It’s November 4th. This is the conversation I had with myself while driving home from work in the daylight savings time darkness::
I’m struggling to launch this site. My first launch date was supposed to be May 15th - for no reason other than I decided I liked that day. But May 15th came and went. So, then it was supposed to be October 15th - because October is a beautiful month and by the time I established that new goal back in mid-July, I figured it would be plentyyyy of time to get my shit together. Then, as I watched the 15th scurry on by (again), I was like: “Okay, for real, October 31st.” Nope. Turns out you don’t get a lot of writing done when you go to Portland for a marijuana convention and work 12 hour days for a week. So, now it’s November and I’m driving down this road wondering what the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I just launch the damn website?! Like, honestly. Nobody is actually going to care either way. I’m not even doing this for anyone else…right?
So I tell myself.
The reality is, I feel an incessant urge to perfect everything. Every word, every rhyme, every tone, the concept behind the design, the font, the color palette, the photography, the freaking mobile-friendliness?! I mean, the list goes on.
Even though this whole thing is just a side project, something to do to keep my mind active, something to keep me off my phone, something to use as a means to externally process the craziness in my head, I appear to not be able to easily release this site due to my obsessive preoccupation with being unnecessarily concerned with how people will perceive me.
I literally cringe when I hear myself say this. I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to care. I want to be unattached, removed, so “above” caring that I just freely create. But that’s not real life. At least not for me. At least not yet.
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Perception is funny, because truthfully, it doesn’t matter. You could try to account for and control every factor, every detail, but because the human mind is wild, reactive, and self-preserving by design, people will always project their experiences (i.e. opinions/reactions/shit) onto you and your endeavors ALL THE DAMN TIME. And it means nothing. It’s normal. It’s okay. It’s free will. It’s biological evolutionary science. I know this, theoretically.
Yet, I continue to read and re-read everything I write. Many a night do I sit at my computer and cock my head to right and to the left…over to the right again and back to the left…wondering if adding that one comma really evoked the right emotion.
That’s an easy way to blow your launch date by 173 days (and counting).
I’ve realized this struggle is not because I am concerned with being wrong necessarily. I mean, I really have no idea what I’m doing with this site, and I don’t have the patience (or time) to refresh myself on iambic pentameter…nor do I want to.
What’s really going on is a struggle to release control. Control for me has always looked like a desire, a NEED, to ensure other people do not have the chance to wrongly “categorize” me - whatever that means.
I’ve always been relatively unwilling to be misunderstood. Unwilling to look stupid, misinformed, narrow-minded, incomplete. Unwilling to look too sacrificial or too self-righteous. Too practical or too idealistic. Too dramatic or too self-deprecating. Too much of this or not enough of that.
I’ve liked to live my life in the in-betweens. Goldilocks.
This doesn’t come from a place of wanting to be liked, or even respected. It comes from being tired of having everyone tell me how my life is/was/should be…peppered with some residual defiant rebellion - basically an egoic temper tantrum.
I told you I cringe when I think about this.
So, to combat people from having the chance to form their own opinion (lol) because I just don’t want to deal with having to explain myself (again), I’ve developed a coping mechanism of sorts. In all that I do and everything I say, I try to meticulously cover my bases. I take subconscious inventory of every potential conflictual area, and attempt to comprehensively account for every possible reaction. Each angle. Each perception. Every projection. I become a master craftsman - building in loopholes, context, and explanations to somehow satiate any lingering questions or knee-jerk reactions I think another might have.
And oh my god, I’m so tired.
Because it doesn’t matter. None of this matters. Life and death do not cling to these words. My innate worth as a human being will not be diminished because, heaven forbid, someone “took me the wrong way.”
But man, old habits die hard.
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