this is so embarrassing!
plus what's IN and what's OUT
I cannot bring myself to write anything because writing anything is so embarrassing.
I love reading books, which is obviously an embarrassing way to start a sentence. And sometimes this thing happens when I’m reading a book, where I get all embarrassed about everything I’ve ever written or sometimes even things I’ve never written and only thought about writing, because whatever this actual writer has done in this stack of pages in my lap is real and good, and what I did or tried to do or thought about doing was just a bad imitation, but done with enough earnestness to reveal that somewhere behind the compulsion to do it was a tiny little belief that I could make something real and good too.
Even writing this I’m already embarrassed, because in that above paragraph there were probably infinite better arrangements of better words that someone (not me) could’ve put together to convey how they sometimes feel reading a book, and the first and only thing I could come up with was “I get all embarrassed.” And then the rest of it was a run-on sentence.
A discerning reader (or maybe just any reader; the conceit is not particularly well-concealed!) will by now have picked up on the contradiction before us; that despite writing being the most embarrassing thing one could do ever in the history of ever, here I am doing it! But I think it’s sort of a situation where in order to make my point about the thing, I have to be doing the thing.
It’s an “only way out is through” predicament, where to untangle all of these feelings I have about writing and embarrassment, I have to write and consequently be embarrassed about it. It’s kind of like driving the wrong way down a one-way street, which I do not do frequently but did do recently. I couldn’t turn around or reverse back out of the road, so I just crawled along in my mistake, mouthing “I’m sorry, I know!!!” to the oncoming cars as I squirmed past them. I needed to get back on the right side of things, but the only way to correct my current circumstance was to keep on plodding through the humiliation until I reached an intersection. One could argue the situation could’ve been avoided completely had I not turned the wrong way down a one-way street – which in this metaphor means I could just not write. And to that I would say: I am a bad driver and unfortunately, I really enjoy writing!
Writers who have written about writing say this embarrassment is more accurately described as self-doubt, and self-doubt is healthy and often necessary for someone’s writing to be any good, or at least worth reading. A professor I had in college – and who I later impulse-Zoomed when I decided I needed to be in grad school yesterday and wanted advice – said you can tell when someone writes with a misplaced confidence. Any good writer, she said (although I’m probably paraphrasing) writes 4,000 words, knowing that maybe only 100 could be usable.
I understand this! Self-doubt seems to be about lacking confidence in your own abilities or ideas, and can often be more the result of external systems and a broader cultural context than any one individual’s competency or lackthereof. The key thing about the self-doubt reading, though, is the reality that the person can do the thing — and is maybe even really good at it! I totally understand how working through or writing through that doubt can be productive and insightful and generative, and ultimately lead to interesting stuff. (NOT what’s happening here!!)
But this all feels very different from the sensation of embarrassment, which shares the same inward evaluation as self-doubt but operates on a different truth; the truth being that one simply does not possess the ability in question at all, which makes doing the thing embarrassing! A self-doubting writer, like a real one, does the thing despite not believing they are good at it, and in that process they somehow become even better at it. The embarrassing writer does the thing because they believe they are good at it despite not being good at it, and that’s how we ended up with HBO’s Girls and The Moth. (Kidding! I have watched HBO’s Girls twice and more Moth performances than I’d like to admit.)
This all reminds me of imposter syndrome discourse and a very poignant sentiment I’ve seen expressed on Twitter, by various people whose accounts I did not examine closely yet have given their words credence: “some people do not have imposter syndrome, they are simply not good at that thing!” While the way imposter syndrome is used these days seems a bit flawed – taking something rather structural, like a historical pattern of exclusion or marginalization, and pathologizing it as an individual anxiety that the individual is then responsible for fixing – the idea that sometimes, your mistrust of your abilities might just be telling you something worthwhile is … very interesting to me.
So what I’m stuck on then, I guess, is knowing when to trust that the embarrassment is not a false concoction my head has stirred up to sabotage me, but actually a very self-aware insight my brain has created to protect me. If “self-doubt” and “imposter syndrome” are conditions to “overcome,” so-to-speak, could embarrassment then be a sign to uh…re-evaluate? Give up? It seems normal to physically recoil when reading things you’ve written as a teenager or fledgling adult – perhaps not even due to the quality of the writing but more the bizarre realization that you once existed out in the world as an 18-year-old with stupid ideas. My current embarrassment, though, is so RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW! I’m embarrassed by things I wrote two months ago, two weeks ago. I’m embarrassed by things I want to write and haven’t even started, like a short story I can’t seem to get more than one paragraph into, because I shrivel up at the idea of having to name a character I made up in my head. (That part of fiction always feels like I’m a kid playing make believe!) And I’m embarrassed that I even wrote this, obviously! It’s so self-indulgent and me, me, me. And to make matters worse – all of this hubbub for something that a maximum of like, eight people will ever see, most of whom have heard more much idiotic things come out of my mouth in real life! Em.barr.ass.ing.
Maybe none of this makes sense. Definitely a lot of it sounds immature. I realize I’m talking about writing in terms of being “good” at it or “bad” at it, and I can’t explain what I think either of those things really mean. I probably conflate “good” with “legitimized” in my head; the books I read are “good” (read: real writing) because this writer sent their soul around to a bunch of publishers and at least one of them enjoyed it enough to print it, or maybe someone even asked them to put all of their anxieties and ideas into words and offered them money to do it. And I know (from what little I really know about the industry) that publishing is all fucked up and you probably don’t need to be even a little bit “good” to publish a book, just a little bit rich, white, well-connected, etc. But I still feel a little bit like — or a lotta bit like — a fraud when I try to write a little story, embarrassed that I believe (because I have to believe this or I wouldn’t really be writing it!) that it could mean a little bit of anything at all!
Do painters feel this way? What about people who write songs? Do the Instagram poets never feel a bit funny in their stomach when they post? The people on TikTok who put paragraphs of text airing some of their most vulnerable thoughts over a video of themselves sitting in their car? There is certainly a thread to be pulled here about what the internet has done – in many cases beneficially (?) – to the whole idea of “legitimizing” art, or to people’s willingness to offer up parts of their brain to strangers and strangers’ willingness to consume it. “The internet democratized art!” etc etc. But what if maybe not everyone needs to be an artist? What if that stand-up set just isn’t that good, and everyone watching that 30-second TikTok video, except for the comic, knows it? What if embarrassment is what’s necessary to keep notes app poetry in the notes app? I say this not as someone casting a stone from a very lofty balcony, but as someone with bad notes app poetry.
I’m not sure if I really have a thesis here, or if I've come to the “way out” of my “only way out is through” predicament. Maybe I just spent 1,000 words explaining an idea that has already been explained efficiently by the word “cringe.”
If you are someone who sometimes feels embarrassed about stuff you think or make, I welcome your thoughts, advice, disapproval, gentle suggestions to “hey, maybe put the pen down…”, etc… External words can probably only go so far though, as I’m sure some of this is pathological, ego-y stuff that I and only I can tackle. (Like, getting embarrassed about your own writing while reading a book? That’s like if a basketball fan stopped playing for their rec league after going to an NBA game…a bit dramatic and very silly!)
Anyway, because my brain is stuck in this self-centered paralysis, I have only been able to write little things in lists. Remember at the end of the year when everyone was saying what was “in” and “out” for 2023? I think that’s kind of a fun structure for observing things, although I’m sure some could say it’s annoying and depending on the day I might agree with them.
IN
Looking a little funny when you’re running because most people look a little funny when they’re running.
Mentally congratulating the classmate from college who posted on Instagram about being accepted to a creative writing MFA program instead of digging back through your Google drive to re-read your critique letter of their creative nonfiction piece from 2019.
Regretting things
When the orange peel comes off all in one piece
Not needing to go camping to know you would not enjoy camping.
Nasal spray.
Sometimes using periods in a bulleted list and sometimes not
The bird feeder you put outside your window that will definitely attract a bird at some point they’re just taking their time.
Wearing glitter routinely, like blush or mascara.
Being embarrassed.
OUT
The intrusive thought that somehow your cat’s paw will get stuck in a turned-on garbage disposal.
Driving the wrong way down a one way street, even if you are really apologetic about it as you pass the oncoming traffic.
Ankle socks that slide under your heel.
Breaking a nail peeling an orange
Birds that ignore your bird feeder.
Not being able to touch your toes at age 25 when your arms are already very close to your toes due to your legs being short.
Mistaking a freckle for a zit and picking at it until it eventually becomes even more problematic than a zit.
Cat videos on Instagram that are meant to be cute, but the cat in the video is somewhere near a dryer or washing machine so the actual effect of the video is not “cute/funny!” but instead a comment section full of concerned cat owners crying abuse, and a renewed paranoia in your own mind that your cat’s paw will get stuck in a household appliance, namely the garbage disposal.
Being embarrassed.