I Have This Thing Where I Get Older But Just Never Wiser
Lately I've been a little bored. Everything is going well ostensibly: I have a great job with a fun team where I get to learn new things weekly, I live in my own condo I decorated to exactly my tastes with my two cats, my mental and physical health are as good as they can be for a person with a few chronic conditions, I have a large friend group I regularly see, and I'm even working on a novel after years of avoiding taking my writing seriously. Sure, I wish I had more money to travel and just more money to afford groceries lately. I could be going to yoga more. I should really cut back on caffeine. But things are good. Still there is a listlessness I feel. It's not even restlessness because this is the first time I haven't wanted to move to Europe in my life. But just generally I've felt almost a life ennui. It's a lack of stress that is almost troubling.
It has come to my attention—as well as my therapist's and a few friends'—that I'm a little addicted to stress. Anxiety was my drug of choice long before I realized it was a problem. It explains the internships I did on top of full college course loads. Or the extra writing I took on at my magazine job when I was snowed in with copyediting and factchecking. Or planning trip after trip so I barely had time to think let alone clean my apartment. Or overscheduling my week socially so I was running from one charity event to a party in the same night. Or trying to do a part-time master's during a pandemic. Or changing jobs and buying real estate within the same six months. I was always so busy. I was always doing more than most of friends. I would act like I hated it, complaining about how wound up before an international trip I'd get or how there was a reason I'd put off moving for six years and how I just wanted to live my life without all the hustle and hassle. But now that my life is fairly balanced again, I am bored, unstimulated, fatigued, antsy, irritable, a little wound up.
In this slow period, I've become obsessed with shows about extreme ambition. In September, I watched Netflix's Partner Track about three friends trying to make partner at a top NYC law firm. At the center is Ingrid Yun, a Korean American mergers and acquisitions workaholic who prioritizes clients and case files over her romantic life, family, and friends. Ingrid's ambition felt unhealthy to me, even pathetic at times. Sure, corporate law is meant to look aspirational with the glamorous work wardrobe, luxury apartments, decadent galas, and offices decorated nicer than my condo. But is it really worth skipping your best friend's 30th birthday party for something as boring as sifting through contracts? In the end, Ingrid learns eating all your meals in a conference room doesn't make you partner—being a cis-het white man does.
If Partner Track is a cautionary tale of ambition, then HBO/BBC's Industry is a Shakespearean tragedy. The London-based drama drops the viewer and five recent graduates into the shark-infested waters of international investment banking at fictional bank Pierpoint with its wining and dining (and sometimes coking) of clients, predatory managers, and verbally abusive environment. The focal point is Harper Stern, a Black American who didn't even finish college but has more drive and chutzpuh than her Oxford-educated peers. She needs to start over, make a name for herself, and earn a ton of money, and she doesn't care who she cuts down to ensure she has a permanent spot at Pierpoint. When I first started watching, I found all the financial jargon confusing and the competition almost nauseating, but then I got sucked in. Harper's machiavellian ambition—only sometimes outmaneuvered in this power chess match by her fellow American boss, Eric—should be horrifying. She backstabs friends, goes behind bosses, and puts herself in harm's way to fix mistakes. But it's also perversely engrossing. You root for her twisted Peggy Olson and Don Draper dynamic with Eric even though these characters are clearly both horrible people. Eric literally swings a baseball bat around the office, like his metaphorical dick. Yet he also sees something of himself in Harper's dogged underdog nature and creates his own worst nightmare by pushing her to be best saleswoman and worst person she can be. It was exciting, thrilling even, to watch people be this ambitious again. It reminded me of when I once was.
I never want to be that ambitious again. The kind where you compare yourself to every person in your peer group and even finding a mentor feels mercenary. You stay up late, stretch yourself to sickness, and thrive so much on stress only drinking can calm it down. It's hell to work this much and base so much of your self-worth on it, and something I purposely decided to leave behind when I left journalism. But I also missed it. As much as Harper's motivation should be a turn-off, I admired her fire. I remembered the zeal to get up in the morning and accomplish something, the high of getting in the zone, and the shared misery and war stories among peers. That level of ambition is a particular kind of trauma bond with people, and like trauma it sticks around and shows up in the weirdest ways like watching TV after your much calmer day job.
But Industry has the same message as Partner Track. All of these characters bet on themselves, but not enough not to tie their success to a company that could replace them in any minute. The lie of capitalism is that everyone should be an individual but no one really is in the office. And maybe my work goals are much more modest now, but it's a lie to say I'm not ambitious. I still want to not just finish my novel but publish it. I just know now that the breakneck pace of both Ingrid and Harper just burns them out faster and makes them a pile of ash before they even reach the torch. Of course it's exciting, thrilling even, to watch Icarus fly too close to the sun, but it's not anything you can make a happy life out of—or even a life. After all, Helen Wan, who originally wrote the novel Partner Track is based on, is no longer a practicing lawyer, and Industry was made by two investment bankers who failed out of the career. And we're better for it.
Pimento Cheese Babka
While shaping my second loaf of challah on Rosh Hashanah, I realized I don't actually like challah all that much, but babka, however, is fantastic. Like a combo of a cinnamon roll and challah, it's usually sweet but can be savory like Molly Yeh's fun pimento cheese version. You could cheat and buy the premade pimento cheese, but when I did the math, it was cheaper to make it from scratch.
Ingredients
1 batch Molly's Challah, completed through the first rise
Filling
1/4 cup (57g) mayonnaise
1 cup (113g) shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 jar(57g) diced pimentos, drained
1/4 tsp. sweet paprika
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
kosher salt
black pepper
Egg Wash
1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten with 1 Tbs. water
Directions
1. When the dough is finished with its first rise, roll it into a 10" x 14" rectangle.
2. Spread the mayonnaise over it in an even layer, leaving a 1" border untouched along the long edge closest to you.
3. Sprinkle on the cheddar, pimentos, paprika, cayenne, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.
4. Starting at the long edge opposite you, roll up the dough to make a long jelly roll and pinch the edges and seam to seal them shut.
5. Use a serrated knife and, starting 1" down the log, cut the roll lengthwise down the center all the way through.
6. Turn the two halves of the log so the opening is facing up (and the filling doesn't fall out).
7. Twist the two pieces around one another.
8. Fold the dough in half, place it in the loaf pan, cover it, and let it rise for 30 minutes.
9. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease a 9" x 5" loaf pan.
10. Brush the top of the dough with the egg wash.
11. Bake until the top is golden brown and the loaf has an internal temperature of 185°F when measured with a digital thermometer. Begin checking for doneness at 35 minutes.
12. Remove the babka from the oven and cool it on a rack for 10 minutes. Tilt it out of the pan and return to the rack to cool completely before slicing. Store any leftovers in the refrigerator, well wrapped, for up to a week.
Tess Recommends:
-Obviously, I love Taylor Swift's Midnights, where truly no track is a skip even the seven extra (my top 3 are "Anti-hero," "Midnight Rain," and "Lavender Haze." But also don't sleep on the gorgeous country Plains release, I Walked With You A Ways. "Abilene" is stunning.