Authentic August – Day 2
Yesterday I mentioned that blogging is a more feasible daily practice than vlogging, what with work and all, but it’s also less scary. Less vulnerable. Because like, who even reads anymore? We like video content! And shorter and shorter content to boot. Our attention span shrunk from YouTube to Instagram to TikTok.
So this blog feels like training wheels for my blossoming authenticity. I would like to share my story more openly, but telling my story to a camera is way more intense than typing it out on a blank screen.
“But Q,” I hear you say, “isn’t the whole point of ‘Authentic August’ to live like you were dying, as Tim McGraw sang about? To be more authentic? Aren’t you supposed to drop your fears and just be you? Hate to say it man, but it sounds like you’re hiding behind the blog…”
You caught me! Yes, this does kinda fly in the face of being more authentic, but I’ve got a simple fix for that: read the blog out loud over on my Youtube channel! So whenever I publish these posts, I’ll be hopping on YouTube Live to host a short read-along, if you will. Making full-blown vlogs takes a lot of time and my perfectionism doubles that. Just because I made a video about my perfectionism, it doesn’t mean that it just suddenly surrendered to my better intentions; we are still waging war.
So in a way, I suppose these daily blogs/live read-alongs function both as a temporary antidote to my perfectionistic tendencies, as well as training wheels for my authentic self. I get to practice expressing the unpolished ruminations of my creative yet precarious mind, and hopefully in doing so, I learn to give less fucks.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
Speaking of giving less of an F, I just finished the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and it was rather spectacular. I’m going to reread it again soon because I took a long break in the middle of it, plus I’d like to internalize the lessons fully since a lot of them resonated so deeply. Heck, some parts even read a bit more like an auto-biography than a self-help book. Take this for example:
“Along with the entitlement of my early twenties, the “real traumatic shit” of my teenage years had left me with a nice bundle of commitment issues. I had spent the past few years overcompensating for the inadequacy and social anxiety of my teenager years, and as a result I felt like I could meet anybody I wanted, be friends with anybody I wanted, love anybody I wanted, have sex with anybody I wanted – so why would I ever commit to a single person, or even a single social group, a single city or country or culture? If I could experience everything equally, then I should experience them all equally, right?”
I could not have said it better myself even if I tried. If you know me, that excerpt is probably hilarious to you lol. Anyway, back to the first paragraph of this section – speaking of giving less of an F, I just finished the book, I’m gonna read it again, because ultimately the journey of becoming more authentic is the journey of giving less fucks. Part of why we put our masks on is because COVID is not a hoax (sorry, had to!) – it’s because we care about what other people think. Our parents, our boss, our friends, our significant other, even the guy we just met while waiting at the train station. We care a lot about what other people think. And we especially care if we are perfectionists.
I care so much that I had to think twice about cussing in this post. I don’t cuss at home, or around my family, but I do cuss. Cussing is not morally incorrect (we can debate that if you’d like) and it’s part of the way I chat with my friends. It’s just another tool in my lexicon toolkit. So you see, I censor myself with even with something as simple as the words I use. And if I’m censoring my words, you can be certain that I’m also censoring the substance of what I’m saying. The content. And all because I care way too much about what you think of me.
But I’m almost 28 and I’ve gotta learn how to ride this bike eventually, so I’m screwing in these training wheels, I’m opening up, I’m trusting that in the process of loving myself for who I really am, I’ll eventually need your approval less and less, and I’ll attract the people, places, and things that are actually meant for me.
Thanks for reading.
With LOVE,
Q