The Penny Drop

A parable and an epiphany

I had an epiphany last week.

I was speaking with Jenny Hutt, recording her Just Jenny podcast. (Note: this is not a podcast where she speaks exclusively to Jennifers, although that is a banger of an idea if you’re looking to appeal to the Gen X demo.)

Anyway, Jenny and I were chatting about my books and the trajectory of my career as a writer. We discussed going from writing on my OG Jennsylvania blog (also not solely for Jennifers) to expanding into memoir, then fiction, then YA and screenwriting, ultimately ending up ghostwriting.

I told Jenny that many of my readers pushed back on the idea of my penning anything but stories about my own life. And the memoirs did have value as I always (often inadvertently) learned important lessons while writing them. Memoir writing afforded me the chance to assess my behavior and my reactions and improve accordingly.

I like to say that writing memoirs taught me to never make the same mistake twice, which is definitely a positive. However, in no way did that experience preclude me from stumbling into newer, bigger mistakes. For example, once I was lying in a hammock, slicing watermelon chunks with a steak knife because: A) I was too lazy to take the melon indoors and carve it up properly, and B) I was too cheap to buy it pre-chunked. And that was all fine until a bee landed on my plate and I almost hoisted myself on my goddamn petard in trying to not get stung.

(Music cue: Dumb ways to die…)

The downside of writing only memoir was that process forced me to live exclusively in my own head as a way to generate content. I couldn’t just go and do, to simply enjoy and be present because I’d be mentally categorizing the whole experience, analyzing how I’d recap it for maximum hilarity. Instead of extricating myself from situations that were frustrating, annoying, or vaguely dangerous, I’d lean into them, just to see what tales could come of it. (How I lived in memoir then is how many live on social media now.)

In writing memoir, I forced myself to become a subject matter expert on how I felt about everything, which is ultimately limiting.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Jennifer, than are dreamt in your philosophy.

Memoir was lucrative, but it was also exhausting. I started dreaded having to share ever more about myself and my life. So, I dipped a toe into writing fiction, then expanded into other projects and found I was so much happier professionally and creatively. I liked building multiple universes, with many perspectives, rather than perpetually redecorating a single corner of my world. The more I wrote other genres, the less I wanted to write about me, even though extricating myself from the memoir genre went against my interest financially.

There’s an old parable about a child who got his arm stuck deep in a precious vase. His family did everything to try to dislodge the arm, carefully avoiding damaging the vase because it was so valuable. The villagers gathered to offer suggestions about how to free the boy’s arm. (I imagine one particular busybody there saying, “No, seriously, have you tried lard?” over and over until the rest of the townsfolk backed away from her, all, “Yes, Helene, we heard you the first fifty frigging times.”)

As neighbors watched the struggle, they began to speculate about what could have been in the child’s hand that was too important for him to release.

Was it a diamond? A ruby? A pearl?

Perhaps a nugget of gold?

An ancient rune? A scroll holding the secret to the universe?

Initially, the parents were reticent to break the vase to free the boy because that big-ass urn was a priceless heirloom, the most valuable thing they’d ever own, passed down from many generations. But as they listened to the cacophony of voices around them, they got sucked into speculation about what was in the vase, especially given how hard their son clung to the object.

Surely what he had in his hand would be worth the sacrifice.

Eventually, the parents decided to shatter the vase.

Once the boy’s arm was finally released, everyone—and probably especially Helene—pushed forward to see the treasure the boy had clasped in his meaty little fist. They crowded around him, breathless with anticipation, waiting for that telltale sparkle or the crinkle of the parchment containing ancient secrets.

But no.

He was holding onto a penny.

A fucking penny.

The family had shattered this priceless piece of pottery for one stupid cent.

What I’ve taken from this moral is twofold: first, this parable occurred in a time where parents didn’t look to their children to assist them in making important life decisions, likely why they didn’t ask the kid what was so damn important that he couldn’t just let go. For example, my friend Gina is a high-level corporate recruiter, finding people to fill C-suite jobs at S&P 500 companies. Frequently, candidates turn down the seven-figure offers she works so hard to get them because their children don’t want to change schools. In 1978, my own father was presented with the opportunity to move to Indiana in the next month to advance his career, and the entire family discussion consisted of him saying, “We’re moving to Indiana next month to advance my career.”

My second observation, and likely what the parable’s creator was trying to express, is that there will be times you have to let the penny go because the larger sacrifice isn’t worth it.

Memoir was the penny I’d clung to. Like, I needed that penny. That penny was the key to paying for the big life I’d created, even though it meant I’d have to live so publicly. The desire to cling to what that penny represented was keeping me from just being present, keeping me stuck.

The penny wasn’t worth it, yet dropping it entailed huge consequences.

Ultimately, dropping the penny meant selling the big house in the fancy town. Dropping the penny entailed downsizing and simplifying, losing the status I’d worked so hard to earn and maintain, what with my having to constantly write about that big life and all.

After years of consternation, we finally dropped the penny last March.

What neither my husband nor I knew then was how much better—and how much easier, fun, and enriching—our lives would become in letting go of what we thought we needed to cling to.

In dropping the penny, we learned how great it is not going around with a metaphorical vase stuck to our arms. (I mean, showering was really a bitch.)

In fact, I’m so fulfilled by all the changes the two of us have undertaken in the past year, both personally and professionally, that I’m starting to feel inspired to share bits of my life again. Not because I must honor a contract, but because I want to. Enter It’s Always Something.

As everything’s better when you do it with a friend, this Substack will be a joint effort with Karyn Bosnak, one of my favorite people. Karyn’s a brilliant writer with an absurd sense of humor, and I mean that in the best possible sense. She’s even more OG in terms of social media than I am, but she’ll tell you her story herself. She’s a major reason why I’m a writer today.

Our plan here is to go, do, and simply enjoy, while taking you along for the ride. Because Karyn and I are both a little savvier now, we thought, Hey, what if we didn’t give away all our content for free, like we did for so many years? That’s why our more exclusive thoughts are behind a small paywall that you’ll have to drop a few pennies to access. But our goal is to make it worth it. (Granted, she and I could have made a killing on OnlyFans back in the day, but we’re older now and our bodies just aren’t having it. Fucking gravity.)

Anyway, we’d both like to welcome you to It’s Always Something.

It’s for everyone, not just people named Jennifer.