The power of envy

(not to be confused with its ugly cousin, jealousy)

The response I received to my Substack on The Loss of Ambition last week was eye-opening. Both men and women reached out to me (some of whom I’d not spoken to in decades, or ever) essentially saying the same thing: me too. 

Often, the underlying sentiment of these messages was thank god I’m not alone in this feeling. And for others, I detected a sense of ennui that seemed to pose the question: but if not this, then what? Which got me thinking about many things but chiefly about envy. 

In 2021 when I was at the beginning of some sort of metamorphosis/ego death/transformation/breakdown/awakening (I honestly think they’re all accurate descriptors) I was riddled with all kinds of envy.

I was kind of angry, too. Why wasn’t I doing work I loved? Why wasn’t I living somewhere interesting? Why did everything feel hard, and a little bit lonely? 

In the midst of this reckoning, I was speaking with my friend Tam (of previous Substack fame). I can’t remember the exact words exchanged but there was chatter about me trying to start my own business/become a journalist/write a novel (there was so much ambiguous envy! So many roads not taken!).

A week or so later a postcard arrived in the mail from Edinburgh, where she lives, with nothing other than this quote scribbled on the back, next to words “Love Tam x”: 

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been” - George Eliot. 

I stuck that postcard above my computer screen and decided to try my hand at freelance writing. It was a start. A flag planted on a lifeless planet. Every day I looked up at that postcard, and thought about Tam doing work she loved in the book world in Scotland, and it helped me put one foot in front of the other despite being unsure where any of it would lead me. 

Since that time, I’ve tried to pay really close attention to my envy.

Here are a list of things that I have envied over the past five years, in no particular order: 

• Tam and her work for Edinburgh Book Festival.

• People working from cafes in Byron Bay.

• Dolly Alderton’s career – from her podcast to her memoir to her agony aunt column to her novels to her speaking gigs to her sense of humour. If I could have any person’s career on earth it would be hers. 

• Caroline O'Donoghue – another woman with a “chatty lady / writing” career. Close friend of Dolly’s (envy!). Writes brilliant novels. Has brilliant podcast. Is hilarious.  

• People who can speak another language.

• People who ACTUALLY make money working for themselves / living wherever TF they want.

• People writing Substacks that create community (Hayley Nahman, Danielle Gay)

• People who wake up early and catch the hidden hours of the day.

• People who wake up slowly and softly to no alarm.

• These memoirists/life writers: Leslie Jamieson, Rachel Kusk, Deborah Levy, Helen Garner, Elizabeth Gilbert (for their skill, their stories and their conspiratorial honesty).

• Journalists working on their various “beats”.

• My friend Ingrid’s podcast Stories of Being (she keeps at it– even with two kids!)

• Anyone in a “writer’s room”.

• My friend Anna’s sharehouse in Warrandyte. Full of women! Community! Heart! 

• Lena Dunham circa 2012 when she released Girls.

• Women who surf.

• My friend Bella Royce nabbing a spot in the Australian Writers Guild ‘First Break’ program. 

• An old school friend from my early teens, Ruby Jean Cottle, getting a three-book deal published with Simon & Schuster.

• Me circa 2021 when I would run the Bronte to Coogee coastal walk with my friend Kat, after which we’d dip in the ocean, grab a latte and share a muffin overlooking the water.

So, what does this list tell you?

1. I want to be a writer. 

2. I love chatting. 

3. I’m not sure how I want to spend my mornings. 

I’d say it also suggests I want to live near the ocean and that I value personal freedom, candour, adventure and community. 

If we’re not in relationship with our envy – that is, able to sit with who and what we long for and to be – we are missing the point of envy altogether. It’s in secret concert with our intuition. One whispers to the other: this way, pay attention, take action. 

For the longest time, I mistook my envy for its ugly cousin, jealousy, which is defined by anger or discontent at the thing you wish you possessed but do not. Jealousy has no motivating factor – it’s something that just sits within us, making us rot. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say: for the longest time, I was choosing jealousy over envy. Because that’s the crucial difference– recognising our longing and electing to let it motivate us, or drown us.

There’s a quote from Ira Glass that I love and think about a lot when it comes to my writing, work and life in general. In this context, I like to think about “your work” being “your life” (the ultimate creative act):

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be. It has potential. But your taste -- your taste is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit” 

My life still doesn’t look like the creative masterpiece of my dreams, but it’s definitely moving in the right direction. I’m no Dolly Alderton or Helen Garner but I’m also not sitting around huffing and puffing about the life I didn’t live.

What I know to be true is that our envies weave together and, hopefully, guide us towards creation. Creation of a life that is not a facsimile of whatever we envy, but an attempt to sew small, glimmering threads of our muses into the essence of who we are until we are no longer disappointed with the work of art that is our life.