I Killed Someone
(my ego)
Happy New Year’s Eve everybody! I hope everyone had a good Christmas (or, at the very least, a few days off from work). The week between Christmas and New Year’s always feels a bit liminal and strange to me, even more so than usual this year – probably because my ass went right back to work on the 26th. But I’m working on a lot of cool stuff I’m excited about, so thank God for ways to make money that don’t also make you want to die! (A luxury, unfortunately, in these trying times – sorry, but it wouldn’t be Brain Rot without a lil rant against late stage capitalism. Alexander Hamilton and I will have beef forever, I fear.)
Last week, I said I was turning on paid subscriptions and even more of you pledged – thank you all so much! I am screaming – no, really, I scream every time a paid subscriber email comes in; you can ask my family for proof – and filled with gratitude. What an amazing way to end my year: vibing, chilling, and writing for you all. The first paid subscriber post will be a deep dive on why every man in Sex and the City sucks, actually (yes, even Harry, and yes, even Steve) and some other thoughts from me as I wrap up watching the series for the first time ever (I know, I know). Coming mid-Jan to your inboxes, so keep an eye out!
Your support makes this goofy introspection possible. Thank you
It’s Giving Murder Lowkey
I planned to write some kind of end-of-year round-up for this week – ‘tis the season, after all – but nothing came to mind. It wasn’t hard for me to figure out why: I’m very much in the middle of something – regardless of what the calendar says, and this would’ve been the case even if I didn’t celebrate NYE like a month ago. John Paul Brammer, in this post from his newsletter ¡Hola Papi!, articulated my thoughts on this perfectly:
The chapters of our lives are not defined by calendar years. A year is a rigid, arbitrary thing. A mere unit of measurement! It can’t possibly contain within its strict confines a proper narrative structure. Sometimes, a chapter is two years, or it’s three-and-a-half years, or it’s two weeks. These spans of time, amorphous, but much more complete in their story arcs, are “eras.”
I’m in the middle of an era – my goddess era, yes – with a little bit of leveling up in there as well. But there’s also something more visceral at play here, deeper than that even – a shift so embedded in the fiber of my being that I’d go so far as to say it’s elemental. I am in the midst of becoming who I’m meant to be – which is simultaneously who I’ve always been (it’s getting a little celestial in here, if you didn’t catch the vibe). To get here, though, I had to commit a murder: I had to kill my ego, the part of myself with a fanatical desire to prove others wrong, to make sure “they” knew all I was capable of.
If you were online in 2015 (probably the last good year on the internet, before the US 2016 election ushered in the darkest timeline), you probably came across one of DJ Khaled’s major keys: little videos, usually posted on Snapchat or IG, to encourage his followers to glow up, make moves, and secure the bag. He also frequently invoked a murky “they,” anonymous haters lurking behind every screen to keep you from reaching your full potential. “They don’t want you to win…so I’m gonna make sure I win more,” Khaled told us, chomping on an ice cream sandwich because apparently they don’t want us to do that either. Who is they? No one knows, but it’s provocative – and God, isn’t the idea of making them eat their words motivating as hell!
It’s probably a good time for me to share that I have achieved a fair amount driven by pure spite. When you are a woman, not to mention a Black woman, you are presented with ample opportunities to do so – it seems that undermining and underestimating us is a kink for some. (Such freaks – in the bad way, of course.) I could list some examples here of me doing so – but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because using spite as fuel is the very worst, most potently ego-driven way to live, and it’s corrosive, like ethanol in engines meant to run on gasoline (the woman in STEM jumps out yet again!). It will work for a time, but less efficiently than the right energy source, and with damaging effects that will eat away at your parts from the inside out.
Succeeding from a place of besting “them,” whether your haters are real or imagined, is much the same. The resulting glow of accomplishment will be fleeting and unsatisfying, leaving you hungry for the next perceived slight to push you to the next high – and the cycle repeats, growing more toxic and even less fulfilling as time goes on. Naturally, this process fundamentally divorces you from a healthy sense of self – how could you possibly develop one, when you’ve got one eye on an affront from the past and another on the imagined future where you’ve “shown” them? You, of course, exist only in the present – no matter what the mind thinks. It’s no wonder, then, that Eckhart Tolle defines the ego as “a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.”1
As a result, I came to a decision: the bitch simply had to go. I’ve gotten here through a combination of the usual suspects – journaling, meditation, periods of isolation and introspection – and some other nontraditional methods (a dip in a holy river, almost being kidnapped in Accra exactly a year ago, last NYE lol) and still the journey is not yet complete. But the differences I feel are simultaneously tectonic and so subtle I rarely notice them until I’m months into a new reality I’ve shifted into incrementally. I generally see the harsh actions of others as projections of their relationships with themselves, not a reflection on me or my character. My intuition is stronger, regularly endorsed by random external signs as I accept more and more that I am a part of the universal oneness. My work – writing, content, everything else – is more refined and thoughtful as I reorient my motivations to come from a place of service (the right energy source I mentioned above), not chasing the high of others’ respect or validation.
Related to that, here’s something that gagged me when it first occurred to me: doing more of what someone already doesn’t value or appreciate will not encourage them to suddenly give a shit. Ouch, right? But essential to grasp so you can finally move the fuck on. All in all, I am freer, truer to myself, and all around better – and all it took was a deranged cab driver to nearly drive away with me and my friends after getting robbed at a music festival in Ghana (among other things.) The ego is dead, and I am more alive than ever (corny, but you gotta take a lay up when you see them!)
I know I said I had no New Year’s resolutions, but I lied. Here’s what I’m on all next year:
And that’s a wrap! I keep harping on this, but I’m so grateful to be on this journey with all of you. Thank you for reading, and I can’t wait to see what this space turns into next year.
I will be spending NYE in my preferred manner: at home with family, wearing pants with an elastic waist and reveling in the fact that I have not paid a cover to go to my usual bar that I routinely go to for free. If you’re at the clubs tonight – good luck and godspeed.
See you next year,
Lola xx
1. Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose