I have had a ton of trouble just getting words out lately.
I spend so much energy trying to decide what other people think of me. Strangers even, people I would and will never encounter. If I think that so and so would dislike something I had to say, or disagree, or think I was stupid and inarticulate I freeze up and don’t do anything at all.
In fact, I recently started drinking socially, and there’s this odd moment when I’m just intoxicated enough to start feeling loose, spending one millisecond too many on my S’s that I run and hide. Surely no one wants to hear my drunken babbling. They would dismiss it as stream of consciousness bullshit coming from a man who wants nothing more than to hear himself talk.
So I find some quiet place somewhere: a driveway, a chair in a study… I was at a wedding the other day and took a nice long hike towards a pond in the center of this incredibly gorgeous vineyard, and just laid there in the grass, looking at the stars and listening to the crickets. I wasn’t doing any deep thinking, quite the contrary. I would pick up my phone every now and then and sloppily play some game with such conviction, my fingers not quite keeping up with the intense focus of my mind.
This is kind of how I deal with the daunting pressures of becoming an actual creator. Someone who sees ideas from start to finish. I get scared, so I hide, and give something much less important all of my brain power.
I think I’m too quick to define myself by what I do. For instance, just because I do this doesn’t mean this is who I am doomed to be. But out of pure laziness I hope for change without any effort whatsoever, and that has never been the case for me. No, I am not one of those people where creating just comes naturally and they never get in their own way and they just do, but I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
Hah, even now I want feedback. “That’s okay, right?” Shut up brain. Yeah, it is.
