How to be nervous (about writing)

I’ve tried and failed to resurrect my writing hobby these past 5 years. I published several of those attempts, but something always gnawed at me. Scratch scratch, unpublish, delete. Back to wishing I’d start again.

That’s not to say I haven’t written things, but writing for myself hasn’t happened. Something about the need to craft an idealistic returnal narrative, some impossible grammatic masterpiece to vindicate myself. What am I apologizing for anyway? Who am I trying to convince?

Whatever, it’s been 5 years. Shut up and write.

I can’t help but feel weird though. I thought I embraced weird? Why am I fighting weird?

Nerves

Nervous! Yes! I am nervous! Why am I nervous?

My stupid ego is mistakenly believes my previous writings were superior, well-written, and insightful, just don’t ask me to actually check. I’m comparing myself to a fiction; A fiction built on reverence, and how much writing has meant to me. Like I’m trying to recapture something I’ve lost, but never was.

I’ve grown, matured, even wed since I last wrote regularly. By definition I should be more insightful. Why then am I so nervous to write? To share?

Being gracefully wrong

A decade ago, I switched my blogging style to something closer to note-taking. That was sensible, as I’m really into learning. That’s not to say I wont continue to do this, but something about it worried me.

“Confidently wrong” is a phrase that comes up often. Good writing exudes confidence, or we think it does. My note taking tends to come off as a “matter of fact” style of writing. I will include brief snippets of my current understanding in the notes; Brevity looks like confidence, but it isn’t thorough.

And I suspect that is my bugbear.

It’s not that I can’t write confidently, it’s that sometimes I don’t believe it. Out of necessity I’ll choose a side for the sake of momentum, then find myself in situations where I need to defend or rationalize something I don’t feel strongly about. It can be difficult to gracefully communicate ambivilance in an effective way. Have a conversation with someone, be openly scatterbrained, and they walk away feeling regretful.

I hate this.

I don’t hate that I’m not confident, but I hate that being indecisive isn’t okay. Confidence builds trust; It gives comfort, and everyone wants comfort. While I don’t thrive in indecision, I’m not uncomfortable in it. Call this a personal AuDHD’ism, but it’s not enough for me to be told something is true to believe it; I need to see it or prove it myself to be truly satisfied.

By conventional standards I could be considered an expert on many subjects, but to me I just have a larger foundation. I worry, sometimes dread, about what that foundation is built upon. But the social expectation is that I must exude confidence, and I understand why, as I too haven’t come up with a better way to make others comfortable.

I hate this social norm. I hate this normalized lying.

The enemy of done

I could rattle off the technical reasons why returning to write was so difficult (unhappiness with software, workflow, design), but fundamentally it’s just stupid perfectionism. Dwelling on what’s broken, unfinished, or unported is fruitless if nobody is watching. And nobody can watch if you can’t finish.

Maybe it’s okay to be confidently wrong. “Wrong but done” does beat “unfinished unpublished perfection”, but the desire for right forever haunts.

Whatever. Click save, git push, moving on.