Wanting Things Without Irony

I am trying to stop using jokes as plausible deniability for the life I very obviously want.

I have a verbal tic.

Whenever I say something I care about, I immediately put a joke after it.

I can watch it happen in the draft. I type the plain sentence, leave it alone for about two seconds, then rush back in with a punchline like the sentence has been left unattended near traffic.

I want to build a company of my own someday. Horrifying sentence. Please do not clip that for a podcast.

I want to become an excellent writer. Gross. Somebody hide the tote bags.

I want to make work people remember. Okay, relax, Hemingway.

The joke is almost automatic. It arrives before the sincere sentence has even finished parking.

I have always thought of this as self-awareness. Nobody wants to be the guy speaking about his destiny with both hands wrapped around a ceremonial mug. I certainly do not. There should be legitimate consequences for saying “my legacy” before breakfast.

But lately I have started wondering whether the joke is doing more than keeping me moderately likable.

Maybe it is keeping me safe.

Irony gives desire an emergency exit

A few weeks ago, in a birthday essay about becoming less full of shit, I wrote that I wanted to get better at wanting what I want without immediately dressing it up in irony so nobody could accuse me of caring too much.

I thought that was one line in the essay.

It turns out it may have been the whole problem.

Irony is useful. It signals that you understand how you sound. It keeps intensity from curdling into self-importance. It can turn a confession into something another person can actually sit beside without slowly looking for the door.

I like funny people. I like self-aware people. I do not want to replace humor with the spiritual energy of a keynote speaker walking toward the edge of the stage.

But irony also creates an emergency exit.

If the dream fails, I was kidding.

If the idea sounds too ambitious, I know. That was the joke.

If somebody thinks I am trying too hard, I can act like I agree with them.

The sincere sentence gets to enter the room, but it has to wear a disguise.

This is socially convenient. It is also a strange way to live.

At some point, the performance of detachment starts requiring more energy than simply caring.

Detachment is easy to perform in public

The internet is very good at making commitment look naïve.

Not because people do not want things. We clearly want things. Better work. More money. A stronger body. A family. A book. A company. A home. A creative life. A reputation for doing something unusually well.

We just learn to describe those wants sideways.

You are not trying to become a writer. You are “messing around with a newsletter.”

You are not building a product you hope becomes a real company. You are “shipping a little side project.”

You do not care deeply about the work. You are “having fun with it.”

Sometimes that language is accurate. Early things should be allowed to be small. Experiments need room to fail without becoming identity crises.

But sometimes “just playing around” is a legal disclaimer attached to your own ambition.

It means: I want this, but I would also like immunity from being judged by how badly I want it.

That immunity is f*cking expensive, man.

You cannot build a life around a desire you keep introducing as a bit.

Eventually, wanting something asks you to become specific. Specific desire creates the possibility of specific failure. “I want to make things” is atmospheric. “I want to write an essay every week that earns a place in someone’s inbox” can go wrong in public.

“I might build something someday” preserves potential. “I want to build a company and I am practicing the skills now” creates a standard your behavior can contradict.

That is why the joke feels so good. It blurs the scoreboard.

The problem is not the joke

To be clear, I am not giving up jokes.

This newsletter would lose at least 40% of its load-bearing architecture, and I would have to develop an actual personality.

The problem is not using humor around serious things. Humor is often how I get close enough to say them. It punctures the performance before the performance becomes unbearable. It lets me acknowledge that ambition can be sincere and ridiculous at the same time.

The problem is whether the joke serves the truth or erases it.

A good joke lets the sincere sentence breathe.

A defensive joke pulls it back before anyone can respond.

I have noticed this distinction in my older writing. The pieces that feel most like me usually disarm the self-importance, then return to the thing that matters. The camera purchase can be impractical and still represent craft, memory, control, and a way of seeing. A birthday audit can be absurd and still ask whether my behavior matches my ambition. Wanting to be a founder can make me cringe and still be true.

Self-awareness should make sincerity believable.

It should not make sincerity deniable.

I want a lot

This is the part where I am supposed to prove the thesis by saying what I want plainly.

Annoying.

I want to build a company of my own.

I want to become a writer whose work is useful, recognizable, and worth returning to.

I want to make products that feel considered all the way through… the idea, the interface, the language, the business, the experience after someone pays.

I want to become genuinely excellent at the strange overlap of product, brand, growth, technology, and taste.

I want a strong body, a calm home, a life full of people I love, and enough attention left to notice where I am.

I want ownership. Freedom. Mastery. Time. Work with consequence.

I want the life and the work to feel like they belong to the same person.

There. No joke.

The uncomfortable part is not that these desires are unusual. They are not. The uncomfortable part is claiming them without first making myself smaller for the comfort of an imaginary audience.

That does not mean I deserve any of them.

Wanting is not evidence. Desire can become its own form of cosplay if it never acquires a calendar, a cost, or a body of work.

Sincerity is not saying the big sentence louder.

Sincerity is accepting what the sentence asks of you next.

Every real want has a cost attached

“I want to write” sounds lovely until it means writing when the idea is not cooperating.

“I want to build a company” sounds romantic until it means choosing a problem, listening when customers ruin your elegant theory, learning the parts of the work you cannot aesthetic your way around, and being responsible when the consequences stop being hypothetical.

“I want to be healthy” sounds obvious until it has to compete with a Saturday brunch in The Village. Hey, I love a good mimosa… or 12.

“I want a rich life” sounds beautiful until it requires protecting attention from work that will happily eat all of it.

A real want changes what you are willing to pay for in time, discomfort, repetition, embarrassment, and refusal.

That is the line between ambition and fantasy.

Fantasy keeps the image and negotiates away the cost.

Ambition accepts the cost, then starts collecting evidence.

This is also why plain desire feels exposing. Once you say what you want, people can compare the sentence with your life. More importantly, you can.

The gap becomes visible.

I used to think that visibility was the danger.

Now I think it may be the point.

The Unironic Sentence

Here is the small exercise I am trying. It is less a framework than a way to catch myself reaching for the emergency exit.

Take one thing you keep describing with a hedge, joke, or layer of strategic ambiguity. Then finish these five lines.

1. I want…

Write the sentence with no “maybe,” “kind of,” “someday,” or “I know this sounds stupid.”

Do not make it impressive. Make it accurate.

I want to write a book.

I want to change careers.

I want to build a company.

I want to make art again.

I want to be a more present parent.

2. It matters because…

Do not turn the answer into a pitch.

Not everything you want needs to improve an industry, create a movement, or make you an optimized node in the knowledge economy. Some things matter because they make you feel more alive, more honest, or more like yourself.

Name the private reason before the socially acceptable one eats it.

3. The cost is…

What will this require that the fantasy keeps editing out?

Time. Repetition. Money. Boredom. Beginnerhood. Public failure. A difficult conversation. Saying no to something that looks respectable. Letting another person see work that is not ready.

If you want the image but reject every cost, that is useful information.

4. The evidence would be…

What would exist if the want became real?

A draft. An application. A prototype. A paid invoice. A recurring dinner. A stronger body. A finished film. A conversation you have been avoiding. A Tuesday that looks different.

Evidence turns the sentence from identity into practice.

5. The next visible act is…

Choose something small enough to do and real enough to make retreat slightly less comfortable.

Not “research.” Not “think about my options.” Not “build the strategy.”

Send the email. Book the class. Publish the page. Make the call. Put the session on the calendar. Tell the person. Finish the first ugly version.

The goal is not to announce your dream to the internet.

The goal is to remove your own plausible deniability.

Earnestness is not a personal brand

There is a version of this idea that becomes its own performance.

You can become the person who is publicly, aggressively sincere about everything. Every morning is sacred. Every workout is a vote for destiny. Every product update is a chapter in the founder journey. Every bowl of oatmeal is somehow about courage.

No thank you.

Earnestness does not require constant disclosure. Some desires get stronger when they are protected from distribution. Some work needs privacy before it needs accountability. Some ambitions are shared with five people, not five thousand.

The point is not to perform caring.

It is to stop performing not caring.

Those are different jobs.

One turns desire into content. The other lets desire become instruction.

I still want the irony. I want the snapback after a sentence gets too polished. I want the joke that proves I know ambition can make people weird. I want enough self-awareness to recognize when I am falling in love with the story of myself.

But I do not want the joke to hold veto power anymore.

I do not want to spend my life saying “it would be cool if” about things I am quietly building my life around.

I want to build a company of my own.

I want to make work worth remembering.

I do not know exactly what either sentence will cost yet.

I am going to keep finding out.

A question for you

What is the sentence you keep making safer with irony?

Finish this without hedging… I want…

Reply and tell me. One sentence. No business case required.

-zc

P.S. If you like essays about ambition, taste, building things, and staying recognizably human while doing it, subscribe to Don’t Feed The Algorithm. I promise to remain at least a little embarrassed by all of this.

Rabbit hole for the overcaffeinated

A few things that helped me think about sincerity, commitment, attention, and making the private desire real:

- David Foster Wallace — “This Is Water”: a useful reminder that attention and meaning are practices, not personality traits we get to claim once and keep forever.

- Brené Brown — “The Power of Vulnerability”: popular for a reason; useful on what we protect when we avoid exposure.

- Paul Graham — “How to Do Great Work”: practical thinking about curiosity, ambition, commitment, and the long process behind work that matters.

- Oliver Burkeman — Four Thousand Weeks: a useful counterweight to abstract ambition because every serious want is also a decision about finite attention.

- Austin Kleon — *Show Your Work!: a short argument for letting practice become visible without turning yourself into a motivational content product.

Internal rabbit holes:

- Another Year Older, Still Trying to Become Less Full of Shit — the line that started this essay.

- Trying to Become a Top 0.1% Human — on taking a ridiculous ambition seriously enough to make it useful.

- Your Ambition Needs a Place to Live — on building a container for the thing you keep saying matters.