#2 - The Pressure of Debut

I now have three drafts of this debut. It’s pretty typical of me to put so much pressure onto being perfect that I fail to hit send, to execute, to follow through in any way that wouldn’t be 100% exactly what I was aiming for.

So here’s me hoping that by saying it out loud, it alleviates all of that pressure.

Can you tell I’m a Virgo? If not, I bet you rolled your eyes real hard at that last sentence!

And now, I’m starting this thing mostly to continue in my time-honored tradition of forcing a deadline upon myself because there’s nothing like a little guilt and shame to motivate this Irish girl straight into action. My problem is that I’m embarrassed to write first drafts, so I don’t write anything at all.

These drafts came to fruition, which is already a win. They include my thoughts on the Crossfit Games and the pivot of those athletes to YouTube, the tale of how I became a Taylor Swift fan, and the forgotten crown jewel of early reality television, Bravo’s NYC Prep. They’re everything I want to say, but I also don’t want them to have to say everything.

If self-doubt is probably my worst enemy,  I balance it incredibly well by finding myself to be the funniest and smartest person who has ever lived about two times throughout the day. It’s a fleeting thought, the language of which never lingers quite the same way as the depreciative thoughts I’m incredibly quick at creating. It’s tragically chic, right? (It’s not, because depression never is as glamorous as black and white photos of cigarettes and coffee would have you believe.)

In the past month, I’ve started waking up early and going for walks every day—mostly to prove to myself that I could. This past year has been hard on my mental health (what? shocker! why??) and I all but stopped taking care of myself around Christmas. I don’t ever mean to, but in hindsight, I often see that I push boundaries in order to see who will still love me at my absolute worst. This time, I think I stopped loving myself a little bit.

So, in a way, this project is one of self-love. Because I do like connecting and communicating, and if I hit send in the next twenty seconds I may still be within the time frame of my delusional self-confidence that flares up so briefly, but brilliantly.

This is going out on Saturday, but the rest will be dropped on Fridays going forward. If you want to come along for what will inevitably be navel-gazey essays about what the lowbrow culture we produce says about us as a society, subscribe!