I kind of hate posting here. I love the work of it, having an amorphous idea floating around in my head, working it out onto a page, nudging it in different directions, wading through word choices and sentence structures, doing all of this until it feels like something I enjoy reading, something that makes some sense, that sets out to do a job and mostly got it done. But I hate actually posting. The sharing of the work is where I balk. There is this aversion I have to being perceived, I’m scared of being embarrassed by it. There is something inside of me that wants to cringe at the idea of asking for attention of any kind, and there is no escaping the fact that posting something on a blog is somewhat asking for attention.
But if these posts aren’t shared, there’s not much incentive for them to exist. Creative work doesn’t have to always be shared, but in this case I think it is necessary. But more broadly I am fighting this instinct because I believe it’s an important part of living an interesting life. I don’t want to go through life scared of people noticing me. Not just because it feels somewhat pathetic, but because doing almost anything interesting or creative often means being unable to hide. And I want to have an interesting and creative life.
This isn’t an easy fight for me. I’m naturally shy, and have only been able to get to a point where I can talk to strangers due to relentless exposure and practice. I remember a friend’s mom dropped me and her daughter off at the movie theater box office while she found a parking place. The daughter and I, both under the age of 15 at the time, quietly argued over who would have to speak to the teenager manning the box office booth. Armed with the cash her mom had provided I stammered out my request for tickets. I had to repeat it twice because I struggled to get my voice loud enough to actually be heard beyond the box office glass.
A steady diet of customer service jobs was a useful starting point in correcting this fear. When I was 15 and on my second day as a busser for a local restaurant, I spilled almost an entire pitcher of water into a lady’s lap. After providing the needed towels to mop up most of the mess I retreated to the back room to cry. Danica, an experienced server, came into the back and reassured me. “No one is going to remember you. Those people will leave this restaurant and you will never see them again. It doesn’t even matter.” Her matter-of-fact voice in the face of my utter embarrassment was soothing. And that was exactly what I wanted more than anything, to not be remembered. I would have preferred to not be perceived at all by pretty much anybody, but to be easily forgotten was a close enough second option.
In college I took a class on the creative process. The class emphasized that a key part of the creative process is sharing your creativity with the world. Whether it’s gifting a crocheted blanket to expecting parents, or sharing a meal that you cooked, or performing in a dance showcase, or competing in a tournament, the sharing of our creativity is often the culmination of creative work.
But of course this means that sharing your early work, even when it is not excellent, is important. This means putting yourself into a vulnerable position, playing those early songs in a recital when you know everyone there has heard better playing and more intricate songs before.
Once I took an intro to drawing class. Despite taking a sprinkling of art classes as a child, I’d specifically avoided this discipline because I knew I had no natural talent for it. Also, my husband inherited his father’s talent for realistic, precise drawing. When he bothers to pick up a drawing pencil he produces black and white images that resemble photographs which he claims are not very good. While I harbor no desire to compete with him, I also saw no need to even attempt something similar. So, with trepidation I entered my first intro to drawing class, wanting very much to learn something but being afraid of being seen performing so poorly at it.
My teacher was an artist in her early 70s who invited us into her studio and patiently explained to us how to do basic tasks she’d been proficient at for decades. My fellow classmates were mostly women of retirement age, but there was one younger couple there we’ll call Brad and Jane. It quickly became apparent that neither was a novice like the rest of us. When going around the room and commenting on our progress, our teacher exclaimed over Brad’s framing and his attention to detail. When she got to me she said something about it being very abstract. I knew enough to discern that it wasn’t a compliment. And so the classes went, with Brad showing off every week and being invited to live drawing classes and generally being fawned upon by the teacher, and me being peered at as though our teacher couldn’t understand how I had thought this a good use of my time. I complained about this to a few college friends who’d been art majors, and they assured me that there was a Brad in every art class and they commiserated with my “beefing with Brad” updates in the group chat.
I turned this experience into a joke, because it was funny. I’d come home and tell my husband or friends the things the teacher said to me, and what she’d said to Brad. I’d laugh over my sad attempts and return to class the next week, ready for another hit to my ego.
At the same time, I learned a lot in this class. The biggest lesson was that making a mark on a page didn’t need to be a big deal. It can just be practice, it can be wrong, it can be a learning thing, and that’s ok. It was important to feel that public embarrassment, and then survive it, to recognize the way my body reacted to it, and then process it.
A while ago Hank Green posted a video about the parable of the perfect pot, which is a story about an art class where one half of the class is tasked to make one perfect pot over the course of a semester, and the rest of the class has to make as many pots as possible. At the end of the semester those who made the one perfect pot weren’t as successful as those who made as many pots as possible because the group that made a lot of pots learned again and again from their mistakes. They practiced, they were critiqued. Over and over and over again, they did the same thing, learned something new and started again.
So here I am making pots, making marks on paper, trying again and again. I will make mistakes. There are things that I will write here that I won’t like later. I will wish that I’d consulted an editor, chosen a different topic, waited to post until I was a better writer. I will cringe at the bravery my former self had in writing these things and showing them to possible strangers or people I know. It absolutely will happen. And I’ll keep learning and trying. And maybe, hopefully, I will get better. Maybe eventually I’ll stop dreading hitting the “post” button. Maybe one day I’ll even like it.