Saturday morning and I sit down to try and get some pages out and then my laptop needs like an hour to update and reboot. Love that. As I wait, I start to doom scroll and then, per usual, envy scroll. I’m a notorious envy scroller. I’ll search someone I don’t even follow, someone I never even met in person, and do a deep dive on their website, IG, twitter, college newspaper, I’m a lunatic in this way. These are the Ivy league kids that live life on easy mode and stepped right off campus into their dream job of writing, publishing, TV, art, music, theater, etc., etc. These are the nepo babies born into it. They’re somehow always younger than you, prettier than you, and better than you. But then I realized something: I don’t really gain anything from stalking them. Even if I found an interview or podcast with them, it’s always the same shit — they had a talent for it, moved to a city, had a lucky break // their uncle was the producer.
But then sometimes I envy scroll another type of creator - the creator who isn’t famous at all, still keeps a day job, and whose work I deeply, deeply admire. That’s the comic creator who can’t pay bills, the writer who puts fiction on a blogspot for 100 views a week, or the person inventing a fantasy world just for an indie TTRPG. I suppose it’s the difference between being envious of the success and being envious of the art. I can learn something from being envious of the art. It makes me look inward and ask myself what I value, what I struggle with, what I want to see more of. Everybody is envious for success, and that will never change.
I’m obviously going to keep doing both. This isn’t a self-help stack after all. I would even say that envy-scrolling the success can be beneficial. You learn about the scene, what’s selling, what’s hot, who is who, who is pitching where. But you won’t really learn about yourself other than the baby brained: “I want that.”
When I envy-scroll the art, I say: “I want to create that.” And it’s a much more enriching desire.