Time and Memory
1/3/20 - How do we remember a decade of life and friendship? How do we visualize time? And how do we have compassion for our past selves? Aminatou and Ann reflect on who they were in the 20s, the pleasure of having older friends to look up to, and realizing that our younger friends may have different reference points.
Transcript below.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.
CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Personal inventory days with Sabrina Hersi Issa
Design critic Alexandra Lange’s column Critical Eye for Curbed
That Donald Glover house-on-fire gif
TRANSCRIPT: TIME AND MEMORY
Ann: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Aminatou: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Ann: She's Aminatou Sow.
Aminatou: And she's Ann Friedman.
Ann: Wow, you know, the reverse intro has the benefit of pronoun clarity. Like I will say that. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Also you've got to switch things up every once in a while.
Ann: I'm not upset about it. It felt kind of good, like crossing your legs in the opposite direction.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Relieving the pressure. How're you doing over there?
Ann: Oh, you know, I was going to say happy Gregorian calendar new year but I guess it's also happy Gregorian new decade?
Aminatou: Okay, can I say something about that?
Ann: About the Gregorian calendar?
Aminatou: The decade according to the Gregorian calendar starts on the one. So all these people who are so freaking out and excited, I'm like you've got 365 more days of this decade. But not to be technical about it.
Ann: I mean actually I think that's the greatest gift we can give anyone who is like oh my god, what are all these decade in review things saying? About my personal decade in review and being like you know what, you've got another year to assess. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah, you've got another year to make your playlist of 1,000 songs you liked this decade. You've got another year to like, I don't know, put your top nine on Instagram for the decade. You can do whatever you want.
Ann: I appreciate that especially because pushing it off one year makes the arbitrary Gregorian decade align almost perfectly with like decades of my life, like my 20s, my 30s. You know what I mean? The little one-year push.
Aminatou: I know. [Laughs]
Ann: And I'm sort of like you know, the only real time markers being personal of course. I don't know how people whose whole 20s weren't in the 2010s and whose whole 30s weren't in the 20-teens are processing this decade milestone because that's the only reason I'm onboard is because it works for me.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: It works for me personally, a person born in early January and also at the beginning of a decade on the Gregorian calendar.
Aminatou: You know, as someone born in a year that ends in a five I have to say I really appreciate being in the middle of it all.
[Theme Song]
(2:25)
Ann: Also this has started me doing a side Google as we're talking about Pope Gregory the 13th I think? What are Roman numerals? Who is the Gregorian calendar's namesake. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah. I mean the Gregorian calendar is interesting in that, you know, it's the business calendar, it's the white people calendar, but it's not even the calendar most people follow.
Ann: Oh, for sure.
Aminatou: Because other religions have other years. Personally I'm fine with people that believe the new year starts at the spring equinox. For me personally the year does not start until Q4. The Amina calendar operates that way.
Ann: Right. So you are heading into like the second quarter of your year right now.
Aminatou: Right, of my year. My year just started. I'm so excited about it. And I think I think about this a lot because I was a technology person for a long time but like this whole living like a quantified life kind of thing is both -- on some level I see the benefits of it but more than anything else all I see is how it stresses people out. And so the idea that you have to have something to show for the last ten years of your life as if just being alive is not enough is something that is just really disturbing to me. And I also -- nostalgia is good I guess but I'm the kind of person that I only look forward and that's part of why I'm in therapy, I'm not good at looking behind, but in the front I was like I can do that. So living for today and the future, pretty lit.
(3:55)
Ann: I know. Well, and I have to say we spent a lot of this year working on a book that looks backward so it's like, you know . . .
Aminatou: Yeah, tell me about it Ann. It was very hard for me. [Laughs]
Ann: I know. Well I was going to say though honestly something that -- it's not my favorite thing to do either honestly, like this is a way we are very similar, but one thing that got me through it is being like oh, this is like setting me up to learn things and change my behavior in the future or do things differently in the future. And then I can kind of like find the value in it as opposed to just being like aren't I sad that I handled that that way? Or aren't I sad that this great moment has passed? Any kind of like, you know, any of those feelings that creep in when you're often in like an oh my god, ten years ago reflective mode.
Aminatou: Right. I mean you're so right about that. Not everyone gets that experience and I would certainly not have chosen that for myself or gotten this experience at all if we had not worked on this project together. It's like on one hand there's very much like wow, look how far you've come, but also I think that for me at least there is also a pain of just looking back at that time and being like oh, here is how hard all of this was. And having to revisit it even though today it's not that hard still puts some trauma into focus which not great, you know? But at the same time I think the real gift that I've gotten from working on the book with you really is to just see how full my life has been for ten years because I think that I suffer a lot from just . . . I'm so focused on today and tomorrow that it's like however I feel right now is how I think my life is all the time.
Ann: Yes, the future extrapolation.
Aminatou: Right. And having the time and space to be like no, look at ten years of people who have loved me. Look at ten years of people who have just been there. Look at ten years of really fun experiences or ten years of really hard experiences sometimes, but things that you've survived with people. That was very affirming for me.
(6:00)
Ann: Right. And I think that's something I feel very acutely, like the difference between working on this book that's kind of like a personal decade versus a lot of the things that many magazines and newspapers I read regularly are publishing right now that are sort of an objective political, cultural decade or like some kind of reckoning with what we have supposedly all gone through over this past Gregorian ten years.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: I struggle with a lot of that too because a lot of it isn't about oh, and how can we kind of look forward? What do we want to take forward and what do we want to leave behind? Because I think you're totally right, like the process of being in a reflective mode about our friendship is something that gave me this deeper . . . definitely a deeper sense of gratitude for you and for many people who have loved me during that time. But it also like I was saying earlier allowed me to kind of say oh, wow, when I lay it all out like this I can really see that these are the things I'm focused on in the past or these are the things I'm going to make a priority now as I move to the future.
When I read a lot of these like what were the 2010s reflections there's not that same level of like on a cultural level, there's not that same type of energy of okay, and what do we want to keep from this time? Or what did we learn from this time and how are we going to try to do things differently? It's all very much like as the 2010s draw to a close there is persistent fear and anxiety and the world is burning. But you know what I mean? There is this sense of it's the end of something and not like time is a thing that goes on, you know what I mean? Like we are still in it. We are still making choices. There is still lots of it in front of us if we're lucky.
Aminatou: Right. If we are lucky. Uh, the key operating words here.
(7:45)
Ann: Right. But, you know, I mean these articles are not like literally the Earth is ending tomorrow but they have that kind of apocalyptic tone of like . . . and I know this is because they're book-ending a decade. It's the end of a decade, I'm air-quoting, but they also manage to have this tone of okay, we all start a new thing but it's in a horrible situation. It's not just like, I don't know, there was a Twitter thread I read earlier this year among a lot of designers about how different people see time, like how they visualize time, and how there are people who are like oh, I've always seen the year as a circle. Then there are other people who are like I see the year as a straight line. There are other people who are like what do you mean? It just is. I don't see any kind of visual structure.
And I've been thinking about that a lot as I -- I mean in this time when everyone seems to be talking about is it new? Is it a restart? Is it a new decade? And I don't really know what the answer is for me but I think the answer is it's personal time. It's like years and decades of my life or phases of my life. My D.C. years, that was a time. That's not a calendar thing. My L.A. years, that's a time. It's not a calendar thing, you know? So it's kind of an interesting thought exercise and people were making some extrapolations that there are -- like if you are someone who tends to be from XYZ kind of culture or live in a place that's ruled by seasons you feel more like an X -- you know, they were making everything some generalizations about who's likely to be linear and who's likely to be circular. But I was most interested in the people who were like whoa, time has no shape. Time is just time.
Aminatou: Yeah. I mean I very much feel that way that time is just time and it's a very kind of elastic . . . time for me at least, it's different every single day. It really is. I say this thing that is so cheesy all the time but it's so true for me that the days are long but the years really just zip by all the time and I feel that. I just feel that every day is a slog. And then, you know, you look and it's like the blink of an eye. You're like oh, it's been ten years or I've known this person for XY amount of time or it was like this amount of time since I did this other thing.
(10:00)
But I also just don't . . . I refuse to be a slave to time, you know? Because I think that thing you said earlier about what am I . . . you know, how are we marking the time is something that this year it's been really top-of-mind for me just because when I was reading all those decade round-ups the real comfort that I actually felt was oh, the world has been ending for as long as the world has been here.
Ann: Yes.
Aminatou: And humans have been anxious about it, you know? Like oh, great. And I think that for me some of that just has to do with the Internet and the sense where like at the end of the decade before this one we also had enough mass communication that the same kind of sentiment was propagated widely and then it's happening now again. I'm like oh, great, the world is always on fire. The shit is always ending. You know, the world is going to end tomorrow which obviously is the thing that religious charlatans have been selling to people forever. But even people who are secular tell themselves that. We just do it in this very different kind of way, the same doom-and-gloom and apocalypse, and we have different gods.
Ann: Mm-hmm.
Aminatou: But something clicked into place for me where I was like it's not that I personally feel in a great place in my place in the world. I'm like no, I am anxious and I'm terrified and I'm all the same things as everyone else. But I think that I am really in a place where I'm deciding that the news and culture and all of these external polls are not the things -- they're not the things that I want to center my life around. I want to center my life around myself and the people who mean something to me because those milestones are very different the minute that you make them very personal.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: It's been an interesting kind of thought exercise for me and also the thing I think all the time when I see these like the last ten years or the whatever, I mentioned like the Spotify lists or the top nine, but really I've been thinking a lot about how much of my life is ephemera and I don't like that. That's the feeling that I don't like. And so really thinking about what did I make this last decade that made me proud? What do I want to make the next decade that will make me proud? And what is something that will last?
(11:55)
And I think that once I started not thinking about time in this elastic kind of way it's been a different set of questions. I don't have answers for any of them but I know that I feel a little less anxious about it and I've just submitted to the fact that the world is ending and I will die and that's okay because that's the plan from the beginning. But everyone needs their own internal clock, like you need to decide what does time mean for you?
Ann: Right. And just to give proper credit I went and looked and the tweet was from the design writer Alexandra Lang.
Aminatou: Oh she's awesome. She has a great newsletter.
Ann: Exactly. So I was like oh, right, I knew it was someone I wanted to cite and source. We can link to the thread in the show notes because it's full of replies of just how all these different people conceptualize time.
Aminatou: Look at us being like college student philosophy students. Look at us. [Laughs]
Ann: You know, honestly this is -- but this is like, you know, when we haven't podcasted together like this in a while I'm like it makes some sense. We've done a lot of processing separately in the last few weeks. We were off on our own reading. We can come together and have the salon conversation.
Aminatou: 100%. I've been doing a lot of traveling lately and there was something really nice about being during the holidays in a country that does not celebrate Christmas but definitely celebrates New Years that I think also made me feel so much less anxious about everything. Because it was just like okay, the year is ending, everybody is having a big party or whatever which is fine, but there was not that rush of consumer capitalism, you have to get everyone a president. That just didn't exist for the -- when I was in Senegal for the last two weeks. And that's not to say people don't do holidays, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying the vibe is very different. And 1) it's because it's a majority-Muslim country and also African people don't do nonsense.
(13:55)
But I think that just also knowing that everybody does this differently and it does not have to feel like a mad dash to the end of the year, like it felt amazing to me and I'm really glad that I had that this last month because I think it did wonders for my mental health.
Ann: Yes. And, you know, kind of like everybody does it differently. I want to do a callback to a previous year's first episode of the Gregorian calendar year in which Sabrina Hersi Issa gave the hot, hot tip that she uses her birthday every month as a day for kind of reflection and assessment. And that is her time, you know? Her time is this is how I'm checking in. This is how I'm checking in with my own feelings of am I on a path I want to be on? Am I making choices that are fulfilling to me? Am I kind of incrementally working towards things I want to be working towards?
She had a short list of questions. You know, she schedules all her appointments on that recurring calendar day but she also does stuff like ask herself what she's been grateful for in the past month. Ask herself what she's learned in the past month. Ask herself what's gone well or didn't go so well or who she maybe owes a phone call or what little things has she let fall through the cracks that she needs to be doing to support herself?
And I want to shout that out again because it feels like the kind of perfect marriage between a beginning of the year practical advice episode of this podcast and also the kind of more ephemeral do time on your own conversation that we're having now. Because that's one reason I love it, it's like an adaptation of time to fit her own needs.
Aminatou: Love to see it.
Ann: Should we take a break?
Aminatou: Let's take a break.
[Ads]
(18:24)
Aminatou: As you know from working on a memoir with me I have the worst recall about my own life and mostly because I'm like oh, I just don't want to look there. So when I think about oh, where was I on January 1, 2010 I have no idea. I can probably go in an email somewhere and find it or maybe were we already on Instagram? Maybe that's there somewhere.
Ann: We were at Big Bear Coffee Shop in Washington, D.C. which was closed for a dance party.
Aminatou: What? Are you serious?
Ann: You and me. I was wearing a vintage lace dress and you were wearing kind of like a wide-bell in some kind of fitted situation.
Aminatou: Ann the fact that you know this has me shook.
Ann: And there's definitely a photo of us at midnight or just after or before clearly dancing.
Aminatou: Clearly dancing? Okay, well that's where I want to be at the start of the decade, clearly dancing. So thank you for clarifying that for me. [Laughs] I'm sorry, I'm very shook by that.
Ann: That I remember that? I'm pretty sure it was 2010.
Aminatou: I mean it has to be right? Because we met in 2009.
Ann: Right, that's what I'm saying. And I still lived in D.C.
Aminatou: That's so wild. Well, you know, good to have you in my life because I would've made a mental note to look then never looked back. Where was I January 1, 2010? Not dead. Moving on.
Ann: Definitely not dead, definitely dancing. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I know, but what a decade we've had. I have lived in -- I moved from D.C. to New York to San Francisco, back to New York, and have done so much in that time. That's so wild to me. If you told me today, you were like "Hey, Amina, this next decade you're going to move five times across the country" or whatever I would give up the ghost immediately. That seems not cool and not exciting at all and I'm an old lady now so I don't want to do any of those things. But how wild that we just set off, but also we're like children of the great recession so we kind of didn't have a choice in how we had to be mobile. So when I think about the story of our decade I think a lot about how the economy had so much to do with it.
(20:30)
Ann: Yes. This is kind of what I mean about personal time. Like yes the economy had a lot to do with it. There was a bad economy situation in 2008 that was still going on as we rang this decade, but that for us also coincided with the earliest years of our careers. And I think I in particular, the oldest millennial (TM), had it a lot better than you and Gina who are a couple years younger than me and who were basically trying to find jobs and get on a specific professional track right when the economy tanked. I had kind of a couple years of head start before things got really, really bad. Although in media economy it's always a recession. [Laughs] But it's definitely like that, like this broader economic thing was happening but it's also we were in our 20s and had not established ourselves as professional humans with other professional connections and a body of work and experience we could use to convince people to give us more work. So I think that is like -- you can't really separate those things, right? Like for us the decade is marked both by where we were on our personal timelines and also these bigger factors.
You know, and the fact that I've been thinking about that thing you said about how ephemeral a lot of this is, it's like where did our friendship and where did our lives play out? I mean our friendship and lives played out on G-Chat, that was a huge where we were talking to each other when we weren't physically together, on Tumblr, LOL. Things we have totally abandoned as rich archives of how are we spending the day-to-day? What were the things we were laughing at and finding inspiring or wanting to do with ourselves? What were all these minor inputs?
(22:20)
And when we were writing this book going back to the G-Chat archives and to a lesser extent the Tumblr archives or the occasional Facebook post was so surreal because I can't really imagine. Like, you know, my journal is all mushy feelings that actually are not useful or scrutable to modern me so it's like these are the things, the conversations we had about who's picking up what food item and what time are you coming over and do you want to see that movie? And what photo did I find on Tumblr that I had to re-blog? These are the things that feel much more of capturing a day-to-day of that time even though it's like . . . I don't know, somewhere between the feelings jump of the journal and the kind of surface-level day-to-day you can see in the technology record lies maybe some kind of truth about what was going on for us. I don't know. It was wild.
Aminatou: Yeah. I mean going back to the journal archive has been -- what a mess for me personally. I was like I have to have therapy just because I'm looking at old journals. Triggered. But it's also this thing where it's so funny to just see, with the hindsight of okay, I've gotten over that or I have really overcome just being a young person or whatever, it's so interesting to go back to this younger self. And the thing that I'm trying to do is instead of just cringing just have a lot of compassion for that person.
Ann: Aww, I liked her. I liked her so much. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I know! I was like I really like this girl. She's fine. Life's a mess but she's fine. She's doing it. That person made me this person so that worked out. But it's so -- yeah, I have a practice in my journaling where I don't name people because I don't . . . you know, I just don't want a stranger to find my journal or read it then it's like Ann Friedman, last four of her social, did this today, XYZ.
Ann: [Laughs]
(24:18)
Aminatou: But also because I'm like oh, what I'm really trying to process is how I feel and not who it is. And so it's interesting sometimes to go back and be like oh, sometimes there are initials and I know who the person is and other times I don't know. It's just like wow, some of the stuff mattered so much and it doesn't matter today. But I would also put dumb stuff in there like my grocery store receipt or a thing I really liked that I ate or like a thing -- you know, just like a thing.
So it's been a very fun memento for me as well as just like ugh, like is there a way not to cringe at who you were when you were younger? And I think it's really unfair to cringe at yourself because that person becomes a different person.
Ann: Well right. And counterpoint, you know, if you're not cringing a little it means you're not changing.
Aminatou: Right.
Ann: It just means you are a static person which that is way more terrifying to me than someone, you know, reads in the book an anecdote about something I did or said when I was a lot younger or two weeks ago and is like "Wow, who is she? This is so embarrassing." That to me, the feeling of like oh god, I can't believe that happened is at least a sign that maybe I'm not . . . maybe I'm not replicating whatever it is that makes me cringe about the past.
Aminatou: I mean this is so embarrassing is my feeling about every version of myself that is one second older than I am at any moment. [Laughs] It's like that is the constant state of being.
Ann: You're embarrassed about how we opened this podcast 20 minutes ago.
(25:42)
Aminatou: Oh, I'm embarrassed about everything. I'm like being alive is so embarrassing, are you kidding me?
Ann: Oh, it really is. Now in the background I'm like going to Facebook to be like is this photo of you and me on New Year's Eve available? Now I'm on a hunt for it. I'm like where has it not been deleted from?
Aminatou: Oh my god.
Ann: Because I also -- you know, it's a very funny thing about memories where I'm like the reason why I could tell you right away where we were at the beginning of this decade is because there's this photo that I can recall. Like obviously I was there as a human. I wonder a lot about going forward not so much questions about like oh, is it good for us to document and post our lives on the Internet? But does that power go away? Because that photo was from a much-less documented era which is why I can remember it. It's not from an era when we had photos -- 25 photos of everything we did and every meal we ate.
Aminatou: Yeah, memories are so interesting like that. I had a good chat with my therapist in our last therapy session for the decade, shout-out to people who go to therapy on December 31. We know who we are. It's like some people go to the gym and some people go to the gym for the head, you know what I mean?
Ann: Emotional gym. You've just been there. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Exactly. You know, I think the thing that I was most struck by for me is so much of my therapy work is just working through past trauma and a lot of the not remembering is that. Everything was traumatizing and so you bury the memory and that's how you move on because if you don't think about it it's like it never happened. But that's not a way to live life so you do have to work through it. And a thing that was really good, and again this is why I'm so bullish on just being alive, is I was like oh yeah, you can have an okay life if you survive. And so I think just thinking about how in moments when I was very depressed or very just -- everything was very bad and much worse than it feels now, a lot of that was also just not having the tools to deal with it.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: So it's not like oh, my life is better and there's less trauma and whatever. Oh no, I have tools to deal with that now.
Ann: Right.
(27:50)
Aminatou: And so things are not as painful and they're not as hard and they're not as so many things. So the last ten years I think for me too has been just such an awareness of mental health as an important health indicator and I'm really grateful that at least I'm in a community where it's something we can talk about more and it's so much more normalized and access is easier. It sucks for a lot of people and it's hard but, you know, I feel like who I was ten years ago trying to find a therapist is -- it's a little bit easier today, not to say that it's amazing, but there is just so much more of an openness and a willingness to talk about it. And that has been, you know, just thinking a lot about what are the tools that it takes to make it ten years? I was like yeah, mental health, put that in the toolbox. Everything needs to click into place.
Ann: And that's kind of what I mean about what's the thing going forward? Not just compassion for your younger self but you're like oh wow, what has changed? What's given me the tools to kind of feel like I am different from this past version of myself? Like that is a really amazing and positive thing that I want to keep doing right? It's not just like oh, when we wrote these early chapters of the book about the beginnings of our friendship we did a lot of like who were these girls conversations. [Laughs]
Aminatou: [Laughs] Who are these fools? Who are they? Where are they? Situation them.
Ann: And some of the narrative we ultimately came up with has to do with how were we kind of so suited to immediately become such good friends which belongs in the context of the book and I'll leave it there for everyone who is going to read it. But I think that the other layer of that was like oh, you know, what -- trying to answer that question a little more broadly in a way like I really . . . maybe I have for high school a little bit because it's such a mythologized time. I'd been like oh, you know, I was XYZ type in high school. But really you're . . . adulthood does not lend itself to such easy pronouncements about like oh yes, we were the girls who did X in our 20s. That's the kind of thing that you don't really do if you're not forced to reflect on it. And while I don't think we have clear answers I do think that creating a narrative about that time in our lives allowed me to kind of see some things about myself. For example you were saying earlier moving constantly because recession and because our 20s. It's like when I moved to DC it was my third cities in two years? A year-and-a-half?
Aminatou: Woof.
(30:25)
Ann: Yeah, and I didn't want to live there. I didn't want to leave San Francisco which is where I was coming from. And the . . . I don't know, I think there were maybe two-and-a-half, three years in D.C. before I met you where I was honestly the grumpiest person. Like when I was really reflecting on how . . . that period of time I spent there, like I was saying earlier, my D.C years (TM).
Aminatou: That's what I loved about you Ann. You were the most lovable grump.
Ann: [Laughs] Right. But my narrative self of my 20s was not lovable grump. That's like my teen narrative.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Now I'm like what if I'm a lovable grump now? What if that's just who I am forever and I could only see it in hindsight? But yeah, I had some new perspective on I knew I moved to D.C. with a bad attitude, I know I did, but having to kind of write it out and be like oh, of course I wasn't happy when I got there. And you can't wave a wand and be like attitude adjustment. That's not how it works. [Laughs]
Aminatou: That's not how it works?
Ann: But now I'm just like oh, right, there's a reason that move was harder than other moves I've made, because I had really told myself it was going to be bad. I was really in a mindset where honestly I feel like until I met you I was like oh, a thing this city has given me? Like something that has come out of this that is so objectively good I can't hate this experience anymore, even though I had already before that met people who I really loved and still love to this day. There was something about being able to reflect on my own mental shift and also what if I had just moved and been like you know what? This is a city like lots of cities. There are good things and bad things about living here. There are people I'm going to want to be friends with and there are people I'm not going to be compatible with. What if I had just had kind of a more, I don't know, a less like . . . a less day-to-day upbeat but largescale grumpy attitude? That's my secret. I seem happy in the moment-to-moment then when you peel below it's like she is grumpy, right? It's like that is . . .
(32:30)
Aminatou: You are definitely grumpy but it's also in a way that is . . . [Laughs] I don't know. I love grumpy women. It's truly it's one of the most attractive qualities to me in a lady friend. Just how uncomfortably unhappy are you? And then let's dive in.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: But, you know, I think some of that . . . it's like so much of it is seeing your own kind of self reflected in someone else right? So grumpy is not even the word I would use. But I think that seeing someone who is just -- there's something very clarifying about meeting someone for the first time and you immediately understand they are not in a circumstance they would like but you're both making the best out of it and maybe together you can get out of it that is . . . and I don't know how you communicate that to someone immediately. I don't know how that happens. I guess it's like the kismet of friendship almost. But there is just something about sometimes it really takes seeing it in someone else to recognize that in you because I had a bad attitude too and I was really grumpy and I was really . . . I just like, you know, I'm like I'm not making any headway and nobody wants to be my friend and I'm just such an asshole and blah, blah, blah. And then you just see someone else where you're like okay, this person is less of an asshole than me. This is what I want so let's try that, and it's fine.
(33:55)
Ann: Oh my god, this person is less of an asshole than me. [Laughs] Such an amazing . . . hearing you say that reminds me of the kind of principle that I've experienced firsthand when you are living in a multi-roommate situation and you become very close to one roommate because you're united against another roommate who leaves the kitchen dirty or who is difficult to deal with. The principle of like we have a common enemy is sort of like the foundation of -- I mean even though D.C. was not our enemy, recognizing that grumpiness I feel like is kind of like okay, we are bonded by a negative thing. And, you know, while I am obviously happy that we found a way to bond, thinking about the future, I'm like wow, wouldn't it be great if I did not make any more friendships that are founded in a mutual dislike in something? Maybe wouldn't it be amazing? [Laughter] You're like no, no, I'm all about it.
Aminatou: No. I mean I don't -- for myself at least I don't agree with that roommate analogy but your point stands.
Ann: Have you never had that experience?
Aminatou: I have only had, in all my years of roommates, I've had two bad experiences. One of them was living with just one person. It was in the dorm, she was awful, but I'm sure she is telling someone right now that I am awful and I think that we're both correct, you know what I mean?
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: And so that's fine. I'm like that one I'm just going to chalk up to the game. And in the other bad roommate situation that I was in it was a three-person situation and I was definitely the person that they ganged up against. They were awful. I was medium-awful so I'm sure that they were telling people that I was awful too and it's fine. Like you know what I mean? It's like if somebody confronted me about that I would be like no, you're correct, it was bad. So yeah, but I think it's less about . . .
Ann: I'm not endorsing it; I'm just saying it's a powerful bonding tool. That's all I'm saying, yeah.
Aminatou: No, no, it's a powerful bonding tool but the thing about all of this that's just fascinating is I think everyone has their own internal barometer basically for what they're looking for and what they want and it is truly . . . the experience of writing this book with you, all I can think about is like wow, how in the world beyond kindergarten where they force you together do two people just decide that they're going to be friends? The entire process is just wild to me. And I'm like it just happens some of it is circumstantial, some of it is choice, some of it is whatever, but a lot of it too, I think looking back on the -- you know, in the full scope of our friendship, a lot of it is obviously in those day-to-day moments you were talking about but so much of it is also just looking back at the end of the year and being like okay, we're still here. You know what I mean?
Ann: Mm-hmm.
(36:20)
Aminatou: And you're like great, all of those small things add up to a bigger moment and we're still here. Obviously at the beginning of our friendship if you were like "Let's be friends for ten years" I would've said yes immediately. But I think now that it's been ten years I'm like oh yeah, ten years is a long time. It's also not a long time depending on how you're looking at your life, but it's a lot.
Ann: Depending on how long we'll both live which we don't have any info about, yeah.
Aminatou: Right. Right. Depending on how long you live; depending on how you feel about time; depending on so many things. But also I was like some of it was, you know, some of it went by really fast and some of it was also hard and long and like wow, we're still here. And that I think . . . again I'm like this is the mystery of humans because I think that we both arrived to that place very differently and that's what's very exciting and terrifying about it.
Ann: Yeah, I mean I guess . . . I don't know. You know, not to make everything about a plug for the book or where it ends up but . . .
Aminatou: Please make everything a plug for the book. We need to sell a lot of books so I can pay my rent. Thank you, goodbye.
Ann: But I do think that this idea of you don't have to agree on whether it's easier to make friends if you're united on a common enemy. You don't even have to agree on the narrative of what made your friendship click in the beginning. All you have to do is both be still there. That is really . . . it's sort of how there's -- I actually don't know who to quote it to but there's a thing that married people always say that's like the way to say married is to not get divorced. Have you heard this?
(37:50)
Aminatou: I mean yeah, probably some Christian person somewhere.
Ann: Oh, 100 percent. 100 percent, like that is -- anyway.
Aminatou: Yeah, same thing for being friends. [Laughs] Don't get divorced.
Ann: I think I actually read it most recently in The New Yorker magazine. Anyway I'm just saying it's not only Christians who say that, but yeah, same principle for being friends. You just have to still be there even if you don't . . . even if it's not amazing that way, even if you don't share the same version of events, the only way to stay friends is to just stay friends. [Laughs] It's like I know that's like a sticker that we probably didn't have to write a whole book to say but that is the like ten-year narrative that you . . . that's the only part of our narrative that we really have to 100 percent agree on.
Aminatou: Right. And to complicate it a little bit, right, it's not like stay in toxic relationships or stay with people that you don't like or whatever. It's like if it's bad, it's bad. Everyone agrees to that. But I think there is just -- I always have this very intense, naive feeling that every other kind of relationship is hard. It's hard with my family. It's hard with my romantic partners but with my friends it's always easy and the last ten years has been very eye-opening there. It's like oh no, to make a life with people is just hard.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: And it doesn't matter how you are related to them. If you choose people and you say they are your tribe and you want to stick it out with them that shit is hard. So yeah, so I think that like -- but also I'm really glad that I learned that lesson in this decade because you know what? If I didn't learn this -- if I hadn't learned this this decade the next ten years would be incredibly painful and hard. So now I'm like okay, I know. It's going to be a tiny bit less hard because I know and now I have the tools. I have some of the tools.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: But I don't know, there is just . . . I'm like -- you know me, I love self-help but I don't want it to look like self-help and there's something incredibly cheesy or whatever about it. But at the same time I'm like you know, realizing things about yourself is very beautiful and learning something about yourself and being able to do things about patterns that you have or things you're trying to break out of or generally the project of self-improvement can be a very beautiful thing for a person and I'm really happy that I have that in my life.
(40:10)
Ann: Right. And also that very much speaks to the what is the energy you want to carry forward, right? I was thinking about how a friend of mine who is an artist, someone gave her an exercise to do that was about all of her creative work and it was basically just this, like what do you want to turn the volume up on and what do you want to turn the volume down on? Like what do you want to do -- not like oh my god, I'm going to accomplish this list of things but what do you want to do a little bit more of in the next year, five years, decade, however you're defining time? And what do you want to do less of? And then it's relative. And really I've been thinking about that a lot both after this reflective process of thinking about the last ten years of our lives and being realistic about how much can a human being snap their fingers and change and what does awareness really do, the idea of like okay, actually I want a little bit more understanding and a little bit more day-to-day acceptance of the fact that being in long-term, intimate, family relationships be they chosen or biological or of origin or whatever, that is a thing that I'm going to have to turn the dial up on certain things and turn the dial down on certain things if I want to stay in them. Basically that is a relative marker.
Aminatou: Whew, yeah. Same. Hard same. Agree.
Ann: [Laughs] So yeah, I don't know. It's not quite as practical as Sabrina's use your birthday as a personal inventory every month but dial up/dial down is the only end-of-year reflection thing that I am doing.
(41:45)
Aminatou: The thing that I love about both of those things is that it's also just the truth of how can you be a better person is figure out what works for you. There's not like one size fits all advice for people which is why most advice is given by charlatans.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: I think that you get a lot of input about what you should be doing but again you have to make it work. And the thing that I have really -- I've been really struck by in both our writing this book and all the people that we're talking to and all the conversations I'm having about friendship and all these things is just like realizing that you -- and I've always known this so this is not a realization but being very solid and knowing that there is nothing extraordinary about our story. We are the two most ordinary kind of friend pair that you can have. And a lot of people that we talk to at least that listen to this show or that we interact with and our work a lot of times are younger than us. And I think that -- and it's something that I've said before.
But a thing that is so front-of-mind for me and I'm so struck by all the time is I'm like yeah, all we have on you is we're a little bit older than you so you have to go through all the motions. You have to go through the motions of being alive. And also there is nothing special about us. All of the dynamics that we have are dynamics that other people have. All of the problems that we have are problems other people have. All of the laughs that we have are laughs that other people have. That makes me feel awesome. I was like thank you, like we are only ordinary people. Like all of this is so pedestrian in a way that makes me feel really happy to be alive.
Ann: I think that's true, but also to kind of like -- you know, not to use the ten-year modality again but I've been thinking a lot about the orientation I had towards a lot of my friends who are like ten years older than me. I can't help but be a fan a little bit, you know what I mean? There is this sense of like you're totally right when you're like oh, we've just been alive longer than certain people right? But also that is worth something and I think the kinds of people I choose to surround myself with are often people who are like trying to grow and change and get better. And so therefore if they have ten years on me I have no choice but to stand, you know what I mean? Like they've been working on this an extra decade.
Aminatou: Right.
(43:55)
Ann: I really lately have found myself in my friendships with women in particular who are, you know, about ten years older than me give or take, I am just like chin on my hands, hanging on every word, tell me everything. I have that same attitude that you were talking about. And it's not because I think they are doing life uniquely well or that they are some outliers; it's actually because I feel that they are just a little bit deeper into this thing and therefore have gained a little bit more knowledge and I want to soak it up as much as I can.
So I don't -- I think you're totally right. We're average. We're average humans but like there is still something about average humans as time passes. This is why so many cultures venerate elders for example. Like not 100 percent, not like you're perfect just because you've been around a long time, but if you've been working for an extra ten years on me I want to know what you've learned through that work.
Aminatou: Wow. A white woman talking about elder worship, what a moment for me. I love it. [Laughter] Ancestor worship, bring it back.
Ann: To be clear I did not use the word worship. That's a Catholic trigger for me. I don't do that. [Laughter] But yeah.
Aminatou: You know what Ann? Sit with that for a minute. No, I completely agree with you. I think that that's true and I think that a lot of that is also re-framing it, right? From a place where you're like ugh, this person that's ten years older than me, they have what I want as opposed to saying like oh, how do I . . . what are the steps that make them get there? And a lot of times that step is just time. And instead of looking at them as something that you need to have right away it's really re-framing it and saying okay, when I'm alive as long as this person here is where I would like to be. And I think that is an entirely different conversation. It's funny now to be the age where -- I think for a long time I was always the younger friend and now I realize I'm the older friend everywhere I go because I never ask people their ages. It's like the same way that I don't like to remember things, I think that everybody is exactly 34 because they were born April 8th, 1985. That's what I think.
Ann: [Laughs]
(46:00)
Aminatou: And so everybody in my life is my same age, and now everyone -- you know, it's like every once in a while people will carbon date themselves and I'm like wait, how old are you? And I'm realizing that there are a lot of friends that are in the -- I'm the friend that is ten years older. And even knowing that has been so clarifying. I'm like oh! This is what is going on here. I did not realize that and now I know, but it is both it's awesome to be the younger friend and to be the older friend so I'm really happy to have both of those experiences. But shout-out to the older friends because my older friends really put up with a lot of shit from me so thank you for being my friend.
Ann: [Laughs] And I was going to say that's how you know a decade really is personal time, like there is no collective decade, because you talk to someone who is outside of striking distance of your own age, who's a lot younger or older, and you're like what was your decade like? And it's like whoa, the only way to judge this is personally, you know what I mean? Like you're -- yeah.
Aminatou: Yeah. What do you mean you don't know what Mavis Beacon is? You know, I'm like what are you talking about? So I had this awesome moment with a younger friend recently when we were talking about something with women in sports or whatever and -- oh, and there was like a meme and someone shared a picture of Brandi Chastain, the soccer player, who in one of the most iconic '90s displays of women strength when she scored and took her shirt off and she was wearing a sports bra and it's like we've never seen this before. And this person didn't know who that was. And in this moment everyone tried to shame them and I was like this is so stupid. First of all sports is also ephemera so relax. But that was such a -- this is all a circuitous way for me to tell you that was a moment for me where I was like oh, I am older than this person. We do not share the same memories. And that was such a . . . it's like I can't stop thinking about it, and now realizing all of the same people who have had to do that for me because I was this person who also didn't know and was always embarrassed by asking. So time, it's so weird because I remember that memory like it was yesterday but it was in fact not yesterday. I was not even 15 when that happened so it's a lot.
(48:15)
Ann: Right. Everybody's time is different. We are almost out of time but I'm just remembering because we've been talking about the book, it's like I forget what moment of the writing process we were at but you had the iconic observation that you know that Donald Glover GIF when he shows up at the house with the pizzas and the whole room is on fire? He thinks he's just going to sit and have a pizza and oh my god, everything is burning down. You astutely observe that that is what adult life is. And so I feel like I want to just inject that energy a little bit into talk of growth and change and plans. It's like no, actually the house is always burning down. [Laughs] We're just doing . . .
Aminatou: Since the beginning of time.
Ann: We're just trying to protect the pizza.
Aminatou: The pizza of life.
Ann: The pizza of adult life.
Aminatou: Oh my gosh. I love you a lot. I'm literally going to see you so soon.
Ann: Imminently.
Aminatou: Imminently. I think you're going to be the first person I see in the new year of my friends who don't live in New York so I'm excited about that. I'll see you for the next ten years.
Ann: Aww, see you for the next decade on different corners of the Internet probably, let's be real. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I'll see you on Al Gore's Internet. I'll see you on Beyoncé's Internet. I'll see you on the TikTok kids' Internet, everyone's Internet. I've got you. You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.