What the Hell Am I Doing Here?
New Year, new me! Or not really, but I do have some announcements.
Happy New Year, dear readers!
I am back at WeWork after nearly two full weeks of staycation, and I just dropped a large chunk of salad into my afternoon flat white. 2025 is off to a great start!
Actually, 2025 is off to a pretty good start because…
…last week I was approved for permanent residence in Germany, which means I never have to renew my work visa ever again!!! I’m freeeeeeeeee!!!
Or sort of free, since this doesn’t allow me full rights of movement the way citizenship would. But it means I can work without any restrictions, and I no longer need to show up at the Ausländerbehörde every couple of years to justify my continued presence in the country. I can now live my life without worrying how that life will look on paper to some middle-aged bureaucrat in blue polo shirt who is actively falling asleep at his desk at 2pm. This is a burdensome worry to carry in the back of your mind, and now it is gone!
I still want to apply for citizenship, ideally in 2026, since all else I’d really need to do is take a couple of tests. I honestly have no set idea of where I want to be beyond the next couple of years, and citizenship would give me the right to live anywhere in the EU, and also leave the EU for an extended period of time and come back. Assuming the EU holds together. Whomp whomp.
Given the unpredictability of geopolitics these days, the option to have dual citizenship feels like a massive privilege that I would be very stupid to pass up. Nobody knows where the chips will fall over the next decade or two. And I’ve put a lot of effort into making my life here work over the last five-plus years, and it has been challenging and at times very lonely (remember that fucking pandemic?). So I might as well cash in.
There’s a longer thought in here about how you make these half-cocked decisions one summer, and then suddenly you realize they’ve become your life. But I’m gonna bookmark that one for something else.
Onward!
In 2025 I resolve not to think about any of this shit, beyond continuing to work on my truly pathetic German so I can hopefully take the aforementioned tests without too much cramming. This year, I want to focus on my writing and career, and on working towards a more sustainable solution for how those two things should coexist. Do I know what that will look like yet? I do not! But I am going to start figuring it out, because I am sick of feeling professionally stuck and creatively and intellectually unfulfilled. I’m 40 now! Fuck that shit! I want to contribute something I find meaningful to this cruel, stupid, and yet still-beautiful world.
And I also want to start having more fun again, somehow, despite being very broke. We’ll see how I can make that work.
To that end, several months ago I said I would turn on paid subscriptions in 2025, and yesterday I did it. Weeeeeee!!!* Here it is!
I actually went back and forth on whether to do this. Like many people who publish here, I’m worried Substack will inevitably go the way of all Silicon Valley platforms and become an unusable mess of algorithm junk and bots and trolls, and thus I’d be better off folding this newsletter into the website redesign I’ve been endlessly putting off. I may still wind up doing that. But for now, I want to stay here where everything’s already set up and there are built in networking tools.
Also, a couple of people actually pledged subscriptions in advance, which was VERY COOL and honestly not something I expected. So that also makes me feel like I should just go ahead and do the thing. However for the time being, this is going to be a fairly loose endeavor and nothing I write will actually be paywalled, because I don’t think there’s a point.
The pleasure of this specific outlet for me is that it’s a quick way to connect with people about whatever’s going on in my head, and to just be kind of weird and goofy. I know a good number of the people on the receiving end, and they sometimes write back or bring up stuff I’ve written when I talk to them. It’s really very nice.
However I also want to try, at least some of the time, to publish things that feel more formed and shareable. Dust off ye olde creative essay skills, etc. But I don’t want the pressure to write stuff that has “market value” to suck the fun out of it. Toiling privately on ambitious projects has its own rewards, but it’s punishing and difficult to sustain (for me) in the absence of a practice that’s a bit more communal and fun. Substack also simply can’t be a top priority right now, because it won’t be lucrative enough quickly enough.
So I want this to stay fun, while also becoming a bit more intentional. How will that pan out? As with everything else, I really don’t know! But if you feel moved to throw me some money as I figure it out, that would be extraordinarily cool of you and feel like a great big warm hug! A hug full of money! Capitalism is great!
So once again, here’s that link:
And Lastly
As part of the whole “renewed creative purpose” thing, I’m trying to get back into better habits about consuming art and culture. So I think I will start doing little roundups of things I find worth mentioning, because why not. These’ll be quick; if there’s anything I feel is worth expounding on at length, it’ll get a proper post. (Links to trailers included for movies.)
The Red Shoes - Ok, it was actually a few months ago that I rewatched this for the first time since high school, but it’s going here because it is absolutely fucking peerless. A Technicolor dream, and one of the fables about making art. And it helps that Moira Shearer was an honest-to-god great ballerina. If you haven’t seen it, see it. In a theater, if you are ever so blessed to have the chance. Movies will never look this beautiful ever again.
Queer - There was a lot going on here, and I don’t think all of it was entirely successful, but in the end I was pretty taken with it. It made me really want to try Ayahuasca, and also absolutely NEVER try Ayahuasca. And bless Luca Guadagnino for holding it down as basically the only mainstream director interested in filming men with any level of genuine eroticism. Men are hot!
Run Lola Run - I thought I had seen this when it came out in 1998, because it was everywhere, but apparently I hadn’t! I guess this is the movie you make if you spent the ‘90s at Tresor. Berlin in the ‘90s! What a time! It’s a delight, and very fun to have finally seen it after having lived here for nearly 6 years.
Intermezzo AKA the new Sally Rooney novel - Very pleasurable to read, not earth shattering. Go for it if you want to read something genuinely pleasurable, but not earth shattering. Normal People is still my favorite of hers that I’ve read.
Jane Eyre (the book) - I’m currently in the middle of rereading this for the first time since middle school. DUDE. How have I read Wuthering Heights like five times, but not this? It’s ferocious! This may get more in a future post.
*Remember when the internet was just a bunch of incredibly stoned animators uploading incredibly bizarre shit? I sure do. You’re welcome.