WE MIGHT BE AS GOOD AS WE THINK

I DON’T KNOW WHO NEEDS TO HEAR THIS BUT I’M WRITING AGAIN ––

After all this time, I still have issues with writing. It sends my imposter syndrome into overdrive. If you witnessed me speaking, it probably wouldn’t make sense because in that case, I can go the distance. The fucking gift of blab!  It’s easier to do because I can overcome my insecurities with other interpersonal tools. Not just words on a page. 

In some ways, words on a page feel so much more finite. They’re permanent, a bunch of little idols of your thoughts. Words make me feel like the shit I’m writing better be good. It better be good, and it better be true, and it better be fucking brilliant. Because if it’s not all those things (especially “brilliant”), it means I’m not either. 

So, I’m writing partly because I want to get over this mountain. It’s going to be hard to be brave, and to be consistent, but I expect it’ll be worth it (practically, and also on some spiritual shit). 

I’m also writing because I’m a Jamaican-born American, cis straight male, New Yorker working in the all-encompassing world of modern advertising, and that means that I have a perspective to this whole thing that someone else might think is interesting. Marketing while Black has become an especially precarious position as the industry has started to pivot on cultural influence as the key to the almighty consumer dollar. 

A personal philosophy: representation is radical. 

And I’m also writing because you should too. There may not be any new stories, but there are infinite perspectives and interpretations. In his book, One More Thing and Other Stories, BJ Novak retold the story of the tortoise and the hare in the only way that’s ever made sense to me (spoiler: the hare smoked the tortoise). It took 35 years for that to happen.

Or maybe don’t write. Maybe your way is a different medium. The important thing is to go to the mat with the little thing in the back, center or front of your brain that makes you feel like maybe you can’t. Or worse yet, that if you try and fail, that it proves a deficiency in your ability, and a certain valuation of your worth. 

Fuck that. 

Write, dance, sing, speak, cook, code, run, meditate...do whatever that scary thing is to prove to yourself that you’re actually...for real, for real...as good as you suspect. 

x

October 25, 2019.
peace.