I miss writing.
It’s been almost five months since I left Twitter, and far longer since I’ve felt like I’ve truly scratched the itch that pushes me to write.
The other night I watched Bo Burnham’s 2016 “Make Happy” comedy special, right before he stopped performing for five years, and I was utterly captivated by the themes he was exploring about art, the ability to speak truth, the relationship between performer and audience, narcissism, and self-respect. There was an obvious level of anxious tension he displayed between the platform he found himself standing on, the self-judged value of the message he was providing, and his feelings about his own need to be seen, understood, and liked.
It struck a resonant chord with me that left me reflective and moody all evening about my own writing… and as averse as I am to calling it that, whatever “platform” I built on Twitter to express it over the last few years.
I don’t like thinking in terms of “platforms” or “audiences.” I don’t like reducing real people to “subscribers” or “fans.” It feels narcissistic and self-important. Looking at a rising follower count and feeling good about it ironically makes me feel bad, and I try very hard not to give in to it (while to some degree being unable to). I think most content creators and writers feel some of this tension, and some of us handle it better than others.
Regardless, I feel an incredibly urgent drive to write and express myself to an audience that I can’t ignore or push down no matter how hard I try, and I’m only happy with what I’ve written when I’m being honest. Uncensored. Raw. My most honest writing is undoubtedly my most resonant and compelling, and it’s the only real way to satisfy that compulsion: to be heard, to be known, to be understood.
These all require truth. Nothing less will do the job.
Having the courage to speak your truth, even (and perhaps especially) when that truth is divisive, is the central struggle of art. It’s exposing the most vulnerable parts of your soul to judgment and critique without the ego-protective layer of context and trust that usually accompanies intimate discussions of potentially divisive topics... and it’s hard to say anything truly honest about how you perceive the world without being divisive.
It was easiest to be honest when the stakes felt low: at a point in my life when I was safe from having to grapple with mortifying ordeal of being known (and judged) both due to the comfortable digital distance of pseudonymity and the physical distance of being in literally the middle of the desert, by myself, in a mobile living space.
But then moving to L.A., increasingly blurring pseud and real professional identities, and attending VibeCamp 2022 all forced me to viscerally grapple with the realization that I’d shared this tremendous (if still censored) degree of my raw, innermost self with complete strangers who I would then have to interact with as a whole person rather than as an ephemeral literary persona—people who would have preformed opinions and expectations about who I was because I had enabled exactly that in broadcasting the fragmented truth of my perspectives, whether or not I was ready or willing to engage with those expectations on a personal level.
I have heard from many people that in meeting me as a real human, I am somewhat different from what they had assumed from my writing, in ways that are both good and bad. At a bare minimum, I’m more distant and aloof with new people (even friendly ones I “know” from digital scenes) than I might seem from my online persona or with people I’ve already formed IRL relationships with. I feel like this sometimes disappoints people, and I can be proactively avoidant in part because I hate letting people down when they might (understandably) be expecting a bit more warmth.
I have been frustrated at other times to hear other people take things I’ve written as uncharitably as possible and express opinions about what I’m like or what I believe that in no way reflect what I actually believe or believe myself to be like.
To be misunderstood or critiqued are always the inevitable risks of saying anything at all, of course. To speak is to be perceived. To be perceived is to be judged, and not always gently or kindly or accurately—especially as one’s readership and body of writing expand in parallel.
But I also know that I can’t control the assumptions or judgments people make about me any more than I can ever truly satisfy my need to be heard and understood by writing anything less than my truth as I perceive it at the time.
There is no actual way to be both honest and invulnerable; no realistic scenario in which you can speak only to a charitable, enthusiastic audience and never lose control of the narrative around your message or how people interpret you as a result. Once you’ve released them, the words (and how people receive them) no longer belong only to you.
The courage to risk being disliked and the courage to risk being wrong are both superpowers, especially when approached with a degree of epistemic humility.
And as I said, I do miss writing.
missed you Lim! glad to see you're "back" and looking forward to reading more 🥰🙏🏾