Too Soon
Joy can be hard for some folks to find right now. Maybe we should stop asking them to.
Pride is my favorite holiday. Even before I was an openly out queer, I loved every minute of it. Some of my favorite Prides were spent on my friend Scott’s roof on Christopher Street, drinking gin and pink lemonade out of a cooler, and watching the parade go by while baking in the late June sun.
That was a long time ago.
A lifetime ago.
I had planned to go into the city to celebrate this year. I wanted to go to the memorial walk for Diana Oh, and I figured I’d be able to see some folks while I was there. A visitation to my old life.
Last Thursday night, I came home from work with the beginnings of a summer cold, and proceeded to get sicker as the night wore on. I couldn’t even work from home on Friday, because sitting upright was not in the cards. By Saturday, I was on the mend, but there was no way I had the energy to drag myself to the West Village in the heat and humidity. I’m going to be 44 in September. I’m not a kid anymore. I can’t just power through shit and expect to feel healthy. So, instead, I slept. And slept and slept and slept. And took some NyQuil and slept some more.
By Sunday, I felt okay enough to go into the city, but there was no way I was going to be able to do parades or parties. All I could manage was to get my hair done, and have a low key daytime Pride toast with a couple of fellow playwrights. We were talking about shows we’ve seen (or, in my case, haven’t seen), what we are up to, and all that’s going on in the world.
One of my friends said he thinks the play he is working on might be his last play. I laughed, and told him I’d said that very thing so many times. But the cruelty of the theater business seem even worse right now, and it is tempting to just take it off of our plates. We’re middle aged, dealing with aging parents, battling mental illness and realizing that while the window of opportunity isn’t closed, it’s beginning to narrow a bit.
There’s something that feels particularly stupid about trying to make a career in theater now, especially when we are feeling a bit outside of the culture in general. We’re not being marketed to (unless you count collagen powder, Viagra, and various supplements). Gen Z seems to find us entirely irrelevant. We are feeling a bit unmoored by it all.
One thing we talked about at our very low key Pride celebration was the concept of “joy”. The word “joy” has been shoehorned into literally everything, to the point where if you are not feeling “joy”, you’re Doing It Wrong. My friends and I agreed that none of us are feeling particularly fucking joyful right now, and while joy has a place in the world, it is not a state of being. It’s starting to feel like my Most Hated Thing — ye olde Toxic Positivity.
It was already bothering me when people were insisting that their films and TV shows be sexless, fluffy, and “cozy”, when I was craving company on the Dark and Somewhat Perverse Side. Today, it seems like every play or musical has the word “joy” somewhere in the marketing material. And while we all agreed that narratives (especially those of marginalized people) do not always need to be tragic, there’s a weird sort of comfort in seeing some dark ass play in a tiny theater and realizing that someone else feels the same way you do. I think of theater as a mirror that reflects our humanity back to ourselves in a way that we can recognize. And everyone sees something different.
There is nothing wrong with joy in and of itself.
I am not a joyless person. I love to laugh. I love a good dinner. I love sex. I love all the joy-making human activities of the world. But, like with all good things, the joy they bring is fleeting.
I know that my approach to my work and to my life has to change. I am going to have to re-focus my ambitions and take some of the focus off off my own goals, which will (hopefully) serve the common good as we fight this regime1. I can do it, I am capable of it. I am happy to pick up that mantle, even if I am so exhausted I can barely get off the couch.
But you’ll excuse me if it’s hard to find joy in fighting for basic shit. I’m not expecting YAY SOCIALISM EVERYONE GETS A UNICORN AND A PONY, I just don’t want my friends to fucking kill themselves because our government is actively working to erase them from existence.
That doesn’t bring me joy. That just makes me angry. Not because I can’t focus on myself, but because it’s fucking unfair.
I’ve been wanting to talk about the concept of Justice Sensitivity for a while, but could never find the frame for it. I find it increasingly difficult to talk about the various “mini-disorders” that come with having ADHD (and also ASD). Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is an example, even though it is very real. It has just become yet another thing that people latch onto in order to insist that neurodivergent people are “making shit up”, which is a thing that too many people think. 2 Or, making it your “whole personality”, even though a big chunk of my personality is formed from my neurodivergence.
Here is a definition of Justice Sensitivity from Addept:
Justice sensitivity is the tendency to notice and identify wrong-doing and injustice and have intense cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions to that injustice. People who are justice sensitive tend to notice injustice more often than others, they tend to ruminate longer and more intensely on that injustice, and they feel a stronger need to restore justice.
Justice sensitivity is not a disorder in and of itself. You can’t get diagnosed with it. It’s just another frame to explain how neurodivergent people respond, and why they may get hung up on something.
I have certainly struggled with ruminating over injustice. I spent years banging on about gender parity in theater, because women playwrights made up less than 20% of productions when I started out, and I found that deeply unfair and counter to the feminist ideals I grew up learning.
A lot of people thought I was saying that just because it was unfair to me personally, or that I thought I should be getting produced more. It was unfair to me, but that wasn’t the primary unfairness I was responding to. I was responding to the insanity of the fact that 51% of the population had their voices disregarded simply because they were a woman. If you had a femme sounding name, your play wound up towards the bottom of the slush pile. I still bemoan not using “K.B. Quinn” as my playwright name, because the name “Kari” revealed “GIRL” too hard. It’s almost cute that this is something I worried about.3
That is only one example of the injustice that I ruminated on. I saw the overturning of Roe coming for more than a decade, and I was told that I was overreacting, or being too strident. But I could never get my mind off of it. I could never square that it was being chipped away at, bit by bit, and so many people couldn’t see that or understand why it was important. And, well, we saw what happened.
No matter what your particular focus is, the unfairness of the world we live in today is staggering. It is unfair to all the people who are suffering, and to those who will suffer in the days and years to come. It’s unfair that after so many people worked so hard for so long, we’re in a worse place than where we started. It’s unfair that we are being tasked with fixing it, even when many of us have been so directly affected.
And not only must we fix it, we must fix it with joy?
NAW.
I’m gonna show up, and I’m gonna do the work, but don’t expect me to be joyful about it. Don’t force that on me. If I show up sad and angry, wearing all black, welp, I showed up. It’s unfair to insist that joy is the only correct method for resistance. Or survival. Or that it is the most important aspect of the human experience. Or that it will actually create meaningful change. 4
In a world where nuance is becoming harder and harder to find, I appreciate that my ADHD brain can still hold two divergent thoughts at once, and still remain committed to doing what I can to make the world better.
I can feel the unfairness and the exhaustion when thinking of the work ahead, and also understand the necessity of showing up. I can feel the importance of joy and also think it’s been overemphasized. I can be sad and angry and also laugh my ass off at funny TikToks or stand up comedy. I can be terrified and furious at seeing our rights taken away and also grateful for the years I lived with those rights intact. I can be supportive and empathic, but I can also be self-protective and experience compassion fatigue.
I am not sure what it will take to get me to “joy” right now. Actually, I do know what it would take, and it’s Not Very Nice….but I can’t wait for the joyful bacchanal that will occur when Certain People shuffle off that mortal coil.
Speaking of Shakespeare (I had a long standing moratorium on invoking ol’ Billy Shakes on account of ENOUGH ALREADY, but sometimes it’s appropriate), this speech by Gonzalo in The Tempest is one of my favorites:
GONZALO
Beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause,
So have we all, of joy; for our escape
is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe
Is common; every day some sailor's wife,
The masters of some merchant and the merchant
Have just our theme of woe; but for the miracle,
I mean our preservation, few in millions
Can speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh
Our sorrow with our comfort.
To summarize— he is saying that it’s pretty boss that we survived, despite everything, and we are still here when others cannot be, and we should derive joy from that. But, Gonzalo is the Toxic Positivity guy in The Tempest, and he’s saying this shit to a guy who just lost his child. Too soon, broham.
And it’s too soon now.
One day we may be able to say that we lived through it, and in honor of those who didn’t, we’ll embrace the well-earned joy you only get from almost losing everything.
We aren’t there yet. But maybe one day.
What matters is that we keep going, however we can. And that means I may be showing up to the next protest, surly as fuck, with nary a hint of joy — unless I see someone punch a Nazi in the face. I think that would help, at least for a little while.
If you would like to support my work, there are many ways to do just that!
✔A paid subscription is $50/year, or $5 a month.
☕ If paid subscriptions are not your thing, you can Buy Me a Coffee as a one time show of support.
❤ You can always subscribe for free - I don’t paywall often!
👍 Most importantly - if you like what you read here, please comment, like and share. Most of my readership comes from my work being shared right here on the Substack app.
Thank you for being here.
-KBQ
I am still dealing with judgment from people about taking Adderall, a long prescribed drug that is safe for people with ADHD and has some of the highest efficacy rates of any medication on the fucking market (70% in this study, which my shrink told me is only second place in efficacy to ASPIRIN FFS). But no, despite my endless “It’s not really like that”, there is still stigma. Also unfair.
The entire concept of gender parity in the theater is considered antiquated by many. Normally I’d have Opinions on this but I’m fucking tired, so that conversation can go on without me.
See: Harris, Kamala. Presidential campaign. 2024