The Dead Letter Department #2
(did you miss dead letter department #1? catch up here!)
be bad at things
There’s a whole raft of discourse floating around out there about what happens when you’re raised with a tremendous focus on test-score friendly intelligence: ‘gifted’ programs (scare quotes definitely used with intent), designations of exceptional or twice-exceptional, indigo children (lol) and so on. A very brilliant tumblr writer I’ve followed for ages has a whole fleet of essays about the complications accompanying this kind of education: the racism and classism of the gifted programs themselves, the way the absurd pressure-cooker of being told you will grow up to change the world can lay waste to any possibility of developing your own ambitions or, you know, just getting to be a child while you’re a child. I still have a full hackles up response when people say something like ‘the children are going to save us’ because for the love of all that’s holy, they shouldn’t have to. The idea that what was sold to my parents as ‘gifted’ might be more accurately described as asynchronous development, a type of neurodivergence, is something I’ve been thinking about ever since I learned the phrase.
One of the lasting effects of spending time in such programs was, for me, a powerful desire to never be seen doing something badly. This is a pretty obvious, & I think common, result of having a lot of intense adult attention paid to how easily something supposedly comes to a kid: the ease becomes the value. If you’re not immediately good at things, if they don’t slide smoothly into your brain, and perhaps most importantly if you can’t to some degree teach and manage them for yourself significantly better than your age peers, than you probably shouldn’t even bother. You certainly aren’t going to be of much interest to the intellect-fetishizing educational stream you’re in if you ever stop excelling, so you’d better be sure to run as fast as you can before the burnout hits.
Learning how to be cheerfully terrible at things is one way to try to chip your way out of this predictably barren labyrinth, and right now I am learning how to draw badly. It took very minimal supplies to start: I have two books, the exact same pen I use to write with, and a stack of nice thick index cards. I have no ambitions for this project—actually, project is the wrong word for it, since I don’t even have any goals. No one’s going to see the drawings, except probably my sister, and I show absolutely no signs of turning this into something bigger or more important or world-savinger. I just like it. It’s nice to put on a podcast and draw fat little gnomes and lopsided mushrooms.
(pls ignore the chips in my desk, apparently I write hard sometimes)
If you’re super stuck in your own head, either with your creative work or just in general, I strongly recommend being shitty at something. Be deeply underwhelming! Bake an ugly loaf of bread. Play an instrument like the exact opposite of a prodigy, like someone who has to painstakingly memorize the most basic of scales. Fall over several times while doing Yoga with Adriene. No one will know but you & me, and it actually starts to feel pretty good after a while.
do better
Would you like to cry uncontrollably? Do you enjoy shopping online? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, you definitely need to check out transanta on Instagram, where you can anonymously send gifts to trans, nonbinary & gnc youth in need. There are little profiles for each person & it’s easy to click through & buy them something off their wishlist. I would recommend doing this holiday activity either in private or with a very understanding companion because holy shit it made me so emotional.
further reading
If you’re longing for more newsletters after reading this one, Samantha Irby is the absolute gold standard. She says she writes about books/snacks/softcore but it’s really mostly about Judge Mathis, a television show I have literally never watched and never plan to watch, but the newsletter makes me cackle anyway & I read every single one.
the only good thing
It’s dark. I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s pretty dark like almost all the time now. I didn’t do much with my garden this year because I was working a lot and also very sad, and I miss the feeling of messing about with plants and buying ambitious bulbs that will definitely get eaten by the squirrels or sprout all in a bundle instead of nicely spread out the way that I thought I planted them. The only good thing today is this perfume, Dirt by the Demeter Fragrance Library.
It smells just like it should, like freshly turned soil, like laying down somewhere nice and warm and grassy and taking off your shoes.
write back
You can give that little heart button a fervent embrace, click through to leave a comment, or email me at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com. Send me a picture of your favorite perfume! Maybe I’ll put it in the newsletter (with your permission) and we can geek out about smells together.
If you like the Dead Letter Department, please share it with a friend. I hope to see you here again.
Reading your newsletter feels like catching up with an old friend. Because, for me anyway, that’s exactly what it is! Even if I’m the only one who gets to do any catching up. Thanks for your writing. I truly enjoy it :) |
 | thank you so much, it's SO nice to see you here! <3<3 |
 | I love this newsletter! I've never been apart of one before but this one always makes me feel so cozy. I can't exactly say I was a 'gifted' child, but I have been a part of science and math programs most of my life with the expectation that I would always do well in them because I had been good at those things in the past. This caused a period in high school where I was very apathetic towards my grades. One of the reasons I was able to get myself out of it was learning about other women-in-STEM's failures and teaching myself that if you aren't failing--a lot, often times--then something isn't right. |
| thank you so much for joining me here! That sounds VERY MUCH like the same thing--being expected to always do well due to your abilities which I can totally see leading to a period of apathy. It's like if you're always expected to do well in something it becomes way too much of your identity instead of something you do, & then if you fail it can be shattering. I definitely want to learn how to fail a lot more & take it a lot more lightly! |
| Oof yeah. I would describe my attitude toward my grades in high school as something like belligerent apathy. I was so bored, and so often got effusive praise for things I had bullshitted at the last minute that for a while I really committed myself to a project of finding out exactly how much I had to just...not, before there would be consequences. And thus begins the tale of how I almost failed my jr. year honors English class. A story in several non-acts, one of which was some paper I was supposed to write about Hamlet, but Did Not. |
| lol at 'belligerent apathy,' that really sums it up! and the whole thing about being praised for bullshit, i definitely get that--like, oh, can I just like b.s. my way through this? great, that seems like it will give me more time to have large teenage feelings so i'm just going to concentrate on that instead. |
Jay WrightDec 12, 2020Liked by Z Medeiros