Taking Myself Seriously

Is it junk or is it art?

My last post about my fear of not being a career person had me in a bit of a tailspin. Why am I whining publicly on the internet that I don’t have a role model?

In high school, I watched Katie Couric interview Lil Wayne and I vividly remember his response when she asked if he thought he was a good role model:

“If you need an example for how to live then you just shouldn't have been born.”

Mic drop

I’m interpreting Weezy’s word to mean:

Be the main character of your own life.¹

Don’t let others dictate how you live.

Also, it’s worth noting that I do have plenty of role models (and I already have a pretty extensive list of people who inspire me). When I thought more about my question “Where are all the successful women?” plenty of names came to mind.

• Haley Nahman
  (pregnant with her first child)

• Virginia Sole-Smith
  (just announced she is getting divorced)

• Anne Helen Peterson (childfree by choice)

• lyz
  Lenz (single mom)

I realized that I was looking for something pretty specific - married women, with children, who are the breadwinners, who are not life coaches, who are writers. But now I see that I wasn’t asking a question or looking for guidance. I was obfuscating the fact that I wanted to be a writer.

I want to be a writer. I want to be a culture writer.

In my latest podcast episode, I spoke to one of my inspirations,

Chris Blahoot

, author of The Zag. Chris firmly believes that if content isn’t “actionable,” then it is essentially “mental junk food.” I find this take quite upsetting because I don’t write actionable content. I feel like I am screaming into the void.

Is my writing junk?

—

All the writing advice says: BE CONSISTENT.

Lately, I have struggled to stay consistent.

Last month, I was (very kindly) kicked out of my writing group. I met monthly with four other women I met in the Novel & Memoir Writing Class I took through my local community college. Each month we could submit up to 5,000 words for our peers to review (approx. 10 pages). I found this daunting.

Instead of sitting down and REALLY WRITING, I fired off two short ramblings I already had sitting around.

When we met later that month, as soon as my words were up for discussion, I told the other writers that I had to leave early. I said “I don’t really want feedback on the quality of my writing because I know it’s not GOOD. I just want to know how it made you FEEL.” This is a defense mechanism. I am telling you that it’s junk before you can. I’m trying to beat you to the punch so that you can’t hurt me. This never works.

Next month, when our meeting was a few days away and I still hadn’t submitted anything, our leader sent me a message.

“I'm reaching out to see where you are with the writer group. What are your thoughts on going forward with it? If you are not writing your memoir at this time, I can see where reading everyone else's work would be a burden, because it isn't reciprocal if you are only sharing a few blog entries each month.”

She gave me an out and I took it. I told her I was in a slump and would bow out of the group for now. I felt like such a failure. These other women have full lives and they were still churning out work while I couldn’t even put out a few pithy blog posts a month!

As Lyz says “If you don’t take yourself seriously, no one else will.”

—

Here is what I wrote on Thursday, March 9th (a week before I published my first post ever)

Does this make me a writer? Writing down what happened? I don’t think it does. Who would read this memoir? I don’t want to get caught up in the “who cares?” debate but it’s hard not to.

I know it’s important to practice the “Pomodoro”/kitchen egg timer exercise where you sit down to write, with no expectations about the quality/quantity of writing. When I type a post, I tell myself this is my “morning pages” exercise that Julia Cameron talks about. But she is against typing. She advocates for pen and paper. And she says it should be the first thing you do in the morning. So I am failing on both of those counts. To me, my thoughts just come so much faster than I can physically write them. I can barely keep up with typing them. I know that’s probably saying something about how I need to slow down and pause/think/reflect before I word vomit but I DON’T KNOW HOW. Or rather I refuse to slow down because I am afraid of what I will see. I don’t know. I know something is better than nothing.

So am I doing my “morning pages”? Probably not officially. But I am writing. I am taking the time to get my thoughts down. I don’t need to judge these thoughts as worthy of being read by others. They are not polished. I could make them polished if I wanted to.

I want to but I am afraid that I don’t have the skill set to make them read quite like I’d like them to. I know crafting beautiful words and stories takes hard work. I suppose I am unwilling to do the work. I am letting the fear of failure keep me from trying.

It’s my perfectionism again. Why even try if it’s not going to be amazing on the first try? I know how ridiculous this thinking is as I type it but this is what’s happening in real time. I suppose it’s good to name it. I have a fear of editing my work. I like just having a rough/stream of consciousness because then I can never be critiqued. I never have to be vulnerable because I never share these writings so there is no pressure to be “good.”

But I know that I want to share my writing. That feels scary to admit to myself. But I desperately, deeply want to share my writing. I do fundamentally think that I have something to say. Even though I am just a dumb white bitch who grew up upper middle class.² That doesn’t have to preclude me from sharing my thoughts. Are my thoughts worth sharing? That’s the issue. How dare you think you are that interesting. It all goes back to self-worth³.

I titled this post “6 Months” because I thought I would summarize what I have learned in this half a year (HALF A YEAR) of “finding myself.” But I always struggle when I try to title my post before I’ve written it. It almost never turns out that the thing I write about is what I thought I would write about. Which is cool in a way - that I am so unpredictable and I am constantly learning from myself and seeing what is really going on with me. Isn't that the whole point of morning pages? I know Julia says it’s to “get out the garbage/junk” that is top of mind so that you can go deeper and REALLY create your “art.” Morning pages aren’t the “art.” They are the process of “clearing out the junk.”

So is my writing “the junk” or “the art”? That is the QUESTION. I know the answer.

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Tags - Books, Fear, Inspiration, Writing

1. This idea is also from my idol,

Jamie Varon

- Her novel is literally called “Main Character Energy” and her first book, Radically Content is my other bible

2. YIKES

3. This brings me back to: Why is it so hard to separate self-worth from money/job title?

“The collection of personality traits that drive success and achievement are commonly the same traits that lead to mental health challenges related to self-worth and achievement-based identity, even in high-achieving individuals.”