One of my pet peeves is when people offer the disclaimer that they don’t want to get too excited about a possibility because it’s not a done deal yet. Though I totally get it—why tempt fate?—I also feel strongly that allowing ourselves the opportunity to be excited is a fundamental human experience and not something we should deprive ourselves of.
That also means we are opening ourselves up for disappointment, just in case the thing we wanted doesn’t come through. (Duh.)
I’ve noticed approximately a billion times or so friends of mine (and sometimes me) do all they can to avoid disappointment. That makes total sense. Who wants shitty news?
But I’ll take shitty news from time to time if it means I can also bask in the very human feeling of excitement and eager anticipation.
To me, these feelings make up the fabric of life. I’d personally prefer to be able to go to sleep with butterflies in my stomach—excited about the possibility of maybe selling that book, getting that house, booking that gig, succeeding at that thing—even if I run the risk of being disappointed later, than to push it all down and deprive myself of feeling big feelings. I’d take a let-down (which I can handle) over a missed opportunity to get excited.
“Don’t get too excited yet,” I hear over and over, as a giant disclaimer in front of a thrilling possibility.
As if it’s in my control in the first place—whether I book that gig or sell that book. I mean, to some extent it is: I need to do a kickass job of my book proposal and I need to work my tail off and be good enough to succeed.
But once the proposal is in the hands of the publisher, once my bid for that house is with the buyer’s agent, it is not mine to control anymore.
And in that empty space, I could either binge on episodes of This Is Us or I could actually allow myself the pleasure of imagining what could be.
Maybe you’re reading this and you’re like, “Oh no, stop right there. Don’t you dare start getting excited because you just never know what will happen.”
To that I say, totally. You’re right. You don’t know what will happen.
But I much prefer a life peppered with moments of excitement and hope, while also being realistic about my chances (I’m not going to get excited about selling a book unless my agent has lined up meetings with publishers)—as opposed to getting to the end of my days and feeling like I did my best to temper expectations.
This is probably partly why I’ve been described as “too much” a few too many times in my life (my first book, my memoir, is literally called Always Too Much and Never Enough).
But let me be clear: I am not saying one should always sit in excitement, opting in to ignorance because there’s literally no chance you’ll get the thing you want. That would be completely bananas.
My wife and I, along with our very good friend (chosen family), are going to soon be moving to Rochester, NY (I will write more soon about my complex feelings about going from a big city person to a small city person). But before our offer on a house was accepted, we lost out on a few other offers—really strong offers, mind you. The market in Rochester is (here I go again) bananas right now, and it took us a while to figure out how to best play the game. So there was a least one house that I figured would be ours for the taking. We even stayed up at night and discussed who would get what room, what color we’d paint the exterior, and whether we could turn the front closet into a kitty litter room. I was excited as hell (especially about the kitty litter room—sharing a small bathroom with my cat is usually pretty gross).
And yes, the next day when I found out we were outbid by six people (even though we were coming in well above asking), I was hella bummed. But bummed, I can handle. Disappointed, I can handle. I have enough of a “recovery attitude” to know that there are always other options, and that there are things we cannot control. I was sad, but not undone. I considered it all information, and that information helped me figure out how to make the next offer come to fruition … which it did.
Being bummed is also a basic human experience, one that I’m sure we are all familiar with. But the older we get, the more we trust that “this too shall pass.”
And I do trust that. Maybe it’s my trust of that and my lived experience that is allowing me to feel excitement in a big way, in a way that is both familiar and intense, and in a way that reminds me of why I am alive.
I sort of wonder what it is that made all of us so jaded, so unwilling to go there, unable to bask in excitement because we are afraid we will somehow jinx it or be embarrassed later if the thing we want doesn’t happen. When I was a kid with crooked bangs and sloppy pigtails, I got excited about so many things so easily: going to FAO Schwartz with my family, hanging out with Grandma on the weekend, submitting my poems to Highlights for Kids (that iconic publication actually published a few of my poems!).
I loved being excited. I’d stay up at night wondering if my poem would make the cut, knowing that I tried my best even if it didn’t. Now that I think of it, the shitty parts of my childhood were probably offset by these glimmers of excitement I allowed myself to hold onto, and I thank that younger version of me profusely, because I am pretty sure that’s why I feel so strongly about it now. It was a survival mechanism, getting me through a childhood that, like many of our childhoods, was full of not-that-exciting things.
Life has so much in it that can get you down. Some days, I walk through my house like I’m in a fog—phoning it in only long enough to appear unperturbed for video calls I must attend for some reason. The news gets me down, the state of the world for animals depresses the hell out of me, and sometimes I just get really worried about my own finances or future that I thank my lucky stars that my mascara is waterproof.
But then I take a chance. I throw my name in the hat for something I am yearning for. And though I have no idea if I’ll get it, I do myself a solid and I consider the fact that I just might get it.
I just might.
And the excitement behind that possibility has basically saved my life, time and time and time again.
xo,
jazz
One Thing I’m Jazzed About
The anthology I edited, Antiracism in Animal Advocacy: Igniting Cultural Transformation, is coming in September and is now available for pre-order.