A few of years ago I made a new-year’s resolution to write four lines a day, every day, for a whole year. I fully expected it to be a diatribe of incomprehensible dear-diary bullshit, but I didn’t care, it was a deliberate exercise with a singular purpose: I wanted to hone my lacklustre writing skills. People in STEM often dismiss arts graduates with disdain and cross-discipline snobbery, but I genuinely envy their ability to write and think creatively.
People who can write (for the sake of a label, let’s call them ‘writers’) probably consider me delusional to believe I can improve my writing four lines at a time — like trying to sculpt your abs with single sit-up workouts — but in an age where the majority of the populace struggles to fill 140 characters with cogent thought, four lines actually seemed ambitious. In truth, I hoped that by committing to write four lines I might occasionally over achieve.
Sometimes I go to the gym just to do a half-assed warm-up calibre jog. I alleviate my self-hatred with some ‘better than nothing’ self-talk and go home. More often than not, though, I decide to stay and work out properly, even though I can never drag myself to the gym for a full work out. I know that’s totally insane, it’s just how I’m wired.
The four-lines project, as it became known, followed the cliched lifecycle of new-years resolutions: hitting full stride in late January and atrophying to a withered corpse by September. But those occasional four lines led to some of the most inspired, interesting conversations of my life. Writing skills be damned, I truly believed that actively conjuring an original thought each day made me a more interesting person. So, like the majority of assholes with opinions, I decided to share my wisdom with the internet. I started a blog.
I eased myself into blogging by writing about things I knew — electronics, engineering, code — at least I wasn’t insecure about those topics. I thought eventually I would branch out. I tried. I failed. Like most people, I abandoned my blog when it got boring and hard. In the end, instead of occasionally writing four lines for myself, I was writing no lines for everybody. For a whole year I have been sitting here trying to think of something inspired to say.
There are probably more lessons to be learned from this process than my tiny mind can recognise or comprehend, but it’s clear that I took a good thing, added ambition and expectation, and made it shit. It’s the story of my life really.
I am not what you might call ‘social’. In fact, my shyness is so severe and crippling that, from time to time, I literally have to walk out of a store because I can’t bring myself to talk to anyone. And not perfectly understandable socially-awkward situations like ‘excuse me sir, how much for this big black dildo’, but everyday stuff like ‘small cappuccino please’. It has caused enough problems in my life that I finally decided to get some help.
Your brain comprises many complicated sub-systems that actively battle for your attention; it’s lord of the flies, the strongest signal wins. In my case, the loudest thought is usually the one that perceives a threat. I would totally see a lion coming before all you chill bastards — sure, there would be a thousand false positives for every real threat, but I’d survive. Unfortunately, in a modern suburban setting surrounded by people, I’m just one flighty, freaked out weirdo looking for motherfucking lions.
Why am I scared of people though? Am I afraid they’ll kidnap me and sell my organs? Set me on fire? Sexual abuse? Perhaps even [gasp] get my order wrong? I could pick any number of horrible things — things that people actually do — to be concerned about, but really my greatest fear is that I will be judged and found wanting. Less than hoped. Not awesome. Uninteresting. Boring. Normal.
I have heaped so much ambition and expectation on my social interactions that I’ve taken a good thing and made it shit.
So here it is, my current working theory on how to get by in a world full of people ready to judge me: minimum viable human. My aim is to be so remarkably unremarkable that I cannot possibly fuck it up.
Today I ordered a coffee and a bagel. They were out of bagels. Shit. Ordinarily my mind would be racing about how to react perfectly because the whole time I was waiting in line I’d constructed what was obviously the most eloquent order mankind had ever heard, and so I was on track for perfection, but I didn’t prepare for this. I didn’t know this question would be on the exam. Commence freak-out.
Not today. I was disappointed, so I just said:
‘Oh, that’s disappointing’.
Totally forgettable, not at all awesome, but it seemed to meet the criteria of how a human might respond. I was still hungry so I ordered some banana bread instead.
‘Do you have any banana bread?’
So far so good. She totally doesn’t even know I’m faking not being awesome.
‘Yes we do’.
Solved. I didn’t need to be awesome. I didn’t need to be anything at all. I was just ordering a cup of coffee and something to eat, after all. Sure I was terrified that I might fail this pop-quiz that had been so unjustly thrust upon me, but I had a life raft to cling to: it was OK to be thoroughly average, no one would care.
Maybe you’re hoping this blog post will crescendo with some perfect bumper-sticker length summary that underlines the salient points and justifies the time you’ve invested reading my thoughts. Something about allowing yourself to suck at things because only the humble grow. Or opening yourself up to opportunities by lowering expectations. That would have been awesome. I would like to have written that post. Instead I wrote this one. Meh. At least I wrote something.