Things to ponder this week: what is ambition and do we want it? Pop culture interviews sort of suck these days..and friend groups vs. community

And join July's bookclub for a live conversation with the author!

Jun 27, 2025

Hi everyone!

To start: VERY EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT:

Our July bookclub for paid subscribers will be reading the book The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center and we will be joined by Rhaina Cohen, the author!!!

It’ll be a virtual live conversation with Rhaina on Wednesday, July 30 at 5pm PST/8pm EST! It’ll be a casual conversation with Rhaina where we can all ask her questions! I’ll send the Zoom link and more info to paid subs as we get closer. I am SO excited about this. Rhaina has written some of my favorite things I’ve read recently:

the book of course!
A Grand Experiment in Parenthood and Friendship: would you raise kids with your best pals?
What Adults Forget About Friendship
and she was on this episode of the Ezra Klein show and talked about friends being invariables and that concept has locked itself in my brain since I heard it

As mentioned, this is only for paid subs. I hope this might sway you to join if you aren’t already! Now I want to start DM’ing every author whose book we read for this bookclub and see if they’ll come! Possibilities are endless.

So, very exciting things to come in this bookclub!

Now, let’s get into it.

What I’m thinking about this week

I don’t know if I’m ambitious anymore, and I don’t know how to feel about that…

A piece by

Nadia Meli

from a few years ago randomly appeared on my Substack homepage this week and lol WOW does the algorithm know what I’m thinking about these days. The piece is called The more I heal, the less ambitious I become. I made a TikTok video a few weeks ago1 talking about how when I first quit my full-time job last year, I was convinced that I was anti-work. That any working, any significant time at my computer, chugging away at deadlines or putting in effort, or working for anyone, that I was anti all those things. It felt so obviously black and white to me: I do not want to work. But as I say in that video, what I’ve noticed in myself over the last year and a half, is that it’s not so cut and dry anymore. I’ve learned that when there are things I find interesting or that light me up, or people that I want to collaborate with me, I tap into this inner fire. And then I can write, or talk, or think, or work on things with an almost endless capacity (although I always take breaks, even when I’m self-driven. Big break-taker here hah!).

As I wrote about last week, I used to be oriented towards the idea that working hard on something (anything, really.. truly didn’t matter what it was, just that I was engaging in the performance of “working”) = I am somehow an admirable, impressive human. I have always been oriented towards mission-driven work, but I don’t want to flatter myself. Ultimately, I’ve been motivated in many ways by how I looked and felt and was perceived by others as a hard worker, as someone who was ‘capable,’ ‘productive,’ ‘admirable’. Like the pride I felt a few years back saying, “I work at Planned Parenthood” makes me feel kind of icky now.. even as it really was an important gig and cool and impressive. I just derived SO MUCH self-worth from that.

I feel REALLY different about this now. I just don’t want to have to work very hard. In my ideal life, I want to have spurts where I’m spending time putting work into fun things, things that matter, for people and causes that are worth it (and that can pay enough to live a comfortable life and save). And then I want to be able to pack it all up for a bit until I get my next spurt of work2. I guess, in some ways, this is the cadence of a freelancer, no?

So how do I look at that aforementioned inner fire, my ambition? That drive that intrinsically motivates me to move, to meet people, to start projects, to climb outward/upward/further (or maybe climb is even the wrong metaphor because it’s not necessarily always going upward… idk). After being without full-time work for this long, I can see now that that fire I have in me isn’t actually dependent on having a JOB; it exists within me. Where should I put it now? How do I look at it?

Cambridge dictionary has two slightly different definitions of ambition.

The first, the definition we typically think of with ambition:

The second one is more interesting to me. It still insinuates having a result you want to get/have, but that final line, ‘political/personal/artistic ambitions’ sits better with me.

Is it inherently capitalistic to have goals and work towards achieving them? Can I be ambitious about trying to make friends? Taking classes to learn new things? Finding creative things that light my brain up?

This reminds me of an Elle article I read a few years ago by Ann Friedman: What Comes After Ambition? In it, she writes a few really compelling quotes:

At this point in our collective professional history, women are looking for something more. Or is it something less?
“Yes, I’m ambitious,” a friend told me recently, “but climbing the corporate ladder does not interest me like it used to. A title, a bump in pay—it’s not satisfying. What I need to feel successful and fulfilled is completely different. Am I doing something that brings satisfaction? Do I feel like I’m learning? Do I feel like I’m contributing? Do I feel like I’m connecting to other people? Do I feel like I have flexibility in this new way we live and work? Am I given not only responsibility but autonomy? Am I in a place that aligns with my values? The things that I am looking for have changed.”

For ambition to be sustainable, it has to be personal and complex, not just about rising through the ranks. For every woman who is burned out after placing too much value on work as a key component of her identity, the task isn’t letting go of ambition altogether. It’s relocating those ambitions beyond the traditional markers of money, title, and professional recognition. Ambition does not have to be limited to a quest for power at the expense of yourself and others. It can also be a drive for a more just world, a healthier self, a stronger community. And it’s definitely achievable in soft pants.

Knowing that there are so many others who are reckoning with this exact thing at this exact moment gives me so much solace and hope. I feel really proud of my inner fire (we could unpack that word “proud” too, because how much of my ability to sustain an inner fire is related to my neurotypical brain/relatively stable mental health??), that even without the structure of a job I’m out here making connections, experimenting with my creativity and my voice, and ultimately finding surprising ways to make money.

I feel like I could talk about this topic for the rest of my life and never have some sort of answer. LOL am I ambitious in my attempt to understand ambition?

Anyway, I’d love to hear if this provokes anything in you!

Do we actually want to get to know our fave artists or do we just want to fangirl?

From

Tobias Hess

, "Why Are All Pop Star Interviews Like That?” This piece got my brain whirling in the best kind of way. The TLDR is basically that there is a whole strain of celebrity interviews these days that feels less like an interview, and more like a fan with their faves. It’s often weepy, overly emotional, overtly complementary towards the guest, and just generally devoid of any critique or hard-hitting (or in some case, ANY) journalism. Think: Jake Shane, Call Her Daddy, Zane Lowe and Las Culturistas.

This is by far my biggest gripe with this genre. The conversations are primed to go viral and be clipped and that’s it. If you watch/listen to a Call Her Daddy interview in full, dear lord it’s just fluff.

One of the theses of that piece is basically that stan culture has changed the nature of what we need and want from our celebrities. A quote from the article that sums this up well:

This is pop music media in an era where stan culture is all encompassing.
Where cliche’s like “Gaga’s music saved my life,” no matter how genuinely expressed, have become the cultural oxygen.
Pop stars, no longer mere singers, are now representatives of a whole fan community, and by proxy, subculture.

We (and I mean in a collective sense) seem to just want a channel for our emotions. And yes, it’s a shitshow out there. We want a salve, we want to feel good, or mad, or seen, or whatever it is that entertainment provokes in us. But what about using celebrities as a way to go deeper? To learn? To challenge and be challenged? What about holding celebrities accountable for their words and actions? What about engaging them in a complex conversation about why they wrote or sang what they did, or what it all means, or how they understand their own positionality?

There definitely is that sort of art critique happening today; it just seems to be happening in a small-scale sort of grassroots kind of way. Content creators and independent journalists who purposefully fight against the “it’s not that deep” mentality to engage us in conversation and challenge our pop culture ‘faves’ (if you aren’t following any of these kinds of people and want to be, I can recommend so many!) I love that kind of discourse. But it seems like it doesn’t really exist on a larger platform. As soon as someone gets a camera crew or a set or famous guests, any critical conversation fades.

Is it that the hosts are afraid they’ll lose their connections and proximity to wealth and fame? Is it that now they have ad dollars or a Spotify publisher and can’t be ‘problematic?’ Is it that now they’re trying to play it safe to appeal to as general an audience as they can?

In the comment section of that article, someone commented this and I feel like that hits the nail on the head a bit:

Have you seen anyone who you think is actually good at interviewing celebrities and pop culture figures? Could be a specific interview that you really liked or a person who in general does a good job? And I don’t mean someone who is good at interviewing broadly, because I listen to a lot of amazing interviewers on podcasts. There is something specific about this “interviewing POP CULTURE figures” thing that feels particularly unique here.

Community vs. a friend group

Ok, now onto another topic I talk/think about constantly: friendship and community. I saw this TikTok recently that got me thinking:

@caseyishealing Do you have a community or just a friend group? 👀 #community #together #friendship #friendshipgoals #fypシ

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If you don’t have TikTok/don’t want to watch (lol), the TLDR that this person is saying is: there is a difference between a friend group and community. The key difference being: community involves reliance and interdependence. A friend group does not, necessarily (although it might, and I would love to know if you feel differently about your own friend group). Reliance is, hey I need money, I need a ride, can you help? Let me help you, support you, accompany you. A friend group might revolve around: do you wanna go to this thing with me? Of course that’s reductive and not so simple and is itself creating a binary (and we don’t do binaries here!!!), but the video definitely challenged me.

What I’ve realized in my own life is that I have basically a few different relational categories in my life and they’re almost all FRIENDS, vs. COMMUNITY. Like in my head, those do feel different (although I don’t quite know why/how). With my friends, I have my ride or dies: often long-distance friends, friends I’ve known for 10+ years, we have deep deep love and understanding and trust. And then I have the other kinds of meaningful friends I’ve collected over the years: these might be new internet friends or acquaintances, or even good friends who I’ve known for less long or we’re still building our connection; these are people I spend time with, intentionally, just as I do my ride or dies, and it feels like our relationships have momentum. But I don’t really have the middle: the village, community, a GROUP of people that actually are maybe less close but more interconnected? IDK if that’s even the right distinction there, still working out how those categories feel different from one another.

I can feel a gap in my social ecosysystem, specifically around interacting with my physical space. Many of my friendships are not close to me geographically. I spend quite a bit of my time virtually maintaining those connections. A week or two ago, I was walking on the LA bike path and saw a flyer for "Banned Books LA bookclub.” I looked at their IG and they had like 15 followers. They were reading Animal Farm and meeting two weeks from then at a local bar I love. Immediately interested. So I get the book from the library and I go! And wow it was exactly what I wanted: I discovered it via an analog-method; you truly have to be in the same physical space in order to know about it. It was small: three people + the two hosts. It was at a bar I love, talking about a thing that’s interesting to me. And I just got to attend and engage in something with my quasi-neighbors.

Now I know this is not the kind of thing that the person in the TikTok was talking about. In fact they say in the video, attending an event or a social thing or doing activities together is NOT what they’re necessarily talking about here with community. But for me, I think this is how it might start. I meet my relative neighbors (by LA standards they’re truly next door LOL) and we slowly and surely build an connection based on our physical proximity and our shared interests and, in this case, politics (our convo on Animal Farm btw was SO GOOD. What a wildly relevant book, cannot recommend more!). And I’m excited for it to grow.

So.. no real conclusion here, other than I am really interested in, as always, experimenting with different ways of finding, sustaining, growing, building, and joining community. Here with this Substack, I’ve really been loving being the conveyner of the bookclub for example. Getting like-minded people from around the country to share this little internet space together. That’s one form of connection and community that I think has the real potential to grow. And then now, I’m really excited about my new Banned Books bookclub (lol yes, much of my community and connection does in fact revolve around books). There’s also a slower runners club in my neighborhood that I want to try too. I think in this season of my life, I’m interested in plugging into existing infrastructure and groups in my hyperlocal area.

Do you feel like you’re engaged in community? Do you mostly spend time in friend groups? How do you feel about this distinction between the two?

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