06. It's Porn for Your Boring Life!! 🍆💦

Let's talk about desire. Where does it come from? Where did it go?

Welcome to the Great Job Nat™ Sunday Newsletter! You can read it, listen to my VoiceOver of it (above, posting it later today, best to listen with headphones) or BOTH. Most readers here are paid subscribers, so if you’re a freebie, I LOVE YOU but if you want access to Great Job art, comics, tickets to comedy shows, etc. consider leveling up here xoxo <3

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Has this ever happened to you?

You want to feel an emotion, but you CAN’T? Because there is simply TOO MUCH to feel about all the time? (Elections! memes! panda videos! the imminent AI takeover! Russia! China! what to eat for dinner! some people don’t even get to eat dinner! new diets! old diets! the ozone layer! those two black holes that are slowly converging at some galaxy not-so-far-far-away that might eventually combine and swallow everything we know as reality whole!)

I don’t know about you, but my clitorus has been vibrated into OBLIVION by the NEWS —

Hello, Sharks. I’m Nat from Los Angeles, California and I'm seeking one billion dollars for a 5% stake in my company, Chorn™.

What’s “Chorn,” you ask? It’s porn that’s designed to get you out of bed instead of into one! By idealizing mundane, everyday tasks that you need-to-but-don’t-want-to-do! It’s porn, but for normal stuff! It’s chore porn! Chorn™!

On ChornHub, you’ll find a whole database of vlogs, clips, and Sundance-quality short films about people grocery shopping online, pairing socks, putting blueberries into vacuum-sealed containers, filing for insurance— BUT EVERYTHING IS DONE IN AN ENTERTAINING WAY! Watch hot, steamy videos of people hot-steaming their wrinkled clothes! Packing their suitcases for business trips! Filling out W-9s while HULA HOOPING!!

I hear your hesitation: “Sounds like my TikTok for-you page.” To which I say: “Shut your whore mouth!”

Because, get this! Our videos also provide LINKS TO HELP YOU PERFORM THESE BORING TASKS IN A FUN WAY YOURSELF! That’s right: This is all so YOU can get excited about getting YOUR boring ass to-do list, to-DONE!!! Imagine: Renewing your license to an adrenaline-pumping EDM bass drop! We’ll link you to DMV.com! IRS.gov! LADotParking.com! You’ll pay that street cleaning ticket you’ve ignored so long it’s worth as much as a mortgage, but we’ll make it THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE!! Boring is the new entertaining!! For a Chorn™ monthly subscription is of threeveninetynine!!

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Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want

I’ll tell you what I want— wait, what do I want? 🤔🤔🤔

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This week we’re talking about DESIRE.

Because — okay. I’ve been struggling through my boring-ass-to-do lists lately, unable to emerge from the daily malaise. Which has me thinking: How do you get yourself to want something? When does desire tickle your wanting loins? When did I last feel a sense of desire? Where did all my desire go? Why are my wanting loins so numb?? WHERE DID MY LIBIDO GO?!

TMI? Excuse me, but we’re best friends. Nothing is TMI.

Earlier this week, while performing my daily life-loop of coffee/work/walk like a Westworld robot, I ended up veering from my pre-programmed course and went to the bookstore. As I entered, a heaven’s spotlight shone through a crack in the ceiling onto this book, as if knowing I needed her:

The book begins by quoting “A Song in the Front Yard” by Gwendolyn Brooks:

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I’m very good (professional, really) at desiring the Big Things: scholarships, achievements, parties, rippin’ coasters at Six Flags, fame, fortune.

I’m less good at desiring the Small Things: Breakfast, breathing, choosing which shirt to wear, looking at plants, sleeping.

To rephrase: It’s not that I don’t want those things; I just don’t feel a sense of real desire about them. Wading in the still, lukewarm water of my everyday life—I want more. But more of what?

Editors Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters open the book by addressing us seeking readers: “Most of us can identify in our bodies a memory of that first spark of reckless desire, of wanting the rough and the untended, of feeling like that hungry weed. As we age, of course, our desires layer and change, but the base experience of want remains the same.” Our want lives, they say, in both the body and the brain. I’d like to electroshock both. Jumpstart the stuck gears. What causes malaise?

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Interlude: We <3 Pedro Pascal and Adam Driver

Talk about desire, amiright?

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Remember when we collectively decided that Adam Driver isn’t hot but in his non-hotness is actually VERY hot?

Then we knighted our new nontraditional Casanova: Pedro Pascal. The internet’s “Daddy.” Because he just has a special something.

This man can literally dress like your grandma, it doesn’t matter.

Maybe it’s the way Adam Driver holds things (too firmly), moves his limbs (with reckless abandon) and talks (too loudly). The way Pedro Pascal laughs (with his whole body), collapses into Oscar Isaac’s shoulder when they talk (also with his whole body), and generally emotes (also, somehow with his whole body). They can’t help but handle life with two hands.

Teach me how to crack open, Pedro. I want to scream at the moon with you, Adam. Teach me how to wrap my arms around my surroundings. Because you both—maybe we love you so much because you just seem so alive.

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What Do I Want? 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Lemme vent, real quick.

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Desire! You fickle bitch.

The more time I spend wanting to feel something, the less I feel… anything.

My wants are incessant, cumulative, compounding. I want my wants into oblivion: filling online baskets with clothes, favoriting homes I’ll never buy, saving Airbnbs I have no plans to stay in. Lazy reaching, idle wanting, feeling nothing. Offline. My wants are deeper. I reach into my throat, down into my stomach—feeling around with frantic fingers, searching for the truth of my hunger. What IS it? What do I WANT?

I sit in bed and dream of flavors. Garlic roasted in olive oil, crushed onto bread, steamy and springy and crusted just right. Little, bitter chocolates. Brine. Vinegar. Balsamic. Soy sauce, on anything. Corn tortillas, warm and hand pressed, preferably by an abuelita, preferably mine. My abuelita. I imagine inhaling a lifetime of lessons from my ancestors, I imagine learning traditions through food and song and warm, firm embraces. Hugs that ground you to the earth, that reassure you: You are here. I ache for a hug with conviction. I ache for intention. For affection. My boyfriend’s ears are ringing. His voice is in my head. “I give you affection all the time!” Yes, you do! I love it! But—I want affection that transcends romance. I want affection to be a societal standard, an everyday requisite, a baseline to existence, a norm, a constant reminder that I love my fellow person. Is this just how Europeans live? Latin Americans? This sounds Latin. “Love thy fellow man.” Sounds… biblical? There’s something religious about a hug that grounds you to the earth. What am I getting at? Maybe I want something divine out of this life. I don’t know. I just— I want to experience the mundanity of a piece of toast, a quiet morning, a fucking SUNSET with a simple, full-bodied “yes,” without raining on my own parade with distracting worry-wants:

Money. (I want more of it.)

My body. (I want less of it.)

Fear wants. False wants.

I want to stop dragging my feet through the days in between the big-bang nights of performing and/or parties and/or friends, convinced my life is the same six songs, an EP on repeat. A broken record. I want to want to live inside a typical Tuesday. I want to find happiness, there.

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FAK, I Just Remembered I Never Got Back to My Accountant

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Russ!!! I’m so sorry. I’ve been letting your email collect dust in my inbox. Because it’s too boring, I can’t do it.

I need Chorn™.

Or a lobotomy.

Or, okay. To live in my to-do list, without always needing, wanting more.

BUT HOW?

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Solution: Think of a Stick of Butter as a Work of Art

“Give experience your energy and like any living process it divides and grows. The deliberate wish to “live” takes over from the day-to-day accident formerly called life.”

Hardcore recommendation: read Against Everything by Mark Greif. It’s great. But especially, read the chapter titled “The Concept of Existence (The Meaning of Life, Part I).” It starts strong:

Made me re-evalute my relationship with:

1. The Now. A.K.A. the present moment.

2. Permanence.

Starting with #2: I am bad at impermanence. I want to hold onto every experience like a hand. I want to gather the droplets of everything I’ve ever done and freeze them into an ice cube that I can suck on, forever. That’s why there are too many photos in my camera roll. It’s not that I take too many photos; it’s just, I can’t bear to delete the ones I have, no matter how insignificant. Lest that memory be lost as heat to the universe.

But then: I’m living in memories. I’m not living, now.

Now, back to #1: Ugh. My Achilles’ heel. The present moment. I am anywhere, everywhere but Here. I am in daydreams and memories, dressed up as a past self and living in a hypothetical situation, entirely absent from what’s happening right in front of me.

Greif’s suggestion? Aestheticism.

Regard all things as you would a work of art; understand that it is never wrong to seek in art the stimulation of desire, wonder, or lust, or to search for resemblance to things in the world… Apply this to everything. Especially “the trivial, the ugly, and the despised.” That Eggo waffle you threw into your toaster? Beautiful. Waking up with a hangover? Romanticize it. It’s all a part of the movie that is you. I can’t tell yet if this is a healthy way to treat life, but it’s an idea. I’m gonna try it. 

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Going Bowling Felt Like a Step in the Right Direction

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I went bowling this weekend. But it was bowling in Hollywood, which means it was bowling/drugs/DJ/drinks at a low-lit speakeasy type venue. In between rounds, I double fisted a negroni and a margarita (Italian-Mexican fusion anyone?) and laughed a lot, a lot, a lot.

Considering these were the only two pictures I took, I know it was a good night:

How is it that I feel more when I’m sedated by alcohol? Something-something when-you-suppress-one-sense-it-enhances-another. When you’re blind, it enhances your hearing. When you drown your logic in booze, it enhances your emotions…

When I threw my first ball, it hit eight pins. I might as well have sold my show to Amazon/Hulu/Netflix, I was so chuffed.

Is this what they mean when they say “It’s the simple things in life?” Is this what Mark Greif means by finding art in life? Is bowling art? Are simple things art? Is double fisting art?

Haha, who cares. All I know is, I was left wanting nothing. Satisfied.

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Okay Now Really Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want

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As always, I’m an open door for your words, friends. Leave a comment about what makes you excited to get up in the morning, to live your typical, daily life. And tell me about your big wants, too. I’ll hype ‘em up.

Or, if you’re more private, send an email to nat@greatjobnat.com. Always love hearing from you. It’s one of my desires.

xoxo

nat