Expectations
I was initially very excited about having a pseudo blog where I could continue to roll around the pearls in my head with an imaginary audience. But now there’s an expectation to write, even if no one else reads it. There is a space just waiting to be filled with words. It’s that expectation that makes it feel less thrilling. I wonder why it’s hard for me to stick with a writing practice when it comes to this more personal and less formulated stuff. I don’t have to research or cite, it’s all just feelings moving through me being worked out in real time.
Writing my dissertation felt easy in hindsight. I don’t know if that’s a crazy thing to say, but I found the hardest parts of that whole process to be not knowing what the target was. I could write five pages a week, about 25 in a month. Then spend another month refining it into something more presentable only to be told that it wasn’t good. But then I could write 30 pages in a few weeks, feel unsure about it, and then be told it was my strongest chapter yet. I left the dissertation happy it was completed, proud of my work, yet still unsure as to what it is my advisors wanted from me. I had a feeling of just waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me at the end. It never came. I am still standing in that rug, but I don’t feel proud about it.
When my friends ask me how I finished a dissertation or did all this, I tell them you just have to write. Just get it out there, don’t over think it. At the end of the day, you will never know it’s “good” until someone else tells you it is. And even then, if you’re like me, you might have a hard time believing it. Fear of failure doesn’t keep me from writing. I have internalized the truth that everything is subjective, and that is both liberating and depressing. It keeps me from being ashamed to try anything and also means that these endeavors might not feel as rewarding. Compliments make me defensive. I’m trying to be seen, but not accepted. I want to be in the conversation but I don’t want to be part of it. I want to somehow be above it at all times. Acting like I’m better, but also still so personally invested in the destruction of my own ego. I am not better, well, except for maybe those people I guess.
I like to write. I like it so much. I have to remind myself that I don’t need to feel like I need to write towards something or for someone. Sometimes I just have to write towards understanding myself, and to process the things around me. Even in writing this, I have talked myself out of a slump. I can write, I have thoughts and feelings I want to share. I am an asshole, I am critical, and I write. I do something to understand myself a little more, to make myself feel less lonely.
I was suggested a YouTube video of a women reading Pride and Prejudice out loud to practice her English. I started crying immediately, then I was critical of my crying because I felt that I was infantalizing her. But it just gave me so much hope. To see someone unabashedly doing something they want to do to better themselves. All the bad things happening, all the bad things that could happen, all that bad things that will happen, and I want to try getting better at this one thing. Because there are also good things that can happen, and have happened, and maybe will happen. And writing helps me capture that feeling of potential. Of being and existing in a different way that orients me to a present with a semblance of control. When I don't write, it feel like I'm letting other thigns determine how I should be feeling. All of this is going on, but I want to do this one thing that makes me feel like a human with agency.
I hate ending a piece, so I’ll keep it brief. It’s late, and I should go to bed.