Ignoring my writing
Blogging is hard. Sharing your thoughts is vulnerable. Even when I’m doing it pseudo-anonymously.
I talked previously about my debilitating condition of feeling cringe and embarrassment from reading the writing I put out into the world. Back in the day, I used to even delete tweets hours after posting them because I would overthink, second-guess, and feel embarrassed by what I had written.
I think it’s like any other form of self-perception. Catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and feeling self-conscious (I no longer do this), or when you hear a recording of your voice (eek!!). As a gay guy, this used to be especially challenging — for a long time, I felt betrayed by my voice. I sound so gay, so different from how I feel myself speaking. Hearing myself speak felt like a glimpse into how others perceived me, which was really uncomfortable.
But I’m really proud that neither of these things bothers me anymore. I’m older, more experienced, more comfortable with myself. But I only got there because of practice. I see myself in the mirror every day. I hear my voice often - I teach and record my lectures. At a certain point, I struggled and accepted these things about myself. In fact, I think I’m a really good teacher. So my gay enthusiastic voice must be contributing to some of that success. I've learned to be kind to myself in these areas.
But back to writing — I bring up the other things to say: writing feels like another form of catching a glimpse of myself and perceiving myself from the POV of an outsider. It’s cringeworthy at first, but with practice, I imagine I'll feel more comfortable doing it.
I can already feel myself making progress toward feeling more comfortable with sharing my writing. Currently, my strategy for not obsessing over what I’ve written is to try to ignore it. I post, and then don’t think much more about it. I’m not going back to reread it. If there are typos, then god bless. At least you know it’s not AI!
In fact, I had a lovely person sign my guestbook (shoutout to Nics!), saying they related to my frustration with others overanalyzing and hyper-critiquing fun, silly books. And honestly, for about 10 seconds, I had no clue what they were talking about. I had forgotten I’d written and posted that rant!
I believe this is a step in the right direction. Whenever I was self-conscious about my appearance or voice, part of the process of overcoming that was to not fixate on it and to keep moving. Then came acceptance, where I can comfortably look at it head-on.
When it comes to my writing, I’m keeping it moving.