I was so preoccupied with a pop-culture-created version of coolness that it was often all I worked toward. I'd try to change the way I dressed or the kinds of things that I liked, assuming that eventually the rest of the world would see me as "cool," and then life would be easier.
One of the most relaxing moments in my life came when I realized that I was not and was never going to be cool. If someone had told me, as a 15-year-old, that coolness was not only not an important pursuit but also completely unpursuable, it would have saved me a lot of time, and a whole lot of awkward haircuts.
I wasn't cool not just because I was awkward and sweaty and measured coolness in Fonzies in fucking 2012, but because I was so focused on chasing coolness, a pointless and intangible thing that only goes away when you try to catch it, that I never got a chance to actually get comfortable. But you can't really blame me for chasing coolness. I was raised by movies, where coolness is important, and no one told me that ...