While I am recuperating for the 100th fucking time, let’s continue our Proust Questionnaire with my friends because at this juncture they are far more interesting than this chick over here in Paris with stupid ALS.

Today’s Q & A is from my friend, Jamie Brisick. Truth be told, Jamie is my first crush. I was 16 or 17 years old and I met Jamie at the beach and fell head over heels in love. How could I not? He was a dashing intellectual… surfer. Usually intellectual and surfer do not go hand in hand but in Jamie’s case, he was exactly that. On top of this, he was also the funniest, wittiest, most handsome man on earth… still is to this day. But don’t tell him that I said any of this. For our 1st date, if you could call it that, Jamie took me to Zooma Sushi in Malibu for dinner and as the waiter asked for our drink order Jamie looked at me and said, “Care for a Fresca?” I was in love. I like to call him Dogface just to keep his ego intact. Jamie went from surfer to editor of Surfer Magazine to brilliant author penning 2 books. His latest book, Becoming Westerly, is a beautiful tribute to a delicate subject. “BECOMING WESTERLY is much more than a book about a celebrated surfer who becomes a woman—in this case, a dude who becomes a diva. Brisick presents us with a case study of narcissism, of the pathology of celebrity, and a detailed look at the complex world of competitive surfing. It is a funny and painful book, too, and one I greatly enjoyed. —Paul Theroux, Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories, The Last Train to Zona Verde, The Great Railway Bazaar and Mosquito Coast Discover Jamie more through his website, http://jamiebrisick.com, and I am sure you will become as smitten with him as I was am with Dogface.
Proust Questionnaire for Jamie: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Jamie’s Answer: For me, the lowest depth of misery has been doing something that feels wholly out of line with who I am, what I believe in, what makes me happy. This can come in many forms. I have felt it in a shitty relationship, where I feel like everything is compromise. But most terrifying for me has been when I've felt it in my work.

I'm spoiled. I've been fortunate enough to align work with the things I love. But every once in a while that gets skewed. A long while back I took a job as the editor of a surfing magazine. I thought it would be "playing in the sand box." Instead, I inherited a nightmare of Excel spread sheets that were far beyond my skill set. I was exposed to the harsh truth of compromised magazine making: advertisers called the shot. I was also expected to be a kind of glad-handing puppet/frontman, a smiling and baby-kissing politician of sorts. That felt dishonest. It felt like I was trying to live someone else's version of me. That was miserable.
As a writer I feel this on a simpler, more immediate scale when I take on a gig that I have no connection with. Writing is tough enough as it is, but writing about something you don't care about is torture. It's a microcosm of falling out of your own flow, losing your mojo, disconnecting from your instincts and intuition.

I have experienced severe loss (my brother many years ago, my wife just recently), and that's more painful than any of the above. But I wouldn't quite call that misery. That's something else.

Thank you, Jamie. You never disappoint.
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