Level Up - Welcome to the Matrix
And why even smutty reads are political
The Long Island Expressway is typically associated with nightmares for terrible traffic and notoriously insane drivers. For me, it’s also a place of enlightenment. I wish there was a more glamorous place for me to wake up, but alas, the Long Island girl gets her Long Island story.
It was May 2019 and I was driving back to New York City after a breakfast with my ex in which we decided we would give our relationship another chance. This sounds like it should have been great news, but for me, I felt nauseated. Twice I thought I would need to pull over to get sick. My whole body was tense. I didn’t want to think too deeply about why.
Until a car swerved in front of me and I watched a near miss of a multi-car pile up. Cars honked. People yelled out car windows. And I thought, I wish the SUV hit me. It would be easier to be dead.
Melodramatic, I know. I am nothing if not dramatic. It’s a specialty of mine, I think.
Yet the point remains, I felt so terrible about this decision I “made” that I would rather be dead than go through with it. He’s not a bad person, but I didn’t feel like me in that relationship. I was lonely and the world felt small. I didn’t know how I could live a life where my bubble kept shrinking.
The horns eventually pierced my macabre thoughts. Despite the heat of the day, I felt cold all over. What the hell was I doing?
Let’s back up. The decision I made to stay, to try again, was a decision to do something that was expected of me, that other people wanted, that for all intents and purposes, would be easier. For some people, staying is the absolute right thing! I’m not advocating for divorce! I’m advocating for listening to yourself.
This moment on the Long Island Expressway, I realized I was letting life happen to me as if life was meant to be survived, not conquered. Bull shit. As scary as it was, I needed to wrestle control back.
I had been playing life on autopilot, following a script that wasn’t mine. But what if I treated life like a game?
Some people already do—take Elon Musk, for example…Regardless of how you feel about him, Musk embodies a key lesson: He treats life as a game to be played, not a script to be followed. He believes we are living in a hyperreal computer simulation, à la the Matrix. It’s a place where consequences aren’t real. Businesses and wives and governments are things to conquer as a means of leveling up. He’s playing to collect coins and power. He’s playing to win.
Let’s pause here to say this isn’t going to get more political than it has already—I don’t have the energy for that, and that commentary is for the book and wine pairing. I’ve thought the man was slimy and reprehensible since I first heard of him in 2012 so anything new hasn’t changed that opinion.
But there is still a lesson here! Live like you’re in the Matrix.
If I was playing Ready Player One (great book if you haven’t read), I wouldn’t stay in the wrong relationship because it was easier than going off on my own. I wouldn’t stay in a job I hated because it paid the bills. I’d do something about it. In my simulation, I’d write books and make people laugh. My partner would be my best friend and talk about books endlessly with me and not-so-graciously lose in every board game but Catan. I’d collect all the dogs. Sushi for every meal, mercury poisoning be damned. My life would be a constant state of joy.
Embracing the Matrix is taking control back. You step off the hamster wheel of life and think, what do I really want? When we stop acting like life is something to be endured and start playing with the controller, a whole new world opens up.
There are benefits of viewing challenges as side quests and failures as respawns instead of permanent setbacks. It forces you to think of these playfully and with curiosity rather than frustration. Even changing your approach can have far-reaching impacts. You’re no longer a negative Nancy! It can free you from fear, making experimenting and risk-taking easier (and dare I say exciting?).
The gamification of life encourages different goal setting, skill upgrades, and using setbacks as learning tools.
With every business failure and setback, Musk seemed to shrug, tell the world a different story, and try something else… until he did succeed.
When I wrestled back the controller of life, I found true joy though it may not be constant. Once I made the decision, everything changed. I left the relationship and suddenly, the world expanded. I started writing again. I reconnected with old friends. I left my job in finance to move to France for a year. I even started my own business. I moved to a little log cabin in Connecticut that has so many books it probably qualifies as a library. My husband and I play board games and Gin Rummy in front of the fireplace. I don’t eat sushi every day but I eat it more than I probably should. These are all things that make my life feel expansive yet cozy, adventurous but grounded. My happy, weird Matrix.
Nanea Hoffman once said, “None of us make it out alive.” (This quote was falsely attributed to Keanu Reeves, but honestly, I could see it.) No matter how you play the game, it ends at some point. I don’t have all the answers. I still struggle to level up sometimes. But every time I reach for the controller, my world expands. So stop playing the lower levels. Have some fun. Challenge yourself.
Your Matrix, your rules.
Book and wine pairing
Even my smutty reads are political
I used to think my guilty pleasure reads—magic, dragons, shadow daddies and enemies-to-lovers tension—were a perfect escape from reality. But the more I read, the more I realize: fantasy books are some of the most political reads out there.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros was published in May 2023. A time, ostensibly, when things were fiiiine. I inhaled it. Such fun. It felt creative and sexy and expansive, and a book I could be a passenger princess if I wanted or a sleuth. I flip-flopped. Both are fun. The second Empyrean, Iron Flame, came out later that year after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took an awful, heart-breaking turn, and reading felt escapist.
The third, Onyx Storm, was published after Trump’s inauguration. Upon my reread of the series, certain plot points read eerily as a mirror to the current state of the world, particularly the erasure of history that we are ashamed of and the closing of borders to those seeking asylum.
“It only takes one desperate generation to change history- even erase it.”
"Yes." Tairn says.." One generation to change the text. “One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history." - Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
This missing history winds up being cataclysmic. An untold number of lives are lost because of the secrets kept. It’s said history rhymes. If we erase or retell some of our own history to paint us in a brighter, nicer light, we flirt with repeating our mistakes.
Similar themes are present in the wonderful Black Witch Chronicles by Laurie Forest, which also tackles overcoming learned racism. It isn’t until the main character attends university and is forced to interact with others that she realizes how wildly inaccurate her former biases had been. Leaning into homogenous communities creates fear of the other and discomfort over learning about our shared histories and the part we played in them. Preventing classes like Critical Race Theory perpetuates these fractures by pretending they don’t exist.
In the series, racism and xenophobia turns into fascist control with books being burned, freedoms being stripped, and those deemed unwelcome shipped off to work camps. Sound familiar? It’s only when the main characters embrace each other’s differences, recognizing they amplify each other rather than detract, that they can overcome the evil spreading throughout the continent.
Make no mistake, these are fantasy worlds but with real-life policies, hatred, and bigotry. A study by the NIH found that fiction readers are more empathetic. So if we are reading these stories and agonizing over the fate of these characters, why are we perpetuating harmful policies?
And then… there are the sex scenes. Because the whole world is getting fucked, why shouldn’t our main characters?
This weekend, my roommates from college are visiting with their families. We’ll hand off their children to their dads, crack open the Empyrean novels and debate who turned venin, what happened to Liam, and what is Malek after… we won’t debate the politics. In reading these, the heroines are aligned with our own views. There are no ‘better-thans’ or ‘other.’ We’re all just people.
While we pour over pages and draw flow charts, we’ll drink copious amounts of red wine. Since we probably need a bottle each, I’ll pair with something easy, drinkable, and light… and something that won’t give me a headache, like Domaine Gay Michele et Fils Chorey Les Beaune Pinot Noir.
Good on you for making it this far. You deserve a glass 😂
Quick book update
I participated in BlueSky’s #miserypit pitch fest last weekend and received an invitation to query an agent (yay!). I sent her my query letter and first chapter that night and the next morning woke up to a full manuscript request. WIN!
Another agent posted some manuscript wishlist items on Bluesky that I thought were a fit so I queried her. Boom. Two days later, a full manuscript request.
I think the tides are turning folks.
I’m pitching to several agents this weekend in another Writing Day Workshop event online.
Wish me (and Susie Sweetheart) luck!
xx,
bb