How to be an embarrassment to yourself and everyone you love.
Hello there Friends!
Woah, first newsletter, well this is rather embarrassing.
It is the first newsletter, but I’ll spare you all the pre-context of not enjoying my job and making a bold leap into something new. The highlight is that I have afforded myself 12 months to try and make some sort of career work for me, on my own terms, doing what I think is most interesting. And that’s all I’ve got so far, really. I am starting from scratch and need to figure it out. Luckily, ‘scratch’ for me, as with you too, means something new for you. You are not starting from scratch; what you’re doing is starting from scratch.
So how does one scratch? I’m experiencing myself as a beginner (again). It’s a mindset, and that’s what I want to share today.
The expert at being a beginner.
By the very nature of being a beginner, you’re not very good at the thing, but you have intent in being better. We’re patient with beginners because we can see their intent. Your neighbour learning saxophone is not trying to make your life miserable from the other side of your paper-thin apartment walls. They are trying - with intent - to play the damn thing. Beginners embarrass themselves, repeatedly. Your cheery neighbour might perform their saxophone bit at their next dinner party. No one will like it, but everyone will enjoy it. We have a lot of tolerance for the beginner, and we really value intent.
But lately, especially online, we’re all curating ourselves as professional, and that is rather unfair in a world of unknowing and complexity. And we’re not very tolerant of beginners, especially when those beginners are ourselves. Besides, no one wants a professional saxophonist at dinner anyway. But still, we invite them into our digital spaces as gods of the career and ogle over them anyway. When the performance is over, you’ll need to make small talk, find it difficult to relate, and feed them. No, we don’t need the professionals at dinner - thank you.
Public Embarrassment
Despite not having much of a plan, one upfront decision I made that is important is to to establish an audience. An audience is a business asset in and of itself; it builds trust with people over time that is better than any anonymous leads and marketing. This also means I can create different things, see how they land, get some feedback, find early adopters, or just make some friends who I feel are along for the ride with me. Sounds good.
The downside of building an audience as a beginner is that you’re giving yourself even more opportunity to look rather silly. I’ve immediately felt this. It’s rather embarrassing to be sharing your amateur work and your ill-thought-through plans. It takes bravery to both focus on being the beginner but also to have the confidence to play very badly at the neighbour’s dinner party. It’s a practiced mindset to share something openly while being full of self-doubt, projecting that the work is bad - which it may be. But if not this, you’ll be a beginner in isolation, and it will be a long time (perhaps never) before you feel confident to share publicly. Therefore:
The aim is to increase the number of opportunities to feel embarrassed in public.
Over time, I would hope I become less beginner and therefore start embarrassing myself less in public. The amount of time spent in public is constant, but the amount of embarrassment over time should come down as I get better at doing this or (probably AND) I’ll just become more used to being embarrassed publicly (insert self-help 2x2 graph visualising, but providing no more information on the idea). Social media feels cringy to me always, even for those successful. Maybe it’s all embarrassing all of the time.
What I’ve been creating
In that spirit, a big chunk of how I’ve spent my time so far is figuring out how to be public. And it’s difficult to be public with nothing - like I don’t have a business to promote, I just have me. I’ve been exploring the process of documenting what I create. I’m forced to create; no one wants to see me go to the shops and watch Netflix.
What I’ve made:
- This lamp - (Instagram)
- A new “brand” - (Instagram)
- This website and newsletter 👋 (www.warwickvlantis.com)
- An email tool that sends positive self-affirmations every day (Linkedin)
- - Get your own custom daily affirmations by filling out this form
Honestly, it’s been a bit frantic. At some point, I’ll need to find some direction and structure. But the point of this is:
- To make
- To document
- To be embarrassed about both above
On documenting, it is difficult! With my “new brand,” the actual drawing didn't take long at all (which I’m sure you can tell - oh, hello self-doubt). But making that video took me like half a day - and objectively, it’s not very good. But here is my lesson with documenting. Documentation is not the product. I could have spent another day making the video good, but there is a trade-off of time to make the documentation better vs getting on with what is being documented. And if I did spend more time, I would still find it embarrassing. The documenting is not my product, so bad documents with good ideas will do.
Now you know I’ve got a clear plan to embarrass myself in front of you. If you see something posted and you think that it’s super cringy, comment how I'm doing a great job (…at being an embarrassment, it will be our little secret).
Parting thought. We all have a lot of patience for beginners. We are all beginners.
Until the next one, whenever that might be.
Warwick
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PS: I can't claim this is all original thinking. I'm currently reading these covering the topic, which have been helpful nudges to just get on with it:
- https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work/
- https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
PPS: Reply to vlantisw@gmail.com if you feel so inclined to chat abut it!