I guess I was always aware that there are people in the world who don’t think that everything they do sucks, but I’ve never been one of them. It’s my worst quality. I’ve always second guessed my own every move. Once I made an appointment with a therapist to ask him why I felt like I was doing life wrong all the time.
He didn’t know.
Sometimes I do things that I think are decent, but then I consider showing them to someone and then immediately want to vomit everywhere and I realize that no, in fact, I’m pretty sure whatever person I might have considered sharing whatever I might have done with is going to hate it and tell me I’ve got no business living. So then I start to hate it too. Because obviously.
For a long time I was sure I’d mature out of it, that I’d grow in to my confidence, but that day never came.
Except that more and more lately, it’s started to seem like maybe it has. Maybe I just had to work a whole lot harder for it than I’d thought I would. Maybe I had to earn it. Maybe I just had to actually prove to myself that I was worth believing in.
Instead of being like POOF! CONFIDENCE! all at once, it’s started sort of slowly like a trickle that I realize that I can still like something I said or did or believed or wrote, or whatever even if someone I respected does not. Which seems obvious, but wasn’t. Finally I can start to step back after finishing a screenplay or a blog post or even arranging the pillows on my couch and think: “Hey, nice work, self.”
Slowly but surely the confidence I always wished and hoped for has started to take hold. I know who I am. I know where I’m going. Or at least which direction I’m heading in.
And then, inevitably someone tells me I’m not good enough. It happens sometimes. In the creative world especially, but I probably shouldn’t even say especially because that’s the only world I know and maybe it happens in the statistics world just as often. Still, every once in a while I put myself out there creatively and I’m faced with the reality that sometimes some people just aren’t going to like what I have to offer. And that still scares the living shit out of me.
So I did something kind of out of character for myself. I enrolled in an improv class in Hollywood and I started it this week. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to get the hell out of there because in Improv-world, being too cool to make a fool of yourself makes YOU the asshole and I REALLY DO NOT LIKE TO ACT A FOOL OR BE AN ASSHOLE. I mean...on my own terms, sure, but short of being there by choice nothing about playing make-believe in a room full of strangers at thirty-two years old feels like my own terms.
Still, even though I basically hate it so far because it’s like three hours of pure socially awkward torture, I think I’m gonna love it. Because fuck my comfort zone. What good has it ever done me?
And I’m learning…slowly but surely…that the more I believe in myself the less important it becomes for anyone else to agree with me.
{Okay, now will someone remind me I said that in five minutes when I want to crawl back in to a corner please? Also? Here’s a video of a baby sea lion climbing on a boat.}
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