Your Monthly Momecdote, Issue 24: April, 2026

This blog post was originally published in my April newsletter. Subscribe to receive next month's essay along with book and music recommendations.

I’m feeling a bit stuck on my current manuscript. Not in a blocked sense, because every time I sit down to write, everything comes out just as easily as always, but in more of a… restlessness, a frustration with myself, with my schedule, with the fact that I can only seem to scrounge up enough time to work on the manuscript in fits and starts. I’m keeping up with my writing-a-bit-every-day, but what I’m delivering isn’t what I set out to write. I’m fighting against my nature with this one, basically. I’ve discovered a weakness in my craft: I have a comfort zone, which doesn’t necessarily feel like a bad thing to me. But what is comfortable to me is probably not what’s best for the art, and trying to push myself to do something that goes against my writerly instincts is feeling more like work than it has in a very long time. Olivie, I keep telling myself, we do not need to dive into the interior every single time the character experiences an emotion. Even if it means a little joke! But alas. I have never been in charge here.

In a similar manner, I’m starting to see my parental flaws take shape. I think my approach to most things is designed well enough, in terms of producing the kind of person I’m trying to make. I tend toward natural consequences vs. strict rules, I prioritize empathy, I make space for him to understand and engage with his emotions, I’m curious about who he actually is more often than I am restrictive about who he’s allowed to be. But I also feel flashes of authoritarianism from time to time as he gets older—for example, whether he takes music lessons or participates in team sports is more my decision than his. I am able to offer those resources, for one thing, and I know the value of those opportunities. So, in short: I know better. Sorry, big feelings, but I suffer no second-guessing over the fact that sometimes, Mom is fucking right.

I am also pretty unrelenting in wanting to push him to think critically, to strive for more. To not be lazy. I don’t find the notorious “Why?” phase irritating because I usually turn it around on him: Why do you think that is? Why is it like that, in your mind? We talk through it more often than not. But the kicker, the thing that does occasionally flood me with doubt, is the act of holding him to a higher standard than he, a four-year-old, holds himself. I don’t tolerate random scribbles—he can draw too well for that. I want effort. I want creativity. I want avant garde. I’m mostly joking, but also not. The storm he will most likely have to weather as he comes of age will require him to choose to do things that are difficult; to not balk when things get hard. In a world profiting off the act of outsourcing curiosity, intellect, and artistry, I don’t think I’m wrong to feel like I need to arm him with diligence and resiliency now.

But, of course, the moment of uncertainty. Again, he’s four, almost five. He barely even exists. Am I going to drive him away from something he loves by never allowing him to settle for what comes easily? As is the nature of parenting, I am not and can never be sure. I know we’re different people, so how can I ever really say whether something will work for him?

I guess I should back up: I don’t thrive on praise. I don’t really trust it? If people are too kind about me or my work then I assume they have an agenda, or that they’re lying, or if not lying, then exaggerating to ease me into a state of compliance, so… the agenda thing again. Praise makes me uncomfortable and I disregard it most of the time. My mother, as you might guess, was not big on praise—she is now, but it’s too late, I’m already formed. My recollection of childhood was that little to nothing I did was ever good enough, and as a result, the teachers and coaches who motivated me best were the ones who were kind, but tough. They were paying attention; they told me, firmly and specifically, whenever I could and should do better. I can see that this is the attitude I’m imposing on my son: You can do better, you are capable of more than this, and I know this because I know you. Because I love you, I won’t allow you to fall short of the person I know you can be.

Gifted & Talented is out this month in paperback. The title is, as you likely know, an allusion to the strange melancholy of adulthood that follows being a “gifted” kid. It’s about three terrible siblings, sure, but it’s also about the act of mourning your potential; about grieving the person you thought you would be. Obviously, I have some hangups about this mismatch—about how “potential” is so often defined as something intrinsic, when on a practical level, achievement of said potential can only end badly, with profound corporate fraud. Again, that’s a joke (read the book), but also, a real conundrum. The part I resent is the part where I was told I could be anything, I could have it all, but the reality of my sociopolitical infrastructure makes that technically impossible. Is it hypocritical, then, to wrestle with the vast horizon that is my son’s—all children’s—extraordinary potential as if it’s something they, too, should seek?

I’m not an overachiever, I used to say, I just achieve. What I meant was probably a riff on my mom’s immigrant outlook: I am trying to make it in America. It’s strange, I feel it now, the dissonance between wanting my son to have an easier life than I did while also hoping he takes my intensity, my urgency, along with him. How can he have both? And which is more important? Am I only this way because I was forced to be? I don’t know how to rest, how to enjoy, how to settle. Would I be better off if I had those skills? Is it always fruitless, this feeling like you want to give your kids the world, but only if they don’t take it for granted, even though you literally gave it to them, so how could they not? I made it in America so he didn’t have to. So he doesn’t have to. Depending on how you look at it, I have armed him with more than I myself have. What else is there to do?

“Do your best work,” I hear myself tell him, again and again. “Is this your best work?” I’m training him with my own mindset. With all parenting problems, the grip of fear is about my absence—Who will you be if I’m not here to protect you? Have I given you enough tools to survive? But of course, if he fulfills my training, then one day he’ll find himself exactly here, feeling restless, frustrated with himself and the arbitrary bar he’s set because the craft allegedly demands it.

In which case I hope he thinks of me, laughs, and gets up from the desk to live his life.