I've got gloom but I'm not a gloomer
When 'living in the present' comes at the expense of dreaming a future
I recently heard that an old acquaintance identifies as a "doomer." The person who told me this defined it by saying the man believes we are at "peak-doom— wait, no, at peak pleasure. Or past it." The acquaintance had decided not to have children. He lived out of town. Did this make him a prepper? I’m not sure. He still had hobbies. But he was buying things to prepare—to prepare for life getting worse.
My first reaction was: okay, sure. I know a similar feeling, in the bedrock of my gut. Last week I had one of those days. I'd gone to bed too late, and woken too early, and now: a fog of gloom around my skull. My sorrow was costumed rage. The world had briefly tipped past a two-degree threshold of warming. My tax dollars and elected officials were supporting the death of countless-thousands of civilians in Gaza. In a conversation with British-Palestinian novelist Isabella Hamad, Irish novelist Sally Rooney writes that witnessing these deaths has made her “lose faith in language, in conversation, dialogue, everything. The only word that means anything to me at such a moment is the word: No…No, no, no.” That was all I had in my head: No.
Later that day, I bought a poinsettia at Trader Joes. I’d never bought one before. It occurred to me I should try to “get into the spirit.” No sooner had I unwrapped it than I saw the milky white dots across the petals. Were these little eggs? Would they get wings? Would they fly to infect my other plants? The blooms were already sagging. “Fuck,” I said to my empty living room. To myself I said: What did you think you would get for $7.99? This is what happens when you fling yourself toward beauty! It bums you out! At that moment, the future—for this plant and for my world—felt futile. Neither was a metaphor for the other—the scale was incomparable—but both felt deeply disappointing.
When faced with little white dots and bigger tragedies, what do we do? I sulked for a few hours, trying to finish some edits while glancing, every few minutes, at the plant’s spotted petals. My optimism in the plant’s future was waning. I wanted to toss it in the compost. Then again, it was the only poinsettia I had. A crimson slash against the window. As much as I wanted to succumb to failure, I also wanted to imagine a future where my interventions could make a difference. My reaction to this plant— like my reaction to my gloom—was less about the thing itself, and more about the story of self I wanted to subscribe to.
I wanted to be the sort of person who tried to keep the plant alive.
If you want to run, don't say you like to run. Say you are a runner, is a line I heard on a podcast once. I rolled my eyes at the time. But it's true. I am the sort of person who keeps the plant alive. The label matters, and it goes the other way too. I can let myself feel gloom; I can’t let myself feel like a gloomer.
Recently, though, my therapist called me out for my fantasy life. I want you to notice that when you talk about the future, things are often going badly, said the woman in my laptop. Did you used to imagine nice things happening to you?
Her observation was so on-the-nose it made me want to laugh. My days used to fizz with anticipation. As a teen, I’d fantasize about school dances and summer break. At some point, I realized that I wanted to envision a world where my writing might resonate outside my head, and so I began submitting to publications and contests. When rejections came, it almost didn’t matter. The act of submission had, in itself, kindled possibility—the pleasure of imagining my writing connecting me with others.
Later, long-distance relationships created a similar thrum of wish. I would look forward to reunions, and even when they failed to live up to my imaginings—even if, say, I went into a hotel bathroom to cry under the guise of running water—I could still feel a strange gratitude. The weeks prior, I’d glowed with excitement. My dreaming had not created a nice future, but it had padded the present tense. This is why, when I hear someone say that hope is naïve, I almost feel sorry for them. Don’t they know its role is not to accurately predict the future, but to fortify a self to get there?
I still believe in the power of dreaming. But my therapist is right: its presence in my daily life has waned. When did I stop? The answer is easy. The pandemic came, and with it the "slow cancellation of the future," to use theorist Mark Fischer’s language. His book Ghosts of My Life is not about COVID-19—it was published in 2014—but it articulates a 21st-century feeling that even as our calendar moves forward, "cultural time has folded back on itself." At the height of the pandemic, I stopped looking forward to parties and vacations because one after another, they got postponed, or canceled, or became watered-down versions of themselves. Imagining nice things came to feel like setting myself up for disappointment.
It wasn’t just pandemic-anxiety that stymied my dreaming, it was selling my book. In accomplishing the thing I had wanted for so long, I had to consider what was on the other side: People reading it! I became so nervous about shipping this hydra-of-brain into the world that I didn’t let myself think about what would happen when it got there. I curtailed my thoughts about the future. I learned to dose the world one day at a time.
Along the way, a strange thing happened. I became very good at living in the present. Unable to visualize the horizon, I stopped looking for it. I kept my head down. With no starry future and no easy “past” to dwell in—the pandemic came after a rocky time in my personal life, after multiple cross-country moves—I had nowhere to hide but in the beauty of what was before me. 2020 was about training my gaze on the focaccia in the oven, the blushing dogwood, the people marching beside me in the protests downtown.
And now the future I thought about has happened. My book is out, the pandemic has become more legible. How do I “look ahead” to 2024? I sit here weighing various ratios of doom-to-hope. I feel a moral obligation to acknowledge—and act on—the toothy reality of each. I know both feelings are politically helpful. But I am trying to practice occupying time in a different way. To stay attuned to the present while letting myself imagine nice moments down the road.
A student recently told me about a project-management approach where you consider the future only in two-week chunks. It’s a nice little nugget of time to practice cheery visualizions, and I am trying it out. I ask myself: In the next two weeks, what should I write, read, cook? Who do I want to prioritize seeing? I’m finding it useful for guiding my creative and social life but also in considering what, in the immediate future, I can do for the world around me.
It’s been four days since I brought home the poinsettia, and I can no longer ignore that it is dying. The stems have started falling off. Reddit told me I could keep them alive in a vase, but they sagged after a day. I tossed them in the compost. I can see, now, that the plant has had a bad trajectory. But if I ask myself, should I have given up on its future earlier? The answer, of course, is no. Two flowers are still standing. A pop of red greets me when I open my front door. They might not be alive next week, but they are here, and blooming, today.
Thank you for reading along with me this year. I am utterly grateful to those of you who support this publication, and/or who might forward along a post to a friend. This is a place of thought-experiments, and I always love to hear about what resonates.
Some other recent publications of mine:
I wrote about the strange pleasures of video-chatting with strangers during the pandemic, for Dirt.
I have a feature essay in the new issue of Orion, all about how our environments affects our conceptions of love. (I’m very proud of this one! It’s a cousin of my NYT essay about dating).
I was delighted to be asked to write about my year in reading for The Millions. I wrote about the importance of encountering uncertainty, and how writing is like hosting a dinner party.
For the January issue of Scientific American, I reviewed a wonderful new book about how human culture has been shaped by the moon. Do you want to talk about the moon to everyone you see? Read this book!
Wolfish news:
I am delighted that some places, including Harpers Bazaar and Powells, have named this a best book of the year, and it got on a best book cover of the year list at Literary Hub. But most excitingly for my indie-bookstore-loving self, it was selected by local booksellers for the shortlist of the Pacific Northwest Book Award, with winners announced early next year. Go buy yourself a Christmas present at an indie bookstore! They’re the best. Also, this is your monthly reminder that if Wolfish resonated with you, reviews at G*odreads and Am*zon are so helpful for others finding it, however complicated these institutions.
Lastly: the paperback is coming out in February (!), and you can preorder a signed copy from my local indie here. Paperback tour details? Stay tuned.
Finally:
I’m late to it, but local climate justice group PDX350.org is trying to raise $100k before the end of the year, and I’ve made a little page where I’m hoping to collect $500. You can support this effort here, and if you send me a receipt of your $15+ donation, I’ll mail you a copy of Wolfish and sign it to whoever you want—a loved one? Yourself? Offer good for first 8 people who write me. Awooooooo.
Happy solstice. Turn off the lights, walk in the trees, read this book.
xxE