I’m 43 and still don’t feel like I fit in.
Since the earliest I can remember, I’ve always found the world’s variety and diversity interesting. I like to hear about how other people grew up, the food they ate, the music they listened to, and the experiences that shaped them. Although I’ve shied away from attaching myself to a specific group, I have a soft spot for traditions, customs, and the community you find in formed institutions. I’m not necessarily envious of people's shared experiences, but just knowing that there’s belonging, even an origin, to our existence appeals to me. Sometimes.
For the most part, I’ve spent my life roaming through groups. In high school, we were known as “the hallway crew” precisely because jocks, Latino punks, Armenian ravers, and Persian and Jewish hippies all congregated together. Everyone brought a little flavor of whatever custom they came from and filtered it through the subculture they were exploring. I was none of it and all of it, mostly wanting to tag along and experience, most of the time vicariously, what it was like to be the force behind a group of teens learning about a new way to live.
I latch on to something briefly and discard it when it’s not working for me anymore. For a long time, I elevated my story about being a part of UCLA, a school known for its academics and sports. It’s also a beacon of the place that nurtured me, Los Angeles, and it’s always stood as a signal of pride and accomplishment for me. But you won’t see me cheering for UCLA football or feuding with arch-rivals. The tribal nature of my alumnus status stops there. I don’t care; the parts I need for UCLA to work for me are enough.
The same goes for where I am now in my career. From the outside, I’ve somehow managed to carve out a career out of complete luck. Some of you know the story: I was out of work, I moved to Berlin, I got a message on AOL from some guy launching a “Latino publishing company in New York City,” and there you have.
It wasn’t all roses. The experience was crippling, demoralizing, and exploitative. But so many amazing things catapulted from that experience. I met my wife in New York City. She had a roommate who was trying to crack into public radio. I somehow turned that into a managing editor gig for a five-million-dollar Corporation Public Broadcasting gig. And when that failed, my wife’s (still my girlfriend at the time) grad school friend sent my info to her friend at some weird tech startup. One community manager role later became the start of this odd trajectory. Fifteen years later, though, and I’m not sure I feel like I fit in.
It’s made me wonder if I ever will and if it matters. If I were to reduce my 20s to one word, it would be “meandering.” Maybe even sauntering. While the word describes the action of exploring the world in a certain way, for me it took on an era of thoughtfully going with the flow. Did you even notice above when I said I moved to Berlin? I still have no idea why I did that. People ask me all the time: why did you decide to move to Berlin? I’ll always give the answer that I did find an English-language magazine that offered to pay me a few hundred bucks for an article that never saw the light of day. Who the hell moves to another country for a few hundred bucks of non-guaranteed income!? Someone who doesn’t fit in, and is looking for a sense of place.
I’ve been in Seattle with my family for nine years. I spent my first 25 years in Los Angeles, and this is now the longest place I’ve ever lived since that time. I don’t always feel “at home” here, but maybe that’s ok. What I usually attribute to Seattle gloom, or the freeze, might be that I don’t overly commit to any culture anyway (there is very much a Seattle freeze).
I started the idea for this edition of my newsletter thinking more broadly about how I’m trying to navigate many differences within myself: father, friend, husband, careerist, photographer, brother. There is so much pressure to understand our different roles and where we gather traditions to inform how we tackle them. In a world where all knowledge is accessible, it’s overwhelming to decide to live “one way simply.”
The truth is that the hallway crew in high school was exhausting. I was never really true to myself because I wanted to explore every experience a subculture had. I was enamored by the varied slang, fashions, drama, and what it all led to. But I left most of my authenticity waiting and mastered zero of the things I was interested in.
It wasn’t until I moved to Berlin that I let my interests shine. I couldn’t escape from grabbing a camera and entering the city. I couldn’t run away from consuming every bit of electronic music I could get my hands on. I wrote more, read more, realized I loved traveling, and realized that whatever I did in life had to make me feel alive creatively. I felt alone and wanted to meet someone, but someone closer to my interests, my new authenticity. A few months later, I met a girl at a party.
It’s been a little over a year since I started this newsletter, and you can see I’m still grappling with themes that affect us all: grief, career, prioritization, and chasing dreams. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel good about fitting in, but I might get back to meandering my way through experiences to figure it out.
I’m headed to New York City for the first time in a few years. I want a black-and-white cookie, Korean BBQ, and a slice of vodka-sauce pizza. I’ll try to visit Rough Trade Records and see if I can snag some photo books at Strand. Mostly, I’ll be helping a friend celebrate his 45th birthday, and there will likely be a lot of karaoke.
Where would it be if you had one place to eat/see/experience in today’s New York City?
TV on the Radio decided to reunite and go on tour. I love that some of my favorite bands ever are coming back. Why did they ever leave us?
Related, my buddy David gave me a tip: Check my “Made For You” playlists on Spotify. Today I have “Big Beat French House Night” as something Spotify thinks I need in my life and I agree.
Happy Sunday.