Bad Self Portraits

of a difficult woman. Music, youthful folly and the joys of having exhausted all of my major fuck-ups (probably).

Coby loves to find music no one else has heard of. He’ll spend hours searching through his Spotify, finding new (to us) artists, listening to their portfolio and adding them to playlists with names like “Chunky Chill Paul” - after our cat, a chunky and chill orange tabby named…you guessed it….Paul.

The other night we were making dinner and listening to one of our favorite discoveries, Lake Street Dive, when the lyrics of their song, Bad Self Portraits, really struck me. I might have been a tad high, but I was struck nonetheless.

I've spent my life
so lost on loving
I could have been a painter or a president
But after 25 years
I should be good at something
Gone are the days of me being so innocent

Oh to be in your 20’s and lamenting your place in the world. What a time to be alive. If you’d met me at age 25 and asked me to describe my life in one word, lonely would have been a good choice.

Our twenties are the valley between parental dependence and the comfortable independence of adulthood. A void between being. And without the benefit of hindsight, you might get lost in the valley’s crags and bogs. Wading through student loan debt and a shitty job. Paying rent and hoping your car makes it another few years. Looking for “the one” that you dreamt of for so many years.

I bought this camera
to take pictures of my love
Now that he's gone
I don't have anybody to take pictures of
Along some highway
is pretty good subjects
I'm gonna make myself make use of this thing

Society told us to graduate high school. So we did.

• Go to college.

• Get a job.

• Fall in love.

• Get married.

• Have kids.

In my small town, it was inferred that this should all be done, or nearly done, by about the age of 25. So when you find yourself still treading water at that benchmark age, it can feel a lot like drowning. Drowning in the failure of other peoples’ expectations.

I'm taking landscapes
I'm taking still lives
I'm taking bad self portraits
of a lonely woman

But I wasn’t lonely. Not really. Dramatic maybe (for sure), but the uncomfortableness of my 20’s was necessary to know myself. And god, isn’t that just fucking annoying? That the adults were right?

Because I can’t count how many times an adult told me, “when you’re my age, [insert unsolicited advice here]”. I’ve never wanted to punch someone more than the people who told me that you’ll look back at this and laugh or it builds character. I wanted to scream back, “you don’t know what I’m going through!” And yet, they kinda did. Not specifically, but in the general sense of the emotional rollercoaster: fine. I get it now.

These two will both be 40 soon. suckers.

Maybe turning 40 gave me a new perspective. I feel brand new. I’m 40. I can shed my youth - it’s gone and never coming back. I can shed that in-between feeling - not young but not old - of my 30s. I get to start wearing weird things like color block glasses or chunky costume jewelry. I now have more in common with Prue Leith than I do with Sabrina Carpenter.

I’m not saying 40 is old. It’s not. But it’s decidedly not young. And there is so much god damn freedom in that.

I'm taking night classes
I'm making sculptures
I'm painting bad self portraits
of a lonely woman

If we don’t take chances and make mistakes in our 20’s, what are we doing? Playing it safe? There will be time to sit and knit in front of the TV. There will be ages to be reasonable and responsible. When you’re too tired to cause trouble, you can be responsible. But while the youthful glow of your 20’s was upon you, I hope you took bad self portraits. Because I have a theory: every single one of us has to make mistakes. And if you put it off, you’ll make them in your 40’s or 50’s, when it so much more cringe.

I’ll explain this with an example/story. If you know my mother, you know her love of fitness and specifically, running. When I was in college and she was misdiagnosed with a terminal heart condition, and she had to give it up. Our hearts broke for her - she loved running so much. And even after she was given a clean bill of health, she never ran like she had before.

To comfort her, I told her that I had a theory (because of course I did): we’re all born with a certain number of miles that we can travel on foot and she’d spent all of hers. She had exceeded the requisite number of miles that had been allotted to her at birth and as such, must find a new hobby. Jury’s out on whether this conjecture was helpful.

Maybe the same is true of idiocy. Maybe we’re all predestined to a certain number of fuck-ups that just have to be spent. Non-negotiable. If you don’t exhaust them in your 20’s, taking night classes, making sculptures and taking bad self portraits, you’ll be forced to, upon turning 40, have a mid-life crisis. You’ll suddenly be completely unsatisfied with life and the only way to solve it will be to quit your job, or get a new spouse, or buy a Cybertruck - the latter having the highest levels of “calm down, bro” associated therewith.

If given the option between the bad relationships, questionable morals and epic hangovers that can decorate the life of a 20-something, or buying a car made by a fascist…I’m going with youthful folly. Because at least in that, there’s an excuse for the behavior. I didn’t know what I was doing because I was in my 20’s. My default setting was “uh oh.” I was programmed to look logic right in the face and giggle, flip it off and skip away toward what looked a lot like, “uh….should we call your mom?”

Erin told me I could post whatever I wanted to.

I bought this camera
to take pictures of my love
Now that he's gone
I don't know what to do with this thing, well
I don't care about the time or money
I just never thought that I'd be
through with this love

I never thought I’d choose anything I did in my 20’s over my latter years, but here we are. I resented my 20’s so strongly, as if I’d fucked up an entire decade by not being or doing “better.” But what if I was doing exactly what I needed to do in that period of my life? What if I spent all of my “oopsie poopsies” and now get to have a relaxed and calm existence in my mid-life?

I’m sure now that I’ve said that out loud something will happen to knock me over and remind me that life doesn’t work that way, but fuck it. I’m doing it. I’m manifesting it. I’m somewhere around the middle of my life (hopefully) and if I’m lucky, I’ll have plenty of time to reflect. And maybe there is still time to take bad self portraits.

Remember, stay difficult and always question authority.

PS: Lake Street Dive is coming to the Gorge May 25, 2025. Coby and I will be out of town but if you’re in the Washington area, look them up and go to the concert. Their music is so good and I bet it’s going to be incredible live at the Gorge.