Did I just fuck myself?

Before I sent this voice memo last night, I had a ready-made excuse for not sending a damn email. I hadn’t publicly committed. It was a private thing — a promise I’d made to myself that I was going to send one every day. 

But I didn’t want to make it a public thing.

Not just because I didn’t want to be on the hook — although I’m certain that was part of it.

I’m not a super-fan of the “I’m challenging myself to do X every day for Y days” declaration. I’ve done it before with both email and #randomtalkingvideo, but there’s something kinda cheesy about it. It feels very ‘social media influencer challenge.’ I figure just do the fucking thing and shut up about it. 

So that’s what I was doing. 

But what I did last night was even “worse” — now I’ve made you aware that I made a private commitment. A commitment to myself… and now I have to honor it. I don’t really see much of a choice.

Granted, if I stick to it for a while and I realize that it’s not working for me, I can most certainly change the commitment. But I can’t just not send an email because writing was hard that day. That just isn’t going to work.

I’m still not making a commitment to you. But now you know that I made one to myself. And now that you know, I can’t be a guy who doesn’t do what he told himself he was gonna do. Not a good look.

But maybe it will actually take some of the pressure off.

The option to not send something is no longer on the table — I don’t have the choice. At least, not for a little while. So I know what I have to do… I don’t have the luxury of deciding whether or not I’m going to do it.

I just have to do it.

I wasn’t sure about the voice memo.

I didn’t love that it wasn’t funny. I didn’t love that it didn’t contain anything obviously useful. I didn’t love that I sound so uncertain.

All I knew for sure is that I did not like that I didn’t even make it two fucking weeks and I was already giving myself an out.

But after I sent it, I felt a wave of relief and I knew it was the right decision.

Even before it ended up getting a really fucking good response… both comments and direct email responses.

Which also felt good. 

I’m still trying to figure out where I draw the line between what I “should” share — what personal, vulnerable process stuff should remain private, and what is ok to put out there.

Sara-Jayne offered this in her comment on the post:

The way my own therapist got me to work with this was to draw I diagram. She made it a kinda pond or something (I changed it to the three layers of human skin). In her water version, she got me to write what sat at the top of the water from my personal life. What I could talk or write about without hitting any uncomfortable. Still personal but just easy. I guess stuff I don’t have so many hang ups in but stuff that takes a bit more creativity to make interesting. Then came a kinda murky in-between layer. Stuff I might share when teaching on a workshop, or in a longer newsletter piece, or with a friend (and there are sub-layers here) where I need to be mindful of my boundaries. This is where a lot of interesting stuff sits but I have to think more about what my edges are. Then, at the bottom, is a load of black tarry shit that is the preserve of therapy and maybe one or two close friends.

I haven’t done this yet, but even just thinking about it, I get the sense that I don’t know what would go in the black, tarry shit. Not yet, at least.

Cool idea, though.