Through her twenties and thirties, comedian Jenny Slate couldn’t find peace. She earned a spot on Saturday Night Live, and became recognizable through her on-screen appearances next to actors like Amy Poehler and Nick Kroll. But she still felt stuck in a cycle of self-criticism and a pressure to always be on. Then she became a mom and it all clicked. Listen as Jenny shares why becoming a mom made her feel less desperate to get jobs, please others, and “perform her tricks”.
In this episode of 9 to 5ish, Jenny shares:
Why living in Massachusetts instead of Los Angeles is helpful for her creative work
What traits her parents were most concerned about in her upbringing
How leaving Saturday Night Live led her to a major learning about success
Why perfection isn’t worth aiming at, and how she unlearned it
How the unconditional love she feels for her kid helped heal her own inner child
A skimm of her new memoir, “Life Form”
On Rethinking Failures at Work
Jenny: I definitely learned that something can appear as a wall or a dead end, but in fact be like the most unlikely doorway. And that just really means a lot to me. I also think that one of the impossible standards set in patriarchy and through misogyny is this idea of primacy. There can only be number one. One impenetrable thing. And it also brings up the idea that like perfection is worth aiming at and is a goal and there's not a lot of room there for vulnerability. There's a high potential for shame. And those are things that I really think that I unconsciously had just believed those things were real and true. And that was the way that that stuff functioned. And I'm not a particularly dark person, although I can feel very sad sometimes, but I think that it was really important for me as a young woman at the time to have to understand what it felt like to truly fail and to accept that that imperfection was like pretty normal., to tolerate that and to have to experience that duality of like being sad and being embarrassed and still being no less in love with performing and comedy to believe in like a multitude of chances.
On Her Changing Needs
Jenny: I just have a different set of needs. And it also might be that my energy is just different. That I don't have energy, but I kind of want to direct all of that rocket fuel thrust into my parenting. And I don't feel the need to like, perform in that way. There's so much risk taking and unknown and like, let's figure this out in the moment in parenting. And I'm just really interested in that. I'm really concerned with that. And I feel more shy. I don't feel inhibited. I feel it's very easy to answer your questions honestly. But even before, when I had stage fright, I never felt shy on stage…I really did feel presentational and excited and I really liked just kind of doing it. And now I feel less of a need to be seen. I don't want to perform my tricks as much.
On How Parenthood Impacts Her Creativity
Jenny: I just don't want to leave home as much. I have a sense of satisfaction that's very real to me and my creative life happens whether I'm working or not. I am that kind of creature. It doesn't feel to me like I'm either in or I'm out. I feel a coherence and incorporation in my existence of how I do my work, but I also just think I just feel more peaceful about myself. So I believe that like my parenthood is allowing me to make choices that preserve that mental state, because it's something I've always hoped for.
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