The Proust Questionnaire: Clancy Steadwell
"Be a monk of your own religion."
Folks who have been following
for a while might remember his ‘posting one note a day until I get to 1,000,000 subscribers’ series. Well, here is my small contribution to that journey. I hope you get at least ONE subscriber from this post, Clancy!I do hope people will check out your stories, as they are distinctive and effortless. Posting fiction on Substack is definitely not the easiest path, but I think for you, it’s not really a choice, it’s a need.
You also happen to be one of the first people I connected with on the Stack; plus, you helped me uncover my very own Porn Name Pseudonym ‘Olympe d’Italie,’ for which, of course, I’ll be eternally grateful.
Anyway, it’s my great pleasure to have you today to share your Proust Questionnaire.
Please everyone, after reading, go and check out Clancy’s work:
And now without further ado…
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Perfect happiness is knowing that no matter what happens in my life or in the world, the little flame inside me will keep burning anyway.
Sometimes it’s hard to know that.
But if I could be within that knowingness, always, without fear – that is perfect happiness.
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Stanislav Petrov. In 1983 he was serving as a duty officer at the command center for the Soviet’s nuclear early-warning system, which was designed to detect incoming missile attacks from the United States. There was an alert he was supposed to escalate to his superiors who would then decide on launching a retaliatory strike, probably ending the world as we know it. Instead, he determined it to be a false alarm.
He was later commended for his judgement in essentially saving the world, but I think he was just doing what most of us would have done.
No matter which country I was serving, I would classify every incoming attack as a false alarm. Let’s just destroy half the world, and we’ll figure out the politics later. I’m not going to be responsible for ending the whole thing.
Which living person do you most admire?
Tom Catena. Look him up, the guy is a living saint.
He could have been a top surgeon at home in America or otherwise had some kind of extremely lucrative profession due to his intelligence and Ivy League education, yet he chooses to spend his time performing surgeries from dawn to dusk in Sudan, on call 24/7, in constant danger, the only surgeon for an area of almost a million people, and training those people to someday operate a hospital themselves.
A selfless life.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
My ability to deplore myself. It would be too simplistic to say I am a perfectionist because I am certain that perfection is not possible, but I contain within me a magnificent ability to criticize myself at every turn, to find the negatives to be improved on, to dwell on past mistakes for fear of never learning from them. I can smell my own mediocrity a mile away.
With good health, self-care, and medicine, I can remove this trait in myself for most aspects of life, most of the time, but not always, and not for all aspects.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
A lack of gratitude.
People are so corrupted by mimetic desire and the consumerist pressures of our society that they constantly want, strive, desire, for what they don’t have and what others do. They think ‘once I have x I will be happy’ or ‘if only I had y things would be ok’ but don’t realize the key to achieving x and y is to be grateful and embrace the things you already have.
What is your greatest extravagance?
Time is our most valuable commodity in life, and I spend too much of mine on the unadulterated watching of countless football (soccer) matches.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Outgoingness, extraversion, and the corresponding ability to ‘network’ and ‘make friends.’
It is an excellent virtue in and of itself, but too often it is a smokescreen with which to conceal vapidity in other areas, and thus, overrated.
On what occasion do you lie?
I lie to myself, mostly, usually about writing.
“This sentence is fine.”
“It doesn’t have to have a perfect ending!”
“You’re a brilliant writer! Post it anyway!”
Stuff like that.
What is your greatest regret?
I wish I enjoyed my teenage years more.
A lot of my writing lives vicariously through young characters, especially high schoolers. I spent most of those years being anxious about nearly everything, without realizing that they were the best of my life, that everything was wild and exciting and new, life could take any course. How little I had to worry about, small the responsibilities I had.
When I was a teen, I felt scared and cloistered, as though every danger in the world threatened to cut my life short, that if I didn't protect myself then I'd be missing out on all the great things my future life had to offer.
Instead, I missed out on youth.
When and where are you happiest?
During the daytime, in the most direct sunlight. Literally.
I have some kind of physiological aversion to happiness when I am lacking sunlight, or perhaps it corresponds with barometric pressure or some other environmental effects yet undiscovered.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My life in its current state and how I got there. I have led a life relatively free of trauma and hardship, yet fraught with its own perils and turmoil that constituted hurdles along the way.
Every addiction I’ve escaped, people I’ve met, friends I’ve made, the temptations and the loves I’ve left have all made the life I have now a spectacular achievement indeed.
If you could choose to come back as something, what would it be?
At risk of sounding unoriginal here, probably a mammalian pet of some sort, preferably in a comfortable upper-middle class home of benevolent owners in a developed country.
Those sorts of people have the luxury of treating pets like royalty and I would be able to enjoy a comfortable life without guilt (I would be just an innocent animal, after all).
What is your most treasured possession?
My acoustic guitar. It is a $100 piece of junk that I have been meaning to discard for years, but I can never get myself to indulge in an upgrade. Despite many opportunities for replacement, I persist with it anyway. I’ve had it for ten years.
The longer I resist buying a new one, the more a symbol of self-restraint it becomes, and thus more treasured.
Where would you like to live?
As aforementioned, I need to be in the sun. Someplace nearer the equator with more static, tropical seasons.
Humanity’s greatest mistake was migrating from such areas early on.
Ideally, I would live on an island with soft, sandy beaches, and little risk of tropical storms and/or hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, or other natural disaster phenomenon.
I’d live in a well-cooled bungalow in an area with various roads ideal for road-running, well-manicured fields for satisfying the vibrant local soccer-playing community, and dive bars that feature local musicians. I’d be walking distance to a few good brunch and coffee places run by locals, lunch and dinner places as well, some specializing in the local seafood, perhaps a market as well.
There’d be no tourists, it’d be just me and my island friends.
Fortunately, I do not currently live in such an area (I suspect it does not exist) and am bound by family and friends to stay in a part of the world with four very strong and distinct seasons and none of the other things mentioned, which I am glad to find humbles me. A perpetually happy me might be kind of dangerous.
What is your favorite occupation?
My favorite job was being a supermarket store clerk – specifically, the one tasked with gathering carts from the parking lot.
You get to walk around outside and daydream a lot, which is all I really need and desire to do anyway. It doesn’t take too much focus and is virtually impossible to mess up as long as you keep a steady pace.
What is your most marked characteristic?
My propensity for daydreaming. It can take nothing to distract me, and everything to take me back to the moment.
At any moment I am liable to stare off in the distance and murmur something to myself, and those who love me and are constantly near to me will know I am gone.
What do you most value in your friends?
I would like to say something more substantive like ‘loyalty’ or ‘intelligence’, but honestly, I most value humor. If you can’t laugh with someone, you can’t be friends. I’ve known many people whom on the surface I would appear not to get along with, innumerable differences between us in politics, intellect, interest, taste.
But if we can laugh together, we can be friends.
Who are your favorite writers?
My favorite writers are mostly white men from the classic modern or near-modern pantheon of Western authors, and while they are my favorites, I don’t consider them essential reading for everyone, nor would I recommend them to most people. But they served to inform me and so here they are:
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Raymond Carver
Earnest Hemingway
James Joyce
David Foster Wallace
Chuck Klosterman
Main exceptions to the white dude classification are Haruki Murakami, Ruth Ozeki, and especially Elena Ferrante, who might be one of my top three favorites.
Who are your heroes in real life?
Main one is probably my Significant Other. As you can probably tell from my answers to this questionnaire, they have a lot to deal with, and they do it marvelously.
Also, my siblings. They excel in areas which I do not despite being subject to many of the same foibles and failings.
How would you like to die?
I’m in the sun, on an Adirondack chair on a promontory or dock thrust out upon the waters of a sparkling lake, cold drink in hand, dog by my feet, surrounded by the smiles of loved ones and descendants.
Ideally, we all know I’m going to die.
And that’s just fine with everyone.
What is your motto?
Be a monk of your own religion.
Thanks to
for being game, don’t forget to check him out here!And of course…
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