On Writing
I think I struggle to write because I am too concerned with the accuracy and salience of my points. I also think I struggle to write because I’m afraid of being judged. One of the key reasons I struggle to write, though, has to be that I’m afraid that my internal world is deeply, deeply boring to anyone else other than myself. That I have no interesting thoughts or ideas. That the expression of anything that isn’t deeply researched and frequently cited that I have written is, in effect, an exercise in public masturbation.
It’s a concern I often have in conversation also. One that, in a most bizarre situation, I had secondhand embarrassment for. When I was at university, we had a flat party. All of us were some level of drunk, high, or a mixture thereof. One person, who we’ll call Guy, was explaining in some depth and with some passion to the group, of which there were about 10 of us, his experience of how synesthesia made it so that letters and colours were associated. While listening to Guy, I experienced a deep pang of secondhand embarrassment: “Nobody here actually gives a shit about the fact you experience colours and letters as linked, and you’re spending all this time expounding on it, with such passion, in the full, naive belief that anyone here gives the slightest shit at the end of the day.” I thought to myself.
I wonder why self-expression feels like indecent exposure.