crippling self doubt and a general lack of self confidence

day one of seven of trying to start a habit

to acknowledge

The hardest pill I’ve had to swallow in my life is that I’m not exempt to criticism.

I always thought I was a pretty good writer. My English grades were always my best and when it came down to assignments that I actually enjoyed doing, essays always cracked the top of the list. Churning out words that sounded good enough together about some book character or historical event eventually became second nature for me.

Writing was enjoyable. There were definitely times I’d hand in an essay for class and feel the satisfaction of knowing it was better than decent. This confidence over my work was a 50/50 split of pure ego and anxiety; sucking at science and math doesn’t get you a lot of clout with nerds. I had to find something academic to be good at.

It came time to apply to colleges and the nerds were divided into two camps. Those who could write their essays themselves and those who needed the help of a self-proclaimed “expert at college essays.” Thinking I fell into the first camp, I had no qualms about this process.

The sad truth, though, is I didn’t write my own essay. It was juiced down to a pulp by a woman named Lisa*. I’m not sure how it was decided Lisa would be helping me - those conversations have gotten lost in the thousands of disagreements I had with my parents between the ages of 14 and 18.

But regardless of how I got there, there I was. Forced to FaceTime and talk strategy with a woman who didn’t seem to get me. She claimed my idea about my afterschool job as a barista was “trite” and “not compelling enough.” By the time we came up with something she approved of and the track changes came through on Microsoft Word, it sounded like it was written by chatGPT before chatGPT was even an idea in someone’s brain.

Lisa was the first person whose criticisms felt personal. Comments or corrections from Mrs. Groninger or Mr. Shansky were pretty constant, as is with teachers, but their notes in the margins never felt targeted the way that Lisa’s did. She was just some woman hired on a recommendation, but in between sessions, I couldn’t shake the anxiety that she thought I was a bad writer.

And I cared. A lot.

It took me a while to move on from my lessons with Lisa, trying to ignore her Yale degrees on the wall of her tiny zoom window and her raspy but intense voice telling me I would need to try harder. Her advice was bad - to this day, I wish I had said fuck it and written my college essay about being a barista. But it was the first time in my life that advice from someone who “knew better” had felt so insulting.

I managed to mute these memories in college, burying them deep down in a little box inside my head. I flourished in school. Maybe I matured, maybe I became braver, but I began to devote my time to screenplays. I wrote characters so complex, they surprised their creator. Changes in my voice and my story were tangible, ideas I had always wanted to explore were there, on paper. My pitches were deep enough to bring to the table in TRF 211, but not existential enough to scare my professors. They started small, with a lasagna, and grew into a butcher shop full of dead bodies. My work only improved, only grew stronger, so much so that I took myself back to the High School where I was just okay at one thing and managed to produce a satire, mocking people I’ve known for years without them even knowing. My honors thesis was an entire web series - sure, it wouldn’t last a minute in Los Angeles, but it worked pretty damn well in Syracuse.

College gave me the strength to try, to take risks. But it took about five minutes of being out of that supportive environment to doubt every single second I dedicated to myself during those four years. Between the minute that thesis was published and October 2023, I barely wrote at all. I felt stuck in my own head, conflicted with the urge to be better, ignoring the all-too-known universal truth that to improve at something, you have to keep doing it. I didn’t want to write if it wasn’t going to be perfect from the second the words came out. I was mad at myself for being too depressed to get better, yet too upset over the state of the world to care I wasn’t doing anything. Jealous of my peers creating content, but not hungry enough to do anything myself. So the words went unsaid, despite the deep feelings that would have been the perfect catalyst to get them out.

My fear of being “bad” or quite honestly, being perceived a certain way kept me from doing something I always believed I could do. Lisa’s criticism came back to haunt me, words that used to roll off my back from a certain screenwriting professor began to creep up during job interviews. In college, I used to email out my pilot, “The Butcher,” to anyone who even asked. Once I graduated, I convinced myself being proud of that was embarrassing and I should stop talking about it.

They say that’s normal for age twenty three. I guess I’ll believe them.

Truth is, I’m not sure what changed from then to now. Maybe my frontal lobe shifted into her rightful place, or I just started to see how ridiculous my fears were. The bottom line is gathering the courage to start this substack took three years too long. What I write down here isn’t “good” or “bad,” it’s just stuff I want to talk about. Ideas that make me feel something. Sure, they’re in their infancy and to really improve as a writer, I will need to invest more time in this. I’m not writing nearly enough and I know I’m not pushing myself to explore deeper themes I’ve always believed I could.

But I’m going to try. I’m on a seven day challenge to push myself to do more, so come back tomorrow for another little tidbit on something you might be able to relate to. If you have anyone in your life who might be interested in reading anything like this, please send it to them.

Maybe I’ll get back to screenwriting. For now, I’m staying here to build up the guts to figure out where I go next. The best news ever is I have 75 people who are here voluntarily. That’s more than I could have ever asked for in my crazy-girl journal.

And as always, thank you for being here. I love you. 

a tarot card reading inspiring me to GMST

*name has been changed - obviously.

The name of this essay was taken from the Courtney Barnett song, Crippling Self Doubt and a General Lack of Confidence. You can watch her, live from Piedmont Park, HERE