On January 3, 2023, I drove three and a half hours with a car packed with boxes full of books, clothes, records, and other belongings. I pulled into a small city/town in Pennsylvania I’d never been to before, an hour or so outside of Philadelphia, and moved into my own apartment.
A few weeks before this, I made the decision that I would move anywhere—literally anywhere—to get out of my Long Island childhood home for a year. I graduated college in May (of 2022), and since then I’d saved up money from my job writing news articles, which was full-time but also technically freelance. I’d spent most of my time at school prioritizing my career as a journalist first; I skipped classes and interned at Kerrang, then Consequence, then Paste, then SPIN, then Stereogum, while freelancing for Billboard, The Fader, and MTV. Foolishly, I’d assumed that once I threw my cap in the air, I would get whatever dream job in media I wanted. That was not true.
I was disillusioned so I found an apartment in this small city/town in Pennsylvania and I was going to write a novel that would then make my name so known that I would a) make enough money off sales to live on my own in New York or b) be the most in-demand writer for hire in New York that every publication would be begging for.
I was also relieved to get out of New York, where so often the line between Writer and Influencer is blurred, and I find myself wondering if I’m writing for the right reasons anymore, if I’m doing it because I love it and it makes me feel like myself, or if I’m doing it because I want attention and validation, though I’ve realized that there’s nothing wrong with writing for attention and validation, there’s no right or wrong reason to write.
In one of her diaries, Anaïs Nin wrote, “There are satanic joys known to writers only.” That is the reward of being a writer, but the pains are just as bad, the isolation and the misery.
A few days after I moved to this small city/town in Pennsylvania where I didn’t know a single person, I fell in love with someone I met while I was on a date with someone else. At a bar where everyone sat with a cigarette between their lips, I saw him from the corner of my eye and we struck up conversation when a Joy Division song came on. We were together until April, when he broke up with me because of my drinking. I got sober and we got back together the next month. I didn’t drink until about a week ago, when I finished my novel draft and was disillusioned when my isolation and misery still remained. I stabbed the cork of a wine bottle, poured the purple liquid into an empty sparkling water bottle, pressed play on The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart’s Belong, and took swigs as I walked to the bar.
I didn’t want to admit to myself that I regretted the move, that I wasn’t meant for the reclusive life I fantasized about when I lived in New York. The life of a solitary—and alcoholic—writer is so romanticized. But in this small city/town in Pennsylvania I see anguish everywhere: in the bartender who shows up blackout drunk to his shift and says crude things to me, in my friends who’ve gotten sober because they had to, in the loneliness I get a glimpse of in everyone’s eyes. I understand why people flee to New York, even if I have my own qualms with the city.
Writing is expression in its rawest, most desperate form. In visual art and music, there’s room for interpretation, there’s color and instrumentation and a backdrop for words. Writing is bare bones. It’s a plea to be heard and understood.
Writing is standing on the sidelines and watching life from afar. When I decided to step back and focus on my writing, that meant putting my life on pause. I don’t know when, but one day I woke up and realized I missed actually living.
Writing is also isolating in the sense that no one wants to hire you; to your employers, you are replaceable. Everybody writes. They write better than you, they write for less money than you, they write more than you.
The reward, though, the satanic joys—it’s beautiful. When you are heard and understood, when you get attention and are validated—it’s beautiful. It’s rare, which is good, because if it wasn’t it wouldn’t mean anything. You are not owed this from readers, just like you’re not owed a job or a career just because of skills and experience.
To achieve the rewards, you have to open yourself up, extend yourself toward others, to step out of the sidelines and take part in life as well as observing it. It’s a difficult balance to execute. I made the mistake of shrinking myself, of burrowing into my alienation, of hiding. I thought it would make me a true writer to embody the solitary, reclusive writer.
There is no such thing as a true writer. In fact, there’s no such thing as a writer. We are all just people searching for connection in different ways. None of it is easy.