Column 2: Dancing the self-doubt tango | Lauren Daeger and her partner Lauren Daeger

*cue Dancing With The Stars announcer voice* 💃🏼

I’m learning how to bachata right now, and it’s really throwing me for a loop how much uncomplicated joy I get out of it. But it’s not the only dance I do day-to-day.

A lot of the dancing I do is complicated! A lot of the dancing I do is mental! 🤡

Remember in Column 1 when I went onnn and onnn about how I’m ~self-assured?~

The truth is, I have had soooo much trouble posting that first piece. I wrote it over a month ago and sat on it for just as long because I thought (convinced myself) it was garbage. I’d reread it every couple of days, and my inner critic would eagerly chime in about how I should deffffinitely abandon this Substack idea. Nothing I wrote makes sense. No one would want to read it. What is this even about?

As Natasha Bedingfield perfectly croons:

Oooof, that last line really hits!

Has anyone ever read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron?

If you’re a creative of any kind, I highly recommend it. It’ll take you on a journey that will forever change the way you view creative energy and how you listen and respond to it.

About a month into my silly self-doubt fest about whether to publish my first writing post, one of my beloved Julia’s most thematic concepts occurred to me and inspired me to sit down and muse about the applicability of it here in my second piece.

She talks about how when it comes to creation — any kind, whether it’s acting, painting, writing, something more niche or nebulous, you name it — any time you are making something that didn’t exist before, all you have to do is show up and do it. Just sit down and make it. Let it come out of you, however it does.

Anything beyond that is not your job and is actually none of your business. 💅🏻

Sizing it up? Assessing its “worth?” Judging how “good” it is? Comparing it to what others have done? Or to perhaps what you believe previous or future versions of yourself were or would be capable of? Not ur job, baby.

And WITHHOLDING IT? Quite literally a crime against humanity and against, most importantly, yourself. (I’m a huge criminal!!!)

So I got to thinking about that first piece. At the moment I was writing this, that first piece remained unpublished. But this lil epiphany helped me to see the light. And I finally published the first piece a few days after this one poured out of me. (By the time you’re reading this post, hopefully you will have read the famed #1 — and if not, head on over to do that, because you’re probably like, HUH?!)

I did my job, my part of things, by writing it in the first place. I showed up, and I let it come out of me.

All the BS that happened after that — spending so much time aching about whether it was good, or whether anyone would like it — is just that. Hot, stinky BS!!! Barriers meant to (I’m sure lovingly — thanks, Subconscious) keep me from doing something that might hurt me. And the thing is, I can’t control anything beyond just making it anyway. So in the meantime, why not let it all hang out, while I’m here, while I’m ALIVE to create and generate and vocalize and splash around?

I wrote what wanted to be written when it wanted to be written.

But I believe (so does Julia) that a key part of the process after that is letting it be seen. I didn’t publish it. So I didn’t follow all the way through. I didn’t complete my job — because of my self-doubt. 👹

I have so much compassion for myself around this. And at the same time, now that I’m aware of this tendency to cut off my creative process at the time of sharing it, I will work on holding myself accountable to really follow through with my job. If you hear inside that something wants to come forth from you, to be made by you, I think it’s your literal duty to yourself to listen, to show up to do it, and then to release it. Because that validates it in some way that I think is important to our human experience.

We live to be seen. At least, I do — some of that is my Leo sun talking. Allowing ourselves and our creations (extensions of ourselves) to be experienced by more than just us sends a message to the world that bounces back reflexively: hello, I am here, and I deserve to be.

I like that my first two posts are almost directly contradictory to one another. It’s freeing to know I can be both. Self-assured and full of doubt. I am allowed to contradict myself. I am more free when I embrace both, all. And ultimately, when I accept each side and let the doubt exist — let her breathe but don’t allow her to control me — I can only increase my self-assuredness overall. Because not resisting says, I trust you, self. What a boring, one-dimensional existence it would be if you only allowed yourself to exist in the plane of One Or The Other. I prefer to oscillate. I like the dance. 🪩

xo,

Lo ❤️‍🔥