GAP

I am here. I am sorry, I am not here for you. I am here for myself. I made a promise. I want to keep it. I am setting expectations - again more mine than yours. It takes away the performance pressure. It’s ok if you don’t read further. I am writing this more for me than for you.

At the start of the #NoBreakNovemeber​ challenge, I had a simple goal in mind. Show up every day, and write at least a hundred words. I hadn’t thought what I will write, or who will be my audience. After writing a couple of posts, I forgot the simple goal. I started to optimize for what will be more liked. On a couple of occasions, I started writing about something, but changed half way through to something else, fearing that the original thought wasn’t worth sharing.

Thinking about what people will like is crippling. This is a very limiting mindset. I have struggled with this a lot throughout my 36 years on this planet, I now realize. Why do I worry about this at all? 

All of us have two personas at least. A public persona that controls how you behave and conduct yourself in public. A private persona that knows and behaves according to your fears, secrets, and joys. There will always be a gap in your public and private personas. To be authentic we should always try to reduce the gap between the two. 

Being authentic is not a virtue. It just makes my life easy. I have to perform far fewer calculations in my head in every situation. I can stop worrying about what will that childhood friend, who hasn’t seen me in 20 years,  think about this post. I don’t have to feel responsible for how fully grown adults will react to some ramblings of my mind. Their emotions are their responsibility.

All of this is really hard for me. I need to work on this every day. I slip often, but I keep checking myself every now and then. As soon as I see the public - private gap widening, I know something needs to change.