My Personal Quest to EGOT

I may never win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, or Tony. But damn it, I will touch all the awards.

Clio Chang
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Frances McDormand with her best actress Oscar in 1997. Photo: Steve Starr / Corbis via Getty Images

I have never won an award in my adult life, nor do I expect to. The kinds of things I am exceptionally good at — eating pasta with red sauce, smoothing over an awkward conversational silence by commenting on how the furniture has a kind of je ne sais quoi — are not the kinds of things for which they give out awards. Everyone knows that the four main qualities that are award-worthy are pretending to be someone else while being filmed for movies, pretending to be someone else while being filmed for television, pretending to be someone else while on stage, and singing/songwriting.

This awards season, like every awards season past, I am once again not nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, or Tony. While I feel neither snubbed nor surprised, each awards season reminds me to recommit myself to a lifelong personal quest of mine: EGOT-ing, but where instead of winning the awards I just touch them. This is a quest that feels doable but challenging, and gives me a small sense of purpose in life.

I held it, gave a fake speech, and hastily put it down when I heard Tommy Lee Jones entering the premises.

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