Getting over the fear of publishing
I think there are potentially two ways of going about this. First, you could dive into the deep end. This strategy will likely be terrifying at first, but especially if you are in an environment that supports you, you will realise that the thing is probably not as bad as you feared. The second strategy is to break down and face your fears ahead of time. By accepting the potential consequences, you will have the confidence to continue forward.
This post is maybe a small combination of the two, by documenting most of my biggest fears on publishing online, hopefully I can get over myself.
Reason 1: First, I’m unsure of the balance I want the internet and social media to have in my life. Theoretically, in an ideal world I would not need to use social media at all. However, this does not match up with the state of the world and the fact that many of my friends do not live geographically next to me. It also feels like it eats into being “productive”, or my experience of the real world. However, I think I need to grow up a bit and realise the modern world is not all analog, and that we must live some of our experiences through the internet.
Reason 2: I don’t like always being that guy. People will always form impressions of you based on the information they see before them, however when this extends to being judged or labelled this can make it difficult to fit in which can be frustrating. This has happened to me at many points in my life, based on my accent, or skin colour, or a job I’ve had. I think with the Internet, one fear is that they use a small section of your footprint to judge larger parts of your identity. This is probably one of the biggest ones for me.
On the more mundane side, this can make life a bit more boring, since conversations with new people who might have certain label(s) for you tend to follow a formulaic somewhat one-sided structure. For example, as an exchange student people will just ask “where are you from?”, “How do you like [new country]”?. At some point, you struggle to come up with a new answer. The more negative side is the heavier judgment/labelling. Especially as some people will extrapolate a mile when you give them an inch of information.
My past environments have also added to this at points. Specifically, I think England promotes a culture of mediocrity which makes it tiring to stand out when it is not usually seen as a positive trait. There is something here that I can only describe as “the look”. It is as if you are out of place. And when somebody gives you this look at the beginning of your first meeting based on your appearance or something they’ve heard about you, it can be very difficult to climb back to the same perspective. This can make it difficult to fit in. It can be that someone feels superior or it can even be that someone puts you on some sort of pedestal, and you have to be like “no, no I’m a normal person like you, I just happen to do some things differently”.
I know it can be tiring to continuously prove people things one way or another. But realise that you only need to be understood by yourself and those close to you. The judgements of others shouldn’t affect you. You probably won’t even talk to any of the background critics in five years. No matter what you do, you will always have critics. If you want to be nihilistic, at some point your critics will be dead anyway. At that point will your work be realised or still trapped in your imagination?
Reason 3: Everything has been said before (by smarter, older and wiser people). This is probably true, however the point of writing is that it hasn’t been said by you before. For example, in terms of advice, sometimes it needs to be the right moment or phrased the right way for something to truly resonate with someone. This is the “human factor” of writing. Another example is story telling, there likely isn’t any truly new story at this point but it’s how we fill the context with life which makes it interesting. This is why we can’t just AI generate our stories, or why the Marvel Cinematic Universe can’t just keep making movies using the same formula. By practising you can get better at sharing your perspective, which is important because to create impact people need to understand other people.
Sometimes you read a bunch of similar things by different people, and you think “this is all a load of crap”. The reason there is so much is that it aims to resonate with you. One thing I’ve also realised is that life keeps moving, somebody will need to be the next engineers, the next leaders or the next public figures, why not you? People will need your current perspective because things keep changing.
Reason 4. I don’t want to seem stupid. I also have a small irrational fear that whatever I write is going to be “stupid”. That I might look back on what I wrote in the last few months/a year and be like ugh… what was he thinking? This also extends to other people reading my work, maybe they will think my thoughts are too simple, or the answers to my questions are obvious. This is something that appears sometimes in the real world too, since in certain spaces I am considered to be smart/capable, I do not want to potentially tarnish that image. Especially since so many of my peers at university are potentially world class speakers/writers/essayists, I’m afraid of not measuring up to their standards. This could be even worse if maybe I phrased or explained my idea badly, or my text did not convey my thoughts accurately.
Although to be honest, I think as long as I give a solid attempt at it, it’s okay as long as I’m willing to learn/improve. In real life to get the ball rolling sometimes I allow myself a minute of “breaking the ice” of asking stupid questions. This is a difference I’ve also noticed between Princeton/Oxford: people from Princeton are much less afraid of asking questions.
Overall I think most fears are based on past experiences or future anticipations. Sometimes you need to let go of these imaginations and just act in the present.
(You also need to accept the fact that most masters in a field were once beginners, so you need to be bad at something to get good!)