for when upward social comparison is unavoidable

Processing... #02

You know the feeling. You’re in your groove, you’ve found your stride. You’re spinning multiple plates simultaneously and you’re actually making it look kind of good.

Then something crosses into your view that captures all your focus. It’s something that is objectively spectacular.

It’s far more remarkable than you. And all of its achievements are extraordinary and grand in comparison to anything you’ve ever even come close to achieving.

This thing that has suddenly captured all your focus… It’s a bespectacled, speckled octopus on dry land. He’s a magnificent creature and he’s being lauded and revered for some unprecedented accomplishments. And his name is Winston Orpheus-Heathcliff.

While you’re spinning two plates pretty well, this sea creature on land, Winston, is spinning sixteen expertly. You become obsessed with comparing yourself to the creature and it seems that your focus has been disrupted forever.

How will you ever return to that neutral place where you were finally enjoying your process? How will you ever get back to that place where you were satisfied with the quality of your work because it met the bar according to your own personal standards?

Should you hunt down the octopus? Roast him on a skewer? Feast upon his supple tendrils with your friends alongside a sweet chili dipping sauce?

No. Because taking your opponent’s life, in this case, won’t solve the problem that you’re facing. It’s not the cephalopod’s existence that’s upsetting you, it’s the fact that you admire the creature for being celebrated and for operating on a more advanced level than you are.

This can land us in a very disturbing place, mentally. Because we didn’t ask for this dynamic. We don’t know where the compulsion to compare ourselves to these otherworldly beasts comes from. The pangs of inadequacy just hit us so instantly and so intensely.

Most of us don’t even realize what’s happening until it’s too late. We’re upset. We’re smashing all our spinning plates on a concrete floor. Then we’re shamefully sweeping up the shards, at a loss for how to proceed.

There is an opportunity, however, for our minds to take us someplace else. There can be a brighter end to our story.

I noticed around 2021 that every social media platform that I encountered made it its business to show me content that I never would have sought out on my own. I could barely even see how all this random content was related until I noticed how all of it worked together to land me in that spooky, upward social comparison place.

My focus? Stolen. Self-satisfaction? Disrupted. Inner joy? Totally disturbed. Kept me in the app longer than I originally planned? Absolutely, you know it.

I spent years reflecting on what to do about this. I couldn’t spin my plates at all -- not with the knowledge that my plate-spinning would never measure up to what these platforms were telling me the super-out-of-reach gold standard for plate-spinning was.

What I learned (after way too much thinking) was that I could make a decision about the role that the plate-spinning of others had in my plate-spinning process.

If I wanted to be terrorized and tormented by the success of other superior plate-spinners, I could choose that. And if I preferred to compare myself upward only to admire the elegance and to study in earnest the technique of the superior plate-spinners, that is another choice that I could make. And if I wanted, I could ignore all the other plate-spinners and only focus on myself.

There are only two questions you need to ask yourself the next time you’re busy spinning plates and the image of a sexy, charismatic octopod appears at the top of your social media feed threatening to screw up your progress:

• What am I focused on?

• How does what I’m focused on affect my success and contentment within my process?

These days, I prefer not to focus so much on what the creatures who are several steps ahead of me have that I presently lack. Instead, I’m really invested in my actual peers and putting my actual skills to work.

Onlookers are free to make an assessment of whether my output is valuable or not, but at the end of the day it’s my work, I own it and I love it. So I’d rather see any bit of it live than see all of it smashed on a concrete floor.

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Hello everyone!

Thank you for being along for this silly ride. I would now like to share an upward social comparison scenario that I’m currently processing and I’d love to hear what you think about it.

Over the weekend, some friends and colleagues of mine were invited to attend the Annie Awards. I guess you could call it the animation industry’s Super Bowl. We were nominated for Best Writing in TV/Media and we lost to Charlie Kaufman for his work on Orion and the Dark.

I’m obsessed over this in the best possible way. The episode that got our team nominated was Craig of the Creek S6, Ep. 4 Whose Dimension Is It Anyway? You can watch the full episode on Max and see for yourself exactly why it’s worthy of being compared to something that Charlie Kaufman wrote!

I’ve never felt more motivated by a loss before now. And I’m honored to exist in the same dimension as everyone who made this moment possible.

In preparation for a win, the storyboarders and writers of this episode collaborated on an acceptance speech, and if you like, you can check it out below:

Thank you ASIFA Hollywood for choosing our episode and Happy Black History Month!

And thank you to Craig of the Creek showrunners and creators Ben Levin and Matt Burnett for being our fearless leaders championing our diverse, queer, silly and fun stories, especially this one that’s being recognized for Best Writing.

This episode hops dimensions and boasts strange, ambitious set-pieces all to illustrate the feeling of being a child of divorced parents and striving for radical self-acceptance.

The Creek that you see in the series is a reflection of the brilliant crew behind every story. We want to thank the entire writing team, especially Najja Porter, Erik Fountain, Dave Allegre and our wonderful director Charmaine Verhagen.

Thank you also to our Korean animation team Saerom, our production team at Cartoon Network and Warner Brothers in the U.S. and our composer, Jeff Rosenstock.

Thank you to the cast and to the entire team for bringing this heartfelt episode to life.

And last but certainly not least, thank you to our audience. With our writing we aim to affirm and celebrate the children who dream, the adults who used to dream, and the adults who still do.

Thanks again for sticking with me. I’m here for you if you need extra help sticking with yourself.

Lorraine