Help! My Jealousy Over Other Writers’ Success is Destroying Me

In our first Tarot + Craft column, Sarah Elaine Smith gives advice to a bitter writer

Dear Braindoggies,

I am a writer with some decent successes to my name, but I’m so destroyed by professional jealousy that I can’t work anymore. I’m so jealous that I can’t even read others’ work, I can’t participate in the community, I can’t even get on Instagram without spinning out over the prizes that I haven’t won, the books I haven’t written, and the ways it seems everyone else is thriving. It feels shitty not to be able to truly celebrate others’ successes. And I’ve actually had it pretty good. I have no right to complain.

How do I deal with this? How can I get less bitter?

Thanks, Bitter

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THE SPREAD

You: The Chariot

The Problem: Temperance

The Ideal Outcome: Aries

The Advice: Queen of Wands

The Mood: Six of Swords

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Dear Bitter,

The truth is, things would be much easier for you if you weren’t so ambitious. The Chariot is not a card of “it’s an honor just to be nominated” participation. It’s battle. It’s war. You have a plan for your presence in the world, and in the pursuit of it, you are willing to harness the opposites of your nature (black swan, white swan) to pull you forward.

Temperance, on the other hand, is an integration of opposites. If you’ve ever made a custard, you know that in order to mix heated milk with egg yolks, you have to introduce the milk slowly, raising the temperature by tiny degrees so you don’t end up with a pan of sweet milk and scrambled eggs—a process called “tempering.”

There are two ways to work with the opposites of your nature: Let them power each other dynamically or integrate them. There’s a time and place for integration, but it sounds like what you really want is power.

Any motor generates power through the alternation of forces. There’s an upstroke and a downstroke in a piston. Riding a bicycle, your feet go up and down on the pedals. Your lungs expand and empty. No power operates through expansive “positive” force alone—dynamism is the source, and for that, we also need to allow for contracting “negative” force. If you don’t alternate forces, they cancel each other out, and that’s what you’ve been doing. You have tempered your desires with rules about what you’re allowed to want or how you’re allowed to feel.

Yes, it would be super spiritual and everything if you transcended your desire and integrated your thorny, ambitious embrace of the ego. But it’s just as spiritual to want what you want.

I get the sense from your question that you’ve disavowed the competitive part of yourself; you feel bad about not being able to support other writers through the cloud of jealousy and you’re using your previous successes to deny your feelings. The problem is you’ll probably feel them anyway, whether you approve of them now or not. Things like that can do a lot more damage under the surface than above. And if you’re truly, seriously committed to not feeling them, you’ll also be inclined to numb or sideline yourself.

So what’s the ideal outcome? Aries is the first sign in astrology, corresponding with the first house, that of the self. As such, Aries energy can be kind of bratty . . . but have you noticed how much shit bratty people get done? Have you noticed how often they get their way?

Have you ever registered the possibility that “bratty” is just a synonym for “self-motivated,” typically employed by people who bitterly play by someone else’s rules?

You want some? Get some.

You asked how you can dispose of envy so that you can successfully perform the role of “I’m so happy for you.” But the real solution lies in allowing yourself to truly feel the force of wanting what you want.

Quite appropriately, the Queen of Wands has the advice. She is a master at embodying passion—both sexual passion and the abandonment of self to work, ideals, and beliefs. Passion comes from a willingness to endure a range of sensations, a willingness to receive and act, and a capacity to dwell in the heightened state.

In this spread, the center card is sort of like an average of the others—or a prevailing mood—so it’s interesting to see such a somber card among the fiery others. In the Six of Swords, you’re leaving a familiar shore, turning away from what you know. The journey to the unknown doesn’t exactly look like fun.

The task of embracing what you want isn’t a simple and lighthearted matter for you. It requires a shift in your thinking. And when you say “I have no right to complain,” it indicates that you were trained to invalidate your thoughts and feelings. If we’ve had an idea like that deeply instilled and reinforced from an early age (which nearly all of us have), going against such training can feel like denying the very laws of nature.

WHAT TO DO

Let opposing parts of your nature coexist. You can be a supportive friend to other writers and you can also be an ambitious soul who feels the sting when you don’t get what you want. Notice the places where you try to cancel out one part of your nature with another. If you think back, can you remember who taught you this?

Think of the number one thing that you want, the main engine of your envy. Why do you want it? Make a list of fifty reasons why. This is not because you need to prove how much you want something, but because it’s fun. You might have temporarily mistaken the thrill of desire with the ache of disappointment, but it’s easy to switch mindsets again.

Make up a name for your brat self. Let this brat version of yourself come out from time to time—in your writing, in your mind, at the mall, whatever. Don’t turn into a Heather or anything, but at least let the brat pick out some of your outfits.

WRITING PROMPT

Three of Swords

At the end of a reading, I like to consult the card at the very bottom of the deck. I consider all of the cards as messages from the subconscious, on the theory that your subconscious and mine are like underground rivers that meet, somewhere, in the darkness. So it would follow that the card at the very bottom of the deck is as far from awareness as can be. These messages, from the deepest hidden awareness, can be wonderful writing prompts.

In the Three of Swords, old hurts are dissected: The sword can wound, but it can also cut open, cut away, reveal. Pierced three times over, a heart is certainly no longer beating. The pain may be more of a recitation of a past wound than a fresh, painful one. There’s a line between catharsis and repetition, although you’re the only one who can tell the difference.

To use this as a writing prompt: I challenge you to revisit your most teenage, dried-roses-hanging-from-the-ceiling, Courtney Love self, and purge it. Write a dirge with it. Write something that would make your mother uncomfortable. If you have access to an electric guitar, you may want to use it.

MUSIC AND POETRY Rx

“Rage” by Rico Nasty

“Seven Rings” by Ariana Grande

Bad Bad by Chelsey Minnis

xxx

Braindoggies

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Thanks for reading, and welcome to this column! Each installment addresses a craft question with a tarot spread and interpretation.

I know that “craft” usually means diction or dialogue or some other mechanical aspect, but here’s the thing: Writing is actually the art of risk. It’s a risk to write anything down, a risk to let anyone read it, and a risk to say what you really want to say.

As such, there are lots of little wars we all have to fight on our way to the blank page, not to mention the doubts and fears we battle when we get there.

Do you have a question for Braindoggies? We would love to hear it! Please send your writing conundrum to Eliza Harris at eliza.harris@catapult.co with the subject line, “Dear Braindoggies”