On Wanting

Friday Missive: April 10, 2026

Let’s go on a journey together.

This week, Caro Claire Burke’s highly anticipated debut novel Yesteryear was released into the world. Readers of this missive may be familiar with Caro as one half of “Grace’s Favorite Podcast”, Diabolical Lies. To celebrate the launch of the book, last week’s episode was an interview between Caro and Katie about the book writing process, Caro’s career up to this point, her philosophies about fiction… etc.

I was extremely excited to listen to this episode. I have always found Caro to be a uniquely inspiring person. She’s smart, she’s interested in a lot of the same topics I am, and she spent most of her 20’s bouncing industries being, in her words, bad at having a job. In a world of type A success stories, I point to Caro as proof that us “not career driven” creative people still have a chance.

I chose to listen to this episode while painting the bathroom, which is important for what comes next. I was priming, working along the ceiling as she talked about the projects that she never sold, working along the edge of the tile as she talked about fiction as a window into the subconscious. I was inspired by her description of the ideation phase for the book, and felt the grip of anxiety as I imagined the pressure she’s under now that it’s coming out.

Was I jealous? Yes, but the pleasant kind that accompanies inspiration. A sort of awed “wow” combined with a little bit of self recrimination, something like “well of course you haven’t sold a book, you don’t work hard enough”. By this point I had worked my way around to the big wall. I was standing up on the ladder reaching awkwardly over the counter as the conversation began to wind down.

It’s here that things take a turn toward the strange. I was rolling along, painting a white wall white, when in my headphones Katie casually said to Caro, “so… you’re pregnant”. I wish I could properly describe the feeling of that moment. I was crying before Caro had even responded. It was like a thousand shards of jealousy had coalesced into that sentence and exploded into a supernova of misery.

I was crashing out. Self loathing and jealousy were chasing each other around between I-think-I’m-going-to-throw-up sobs, relentlessly beating the drum of a single thought — what have I been doing? She has everything I want.

*Record scratch*

It’s me, Rational Grace, here to tell you that I do not know this woman in real life. I do not know anything about her life beyond what she has chosen to make public. And I would hazard a strong bet that she does not have everything I want, nor do I want everything she has.

So what the hell happened then? I’m in that phase of life where I cannot open Instagram without seeing a pregnancy announcement, so I’m no stranger to the pinch of envy. Why had this announcement crashed me out so spectacularly?

1. I was standing in a windowless room painting a white wall white. That’s already a fragile mental state.

2. I am turning 30 next week. And as much as I am excited and ready to be done with my 20’s, perhaps the threshold is looming larger in my subconscious than I previously thought.

3. I was already a little jealous. The feeling of baby envy is extremely physical. It lives in my stomach, in my body, in a way that the rest of my jealousy doesn’t. So when the baby envy hit, it like hormonally turbo-charged all of my thoughts into feelings. This was no longer a thought exercise, it was a full body experience in want.

I didn’t come to this realization in the moment of course, and I lay in bed that night crying periodically and turning the situation over and over in my mind. It was the baby that brought on the tears, I discovered, and “the rest of it” just made me hate myself. Why? What exactly was I so jealous of?

The next day I sent a long video message to a friend. In the clear light of morning, I thought I had figured it out.

• I’m jealous of the book. Not this book, not even this book deal, but of the anointment. She is a writer. She will never have to defend that descriptor again.

• I’m jealous of the podcast. Of the public recognition of her intellect. Of the intense collaborative friendship. Of the passion project of it all.

• I’m jealous that she made it out. She did her time in the shitty-job wilderness, and she made it to the promised land. All of her work did come to fruition. She does have a career now, and not because she was forced to settle. Adding to the potency, through some catalytic alchemy, it all seems to have worked out at once.

• I’m jealous of the baby. Obviously.

There’s a creative writing exercise my mom does with her students where she asks them about a character’s motivation and then just keeps asking why? why? why? until they’re forced, out of sheer frustration, to discover the root of it. This is the best analogy I can find for the process of excavating this crash out.

I think of myself as a person who often doesn’t know what I want. I have a lot of interests, and very little motivation behind them. When I enter one of my bi-monthly spirals about what I’m doing with my life, or how I feel about turning 30, Isaac will often ask me “well what do you want to be doing? What do you want life to look like? What do you want?” And I cry, and finally I admit that I don’t know what I want.

But that’s the funny thing about jealousy. It slips under all that uncertainty and latches onto something. And at its core there’s always a want. You just have to keep asking why? why? why?

Last night I talked to my sister. I was explaining to her that sitting with my jealousy had been really instructive. That digging all the way into the heart of that feeling had actually revealed some concrete wants. I talked about how knowing what I want is a challenge for me, and this felt like finally something tangible.

She disagreed. She said that she’s watched me downplay things I very obviously want for decades in order to pursue other paths. As she put it “I don’t know if you’re following the things you think you should want, or if you’re just choosing the less emotionally risky option”. Ouch. She reminded me of the years and years when I wanted to be a physical therapist and instead got a Spanish degree, took the LSAT, took a job in higher ed, auditioned for a tv show, took the GRE, took another job in higher ed, applied to grad school in the humanities, and then suddenly, somehow, it was too late for that dream.

In her very-much-a-younger-sibling way she told me it doesn’t matter if you know what you want if you never let yourself care enough to act on it. Cue crash-out number two.

In November, Isaac and I competed at the Purdue Ballroom Classic. As we were driving over there I told him that I was going to try something new and experiment with being competitive, really let myself care about the results. He (stunned) asked me, “you’re not doing that already?” To which I (horrified) replied, “no of course not!”

The important fact here is that I am extremely competitive. I can feel it in my body all the time, and I have worked for as long as I can remember to keep it at bay. Sometime in my early childhood I learned three things:

1. It’s less embarrassing to lose if know one knows you cared.

2. People like you better when you’re less intense.

3. If you work hard enough at it, you can convince you actually didn’t care that much.

I spent decades trotting along, playing sports I was never that good at, taking classes that weren’t that hard, and avoiding board games like the plague. Be chill, don’t try too hard, this isn’t life or death, laugh it off, and above all, never let anyone see how much you care.

This is where my tale of internal woe circles back to Caro. It wasn’t until I began writing this that I realized the real truth of it. There is a fifth and final piece of jealousy lurking even deeper than the rest. I envy her ambition.

When I really force myself to look into the bright spot of want, that’s what I find. I want to let myself care more. I want to know what naked ambition feels like. I want to care so much that I don’t question whether it’s worth the work. I understand why Caro in particular brought this all up for me. She is succeeding in fields I would like to succeed in, with a backstory that closely tracks with mine, except that she did it. Her ambition won.

Oh, and a baby.

If I were a good essayist I would bring this home somehow, wrap it all up in a tidy bow and leave you feeling better for having read it. Alas I’ve spent too long keeping my writing light, not letting it take itself too seriously, and old habits die hard.

So here’s to 30, may it be my most ambitious decade yet.

My final say on the topic is that I am extremely happy for Caro. I admire her a lot, and frankly I love to see a job-hating-bitch win. So go read Yesteryear so we can talk about it, have a great weekend, and yes I did finish painting the bathroom. Thanks for being here.

xoxo,