Courage
Of letting go of my fear of cringe
I started off this new year with a cold, which seems rather inauspicious. And I don’t do colds very well; I have man colds, meaning I flop around like a beached fish and act like an enormous baby about being sick. Do I love that about myself? No, but as with everything else in my life, I am learning to accept my flaws. 😌
I don’t know what it is about January that pushes us toward year-end reviews and new year resolutions, but here I am, just like everyone else, looking back on 2023 and looking ahead to 2024. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not much for resolutions, but upon reviewing my intentions and affirmations from last year, I did much better than I expected.
2023 was perhaps the first year in a long time that I have not felt the weight of burnout on my shoulders, although its shadow was ever-present. But perhaps that is the way of burnout; like an injury, I’ll forever be babying the memory of that wound, even after it has long since healed. But my first intention—balance—was something I feel good about accomplishing, and I think a large part of that was allowing myself to be bored.
Boredom is a gift I think we don’t allow ourselves enough, especially in such a hyper-connected, hyper-aware world. Boredom allows me to think, especially about my writing. There are times where I think fondly of working full-time outside the home, because there was nothing if not the drive to stave off work-related boredom by writing a book. I don’t have that anymore (and to tell you the truth, I don’t miss having a full-time job), so boredom is something I must actively seek on a daily basis.
The first thing I’ve done is disconnect myself from audiobooks and podcasts while going on walks, especially with Castor and Pollux. They go on at least three walks with me per day (ah, the joys of having two Aussie shepherd mixes), and on each walk I allow myself time with my thoughts. To be honest, I hate it most of the time—I am allergic to tedium—but I can’t deny that the benefits have far outweighed my childish discomfort with boredom.
And now, on to 2024. And it’s pretty simple this year.
🔮 intentions and affirmations for 2024
I will seek and cultivate pleasure and delight in all things.
If you know me (or indeed, if you’ve read this newsletter at all), you’ll know that I’ve been struggling to love. Love the media I consume, the activities I do, the thoughts in my head. And it isn’t a function of depression; it isn’t as though I cannot connect so much as I feel as though I’ve forgotten how. There was a time in my life when I loved freely and without abandon, when I read good books and bad with no judgement, when I could lose myself in a new world with new words. Part of that, of course, is the algorithm problem, my so-called lowest common denominator. I feel as though I’ve been swimming in mediocrity long enough to know that so much of what is out there is mid. But there’s another part of me that knows this is just an excuse. There is so much good—even great—work out there. Work that takes risks, that breaks outside the palatable pablum spewed out by the algorithm.
I just need to be brave enough to find it.
My word of the year is presence.
This year’s tarot card of the year is the Queen of Wands, whose byword is courage. And I think it’s fitting, considering how much courage it takes to take up space at all. And I don’t think of myself as a shrinking flower by any means, nor am I uncomfortable with charming people in person and on stage. But I am, and have been, rather passive about being me in a way that I remember being able to do when I was younger. Some of that is age; the older I get, the more I understand that the cultural zeitgeist has likely passed me by. And I’ve long since made my peace with that, but I find myself floundering to assert the muchness of me in a sea of information.
And there is, of course, the ever-present fear of cringe. I think I’m rather sensitive to cringe, but that is probably because I’m a judgmental cow. I find so many things cringe, but nothing there is nothing more cringe to me than earnestness.
I am afraid of being earnest.
Last year brought much-needed balance back into my life, but now that I’ve found equilibrium, it’s time to build once more. I’ve discovered that in my quest for balance, and in my disconnect from social media, I’ve shared remarkably little of myself with my audience. And I don’t mean myself in an influencer sort of way, but the part of me that is vulnerable, creative, artistic, and—dare I say—authentic. The parts that think, that feel, that mull and philosophize. I do better sharing that part of myself on Substack than any other platform, but I’m loathe to put myself out there for fear of being judged as cringe.
But sometimes, cringe can pay off.
This past November, I did an experiment in documenting my creative process, and found that both relieving and enlightening, despite how cringe I felt in doing it. It was an exercise in both courage and creativity, and in doing so, I found something I hadn’t realized I’d been lacking before: community.
Authors talk about community all the time, but most of the time it’s framed within capitalistic terms. Community being a watchword for fandom. And while, yes, I would love to have a fandom around my work, what I want more than anything is a community around what it feels like to make art. Because it’s such a lonely process most of the time. And although it feels like talking into the void much of the time, every once in a while, the void talks back, and the relief I feel in knowing I’m not alone is immense.
But perhaps the word I’m looking for is not community; it’s commiseration.
Why is writing so hard? Why is it so hard to wrangle the ideas from my head into something tangible? The creative alchemy of translating the book in my head to a book on the page is magic, and I want a coven around me to witness and experience and share in the creation. It’s all work, and I have to teach myself not to avoid it, but sometimes, I want a cheerleader too.
Courage. 2024 will require a lot of it. And for the first time in a long time, I’m not afraid to try it.
사랑해,
