Winning or Losing?

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• February 17, 2014

Does a new job in a new year mean a new me?  I think not.

I’m living in the city, but I’m subletting, so I’m basically one step above a hobo.  I’m pretty much pretending I’m fancy and can afford living in NYC.  For me, the worst part about living in the city is the Fairways.  Fairway, if you don’t know, is a super market.  But this isn’t your average King Kullen.  The check out is a high pressure situation where you’re yelled at to go to the register, given the evil eye when fumbling with your money, and scorned for using plastic bags.  DON’T FUCK UP. OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.  THERE ARE PEOPLE WAITING WHO ARE SO IMPORTANT.  EVERYONE IN NYC IS SO IMPORTANT THEY CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU.  HURRY UP.  It’s horrible.  I keep going there, and it gives me so much anxiety.  It is the true New York experience.

“Winning or losing?”

This is what my boss asks me several times a day.  It’s just something he says.  It’s not obnoxious or anything, it’s his way of seeing how you’re doing.  It took me by surprise the first time he asked me this… and every time since.

Of course, when he says “winning or losing,” he means with whatever task I have at hand that affects his company which he is paying me for, but he’s unintentionally tapped something in my subconscious that makes me hesitate when I answer.

I grew up in a competitive family.  Everything I did; sports, board games, grades, neighborhood games of kick the can, climbing trees, it all had the same out come.  You win or lose.  And it was always important for me to win.  With my siblings, it was always, “I’ll race you to the door,” or “I bet I can eat more pasta than you.”  My parents (specifically my father) were not the type to just let you win because you were a kid.  My dad was as fiercely competitive as anyone I knew, and if he beat you “Candy Land” he rubbed it in your face.

I grew up in the trophy generation.  Yup… we were given trophies for anything.  Dance, soccer, track, chorus; it was a lot of bull shit.  But we knew it.  At least I did.  Growing up in the trophy generation didn’t make me think I was always winning, quite the opposite actually.  It made me think losers got rewarded too, and left me confused as to what makes a winner, therefore rewards lost their meaning to me.

As I got older, my zealous need to win never dulled, but the game changed.  My standards for winning weren’t defined by others, but rather by myself.  I had to beat me.  And I have high standards.  If someone else accomplished something I wanted, I understood they were not my competition, they were my inspiration.  Jealousy is a waste of an emotion.  I did away with it (when someone is jealous, most of the time they’re projecting their hatred of themselves onto someone else).

When I went to Suffolk Community College, I was nominated for the Chancellors Award.  I was recommended by several professors, had a perfect GPA, interning at Comedy Central, and was the editor in chief of the college paper.  They were impressed, I wasn’t.  As a trophy generation kid, I thought the Chancellors Award was bogus.  It wasn’t.  It was actually a prestigious SUNY award, but even as I met with the President of the college, it meant shit to me.  Just another meaningless award.

But I digress.

“Winning or Losing?” my boss asked.

I should just Charlie Sheen that shit when I’m asked this, but instead, my mind begins a train of thoughts and I’m off…

Well, I’m winning in the sense where I found a job, and I don’t hate it, and the people there are cool, which is a huge win.  But it’s not a writing job, so I’m losing. I’m subletting on the upper east side, which is winning, but I don’t yet have a place to call my own, so I’m losing.  I’m pursuing my dream to become a writer and comic, and I’m funny, so that’s winning, but I’m not at the level I’d like to be, so I’m losing.  Definitely losing in my love life, but that’s never bothered me, so I haven’t settled into passionate-less relationship, winning.  I’m healthy and in good shape, but if I don’t do some sort of out door sport soon, I will fucking lose it.  I write almost everyday, but I should write everyday.  I work hard: winning.  I could work harder: losing.  I have some outstanding friends and people supporting me, winning.  I don’t think I can ever be the daughter/friend/niece/cousin that these people deserve, if I disappoint them, I will lose.  Wait.  Stop.

And then I realize my boss has asked me one very simple question, and I have not yet answered, and he probably is thinking I’m mildly retarded, so I mumble “winning” with such a lack of confidence I want to punch myself in the face.

Every time he asks, “winning or losing,” I run this dissertation in my head, and I have to remind myself to stop it.  Stop it, Lori.  Jesus Christ.  It’s not a complicated question.  But isn’t it?  Because it’s the question I’ve asked myself over and over for years.  There’s been a little voice in my head, always asking that question and analyzing my every move.  That’s why it catches me off guard, because it’s like he grabbed something that’s been stuck in my head and presented it to me in reality.  Even though that’s not at all what he did. Oh my goodness, I’m afraid I lost my mind years ago (though I don’t miss it).

You can’t control everything in your world.  The universe is going to make moves that are going to make you go, “fuuccckkk me.”  But it’s chess.  You have a degree of control.  I haven’t won or lost yet.  I’m in the game.  Chess is all about foresight.  I love a good game of chess whether I win or lose.  But I really, really love to win.