously really grateful for while simultaneously feeling like ah man you’re fucking up my theme!! Most of all, I’m grateful to friends who share that kind of stuff with you and want to celebrate you. And I’m grateful for friends who are incredibly easy to celebrate and root for, because they’re such good people and are so talented and you just love to see them recognized. That’s the stuff that usually lasts way beyond any list.

Over the next few weeks in this newsletter, I’m actually going to be focusing on With Love, from Cold World a lot! It feels like ITS SEASON, since the book takes place around Christmas, and I have a lot I want to say about the music and movie references in it, thoughts on Asa + Lauren, maybe a whole writeup on While You Were Sleeping because I think it’s underrated as a Christmas movie, I have an interview with the brilliant audiobook narrator Lindsey Dorcus to share with you, maybe I’ll give away a few copies . . . so yeah! It’s going to be a lot about With Love, from Cold World around these parts! Fair warning!

Currently reading . . . I just finished [TITLE REDACTED] by Rachel Runya Katz and loved it! Rachel does such a beautiful job of writing around some really hard themes but in a way that always feels so grounded and real and ultimately hopeful. Their first romance, Thank You for Sharing, is also on that NYPL list! Which made me extra happy to see because I’m honored to share any space with Rachel.

I am also reading Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb and loving it so much I’m actually considering taking this little Birds of Georgia book in our vacation rental out to the yard with me and try to really listen and watch for birds. Like everything seems possible and the joy of discovery is coursing through me and also I am really, really ready for these two characters to bang lol.

Finally, this will be of interest to no one but me, probably, but I read a review of “Eddie Vedder” that talked about how it was the heart of the record because it’s the song that’s the most inward-facing and the unlocked something about the album for me. I love it when that happens, even years and years later.

watching . . . I watched the Kelce brothers face off on Monday Night Football not because I care that much about the Kelce brothers per se but here’s what I do care about:

• this essay from Anne Helen Peterson about the cultural response to Taylor + Travis dating, which I think is really smart no matter how you feel about their relationship itself (and the comments were even fun to read, with lots of people pointing out the ways that the relationship has been following romance novel beats and how that’s part of the appeal, discussing Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Chicago Stars series, idk, it’s like everything I want to read about)

• my father-in-law made one offhand comment about how Eli and Peyton Manning are scared the Kelce brothers will take their job and I scoured the internet trying to figure out if that was a joke or a haha-we’re-joking-but-actually-wait or a no-dead-serious-we’re-afraid situation because for 30 minutes I was suddenly inexplicably invested in this possible feud, which led me to —

• this article about how miserable Mark Wahlberg looked on the ManningCast.

Mark Wahlberg’s face = me when I’m dead inside.

listening to . . . I’ve been re-listening to Matthew Perry’s memoir. It’s a really hard listen, maybe even harder now that he’s gone because he was so conscious of his own mortality because of everything he’d been through. He also had so many complicated feelings about fame, and what I appreciate about his memoir is that it feels INCREDIBLY honest to me. Like, maybe too honest sometimes. When he says he would trade with anyone, give up all the money and fame just to be rid of the addiction, I believe him. He also wasn’t afraid to show all the ways that he was arrogant and mean and selfish and didn’t always treat people (especially women!) in his life all that well. And like he talks very openly — painfully — about how much he wished he’d found someone to settle down with, how much he would’ve loved to have kids, how lonely he was. Which is obviously hard to hear, but I also appreciate his honesty in sharing that instead of trying to gloss over that or minimize the way he felt. He seemed to care very genuinely about helping people struggling with addiction in particular, and obviously had a huge impact on so many of us who didn’t even know him and then countless people who did. Anyway. Rest in peace, Matty.