Issue #70: Good for you, sad for me

Celebrating other people’s wins can be complicated. Let's talk about why that is.

Hello, and happy second day of spring!

I’ve been prematurely honouring the seasonal transition this past week. Booking a hairdresser appointment to get highlights. Overspending on California roll sushi. Mixing up my yoga with weekly booty barre. Even, somewhat optimistically, buying a crochet crop top. While Winter Edition Me was characterised by hibernating in my sofa nest, Spring Me is channelling Lauren Conrad’s Los Angeles lifestyle circa 2008. Dress for the weather you want, kids.

My friend's new cat, Rupert; the last of the cosy winter dinners; the beginning of spring.

Good for you, sad for me: When hearing other people’s good news is challenging

This week, I’m seeing a lot about envy. The trailer for the Inside Out sequel, released this month, which introduces a new emotion/character, Envy, voiced by The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri. In Louis Theroux’s interview with Adam Buxton this week, the old friends discuss podcast rivalry (including their own).

Emma Gannon

’s recent newsletter explores what she terms ‘green slime feelings’.

It’s a topic that’s persisted on the millennial pop culture syllabus of the past few years. Self Esteem’s ‘I Do This All The Time’ contains the memorable lyric: ‘the best night of your life was the absolute worst of mine’. In Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love, she writes about her struggle to cope with her best friend Farly’s engagement. In Nell Frizzell’s memoir, The Panic Years, she writes about her ambivalence to her friend’s pregnancy announcement, at a time when she wanted to start her own family:

Of course it’s wonderful. But it can be other things, too.

- Nell Frizzell, The Panic Years

And yet (screechy handbrake turn), envy is not what I want to discuss here. At least, not directly. Instead, I want to explore an emotion that often gets confused with envy. One which it took me years to unpack.