Writing before I'm ready

Right now I'm about to publish this post and I feel that tingling you get before doing something that makes you uncomfortable. A little nervous, a little embarrassed. I just reread it for the fourth time looking for an excuse not to publish.

I know that feeling well. It's the same one I had in school waiting to be called on, standing by my desk, hoping the teacher would say someone else's name. A lot of people call it social anxiety. I'm not sure if that's exactly what it is, but the sensation is the same: my body bracing for something it reads as danger.

And the danger, today, is this. Publishing something I thought through, wrote down, and leaving it out there for anyone to read.

The strange part is that the voice that scares me most isn't out there. It's mine.

Nobody is harder on me than I am. I say it often and I mean it literally. Before any negative comments show up, I write them myself. Before publishing this post my head already drafted four or five versions of why it's a bad idea: that I'm nobody to be talking about this, that it'll sound pretentious, that I should wait until I'm "ready", that there's no reason to put myself out there.

The funny thing is, this isn't the first time I've exposed myself in public. I've been on stage since I was a kid. In primary school I wrote a play that won a school contest, and I got to play the lead. One year I played three different characters in the same production. I loved it. Speaking at church, school events, presentations; I did all of that and it went well.

But there was a trick I'm only seeing now: I was playing a character. It wasn't me. The applause went to the role. If something went wrong, the character was the one who messed up.

This is different. There's no character here. It's me with my name, my face once I get to videos, my half-cooked ideas. If something doesn't land, there's nobody else to blame.

Part of that embarrassment comes from further back. From people who didn't help me grow at certain points in my life, and from the idea (planted years ago) that failing would prove them right. I don't want to go into details because it doesn't feel fair to them or to me, but I want to say it out loud: part of the fear of exposing myself isn't about strangers on the internet. It's about an old audience that isn't even watching.

The other part, the stronger one, is mine. It's perfectionism dressed up as "not yet". The "I don't know enough yet". The "I'm not good enough yet". I always feel like I'm not up to the things I want to do. And if I wait until I am, I'll never do them.

Something pushes me anyway, and it's newer.

What I see online, especially in my corner of it (devs, product people, tech in general), wears me out a bit. LinkedIn has turned into a showcase of wins: courses finished, projects shipped, promotions announced with a smiling photo. I have no problem with that, it's fine. But the result always comes after a process, and the process is what nobody talks about.

What I'm interested in is the process. You're defined less by the project you finished, the course you wrapped up, the degree you closed out, and a lot more by how you act when the big rock shows up in the middle of the road. How you move when the result isn't there yet, and you don't know if it's coming.

That's what I want to write about. Not outcomes, processes. The emotions that show up, the good thoughts and the ugly ones, what doesn't work, what does, what takes time. Everything that grows in between.

Because I suspect those feelings are much more common than they look. That most people are going through them, or will be. And we don't talk about it because we collectively decided that talking about the process is uncomfortable. Better to stick with the executive summary: "I did X". Easier to read, less room for the other person.

Today the feeling is here. The nerves and the embarrassment are here. And I'm publishing anyway.

I'm doing it in writing because it's the format that costs me the least. A blog feels less vulnerable than a video: there's what you think, but not your voice or your face. Eventually I want to work up the nerve for TikTok, for formats where the exposure is rawer. For now, this. One step at a time.

I don't have a neat piece of advice for anyone. This isn't that kind of post.

I just want to say I'm writing from here: from the discomfort, not from the other side of it. I can't tell you yet what it felt like to put myself out there, because I'm just starting. What I can say is that the decision is made and the embarrassment didn't go away. Both things coexist.

If something similar is happening to you, write to me and tell me how you're going through it. I'm interested in hearing how others experience this and collecting different perspectives.