Self-Awareness Kills: The Fine Line Between Social Normalcy and Creative Pursuits

For essentially my entire life (minus ages 0-9 and a half), I have been hyper-self-aware, to a fault. Because of this, I’ve chosen to avoid pursuing things in life that bring me the most pure and fulfilling joy, simply to avoid the possibility of one, hell, even ⅓ of one person thinking that what I was creating from those pursuits wasn’t “good”. Being this way makes it really difficult to be vulnerable and care-free when it comes to creating and sharing. It’s my greatest weakness. My greatest strength? Developing compelling introductory paragraphs for the first online article I’ve ever written. That and going on mildly impressive consecutive White Claw day-drinking stints.

Following through has also never been one of my strong suits (just ask my third wife!). I’ve always been more of a dreamer. I love coming up with ideas and imagining what something will be like when it is completely finished, but I have much less of a desire to go through each of the tedious steps required to make that end goal a reality (just ask my second wife!). Even writing this was a huge struggle for me, but once I saw how much money I was going to make from this piece, I literally had no choice but to finish it (but please, DON’T tell my first wife!).

I’m great at being overly/unhealthily self-aware.

Me: I’m so self-aware…

You: HOW SELF-AWARE ARE YOU?

Me: I’m so self-aware that I don’t like to sneeze too loudly out of fear of waking up that sleeping baby who lives 4 blocks away because he may end up holding a grudge against me.

You: Ha!

Me: My self-awareness is so huge...

You: HOW HUGE IS IT?

Me: My self-awareness is so huge, the last time I was at the Zoo one of the giraffes mistook it for his neck.

You: Eh…

Me: My self-awareness is so out of control…

You: Really?

Me: Yes, really. Gah - just play along. My self-awareness is so out of control it once pooped its pants on the stage at Chuck E. Cheese after a few rounds of tequila shots just because it was a Monday!

At this point, I would advise that you take the following 1-2 minutes to rest your abs after how hard you’ve been laughing from the previous 1-2 minutes (depending on how fast or slow you read).

Don’t get me wrong, self-awareness is a great and useful thing! So when is self-awareness good?

• Rodeo clown

• Existing with roommates

• Common manners

• Being a president

• Robbing a bank

• Urinating in public

• Choosing an appropriate color scheme for the rubber bands on your braces

When is self-awareness bad?

• When it is unhealthily crippling you from creating and sharing the things you want!

But Luke, why are you writing this? You’re perfect. Thanks! But please don’t interrupt me again. This is an issue because I think that having a lack of self-awareness is pretty much a pre-req to being an artist. You remember that one kid in your grade who used to talk to butterflies at PE and bury milk cartons behind the school just so that he could dig them up and smell them 97 days later once they transformed into a solid state? Well he’s now the lead singer of Arcade Fire. To create and share, I think you need to have at least some amount of ‘not giving an eff-ness’, and it’s hard for me to do that when I’m being too self-aware. It always makes me talk myself out of sharing. If you disagree with that, why don’t you make like my fourth wife and get lost!

There are songs that, when I hear them, will immediately flood my face with feelings and nostalgia. I am transported back to the first time I heard it. What I was eating, who I was passing notes to in homeroom, where I was going to bury my milk carton during field day, etc. “I Love You Always Forever” by Donna Lewis takes me right back to carpooling with the Williams’ in their tricked out Astro Van, complete with reclining seats, a TV + VCR, and a mother fucking Super Nintendo. It’s funny because they never actually let me play. And I never cared. I was so content with just watching someone play Donkey Kong Country in a moving vehicle that the concept of actually being able to hold the controller and vigorously tap A + B would’ve sent me into juvenile cardiac arrest. That was a simple, happy time in my life, and I love hearing that song. Art is very powerful in that way. Guess what, the ones who create those powerful pieces of art also had homeroom crushes and horrible braces-rubber-band color schemes. What if they were “too self-aware” to create and share?

Let’s look at this meaningless chart:

And also this one:

So how do we conquer the fear of creating and sharing?

Try this: think about someone who you really love and admire creatively - someone making music, writing books, designing websites, WHATEVER. I’m out of examples, so I’m gonna need y’all to get the idea from those three. Now, think about someone who you’ve been super stoked to tell about this person who you admire. Chances are, you’ve experienced a time like that in which that person didn’t react at all in the same way you did when you first experienced it.

There are always going to be people who don’t like or, maybe worse, just don’t care about what you make. Those, are called, what the youths say, “h8ers”. But, there will also always be those who do like what you’re doing. And, maybe they’ll even LOVE what you’re doing. Unfortunately, the youths don’t have a word for that type of person yet, because they’re so damn negative. They’re also really scary when they form groups of 3 or more.

There’s an audience for everything. While it’s certainly possible to create something that appeals to the majority, the thought of only appealing to a few shouldn’t stop us from creating in general. We all have different tastes, (just ask my second fiancee!), and that’s great. We can’t base our own personal desires to create and share on others’ desires to enjoy what we create and share. I think artists are the most sensitive people there are. The more someone says, “I could care less what other people think”, the more they are deeply affected by others’ approval. OF COURSE THEY WANT APPROVAL. They want to step out on stage and have everyone sing their song, or come into their restaurant, or get their poem tattooed on their forehead. But even if no one in the audience is singing their song, that doesn’t make their gift and desire less valuable or important or necessary to share.

Imagine how it would feel to finally kick your self-awareness right in the genitals and record and release that song you wrote and have one person besides your grandma’s best friend Judy tell you how much they enjoyed it. Or even how much they just didn’t hate it. That alone would make it worth the risk to get started, right? And yeah, most likely it’s not going to be the greatest thing ever. And maybe no one will even acknowledge that you did it. But guess what? It’s a step, and a really big step at that. Then next thing you create is just going to get better, and better, and probably worse, then better! And before you know it, you’re going to be headlining the main stage under the Juul Four Loko Vans Tent™ presented by Venmo at Coachella.

So what the hell am I supposed to do now, Luke?

How the hell should I know, bud? (I say ‘bud’ because I most likely already forgot your name). Honestly, I have no clue, but to avoid letting my triple PHD from the University of Phoenix - Virgin Islands Online™ go to waste, I’ll make up some wildly crazy steps to follow that my lawyer has highly suggested that you don’t actually follow and instead seek professional guidance, so that I can wrap up this stupid post.

Make a list of all of the things that you know you are good at and interested in. If you’re like me, you’ll write something, and then erase it, because you’ll say, “hmm, well I’m probably not actually good at that. Well, maybe I’m decent. No, actually, nevermind - I really suck at that. That’s like, the worst thing I’m good at”. But please fight that. I dare you. Make the list. Be honest with yourself. It may take a few minutes or decades, but I think you’ll be surprised at what you come up with once you sit down and start thinking about it. Chances are, the things will start to come to you quickly and naturally, and those are most likely things that are very much your strengths.

Then, ask a couple of your friends, or family (if you’re into that kind of thing) to make a list also. Most likely they’ll say “sick! that’s a great idea, I’ll definitely do that!” And then 6 months later they’ll text you and say, “I promise I haven’t forgotten about you, I’ve just been suuuuuper busy with work and… stuff, but I promise I’ll do that soon!” FYI - no one is busy. Like ever. If someone tells you that, they’re blowing you off.

Where was I? Oh yeah. So after 24 months, if they’re able to come up with a list of 5 things, I think you’ll be all grinny n’ shit to see a lot of overlap between their list and yours. And that’ll be cool! I think that validates a lot. Even cooler, there are probably things that they will say that you’ll think, “how did they even know I was interested in that thing? I’ve never told anyone I’m a Level 7 Pumpkin Carver.”

I think this is useful because, for me, a big part of being scared to share, is because I psych myself out thinking it’s too random and out of the blue to share this thing that I created, because I don’t think anyone knew I was interested in that thing in the first place. It’s because I don’t want people to think that I’m unaware that that thing I just created and shared is actually not great, so then it’s better just to not take that risk in the first place of sharing it. It’s like, “yeah, I was just kidding. I obviously know I suck at painting. I was just joking around when I showed you that.” That huge disconnect is very intimidating and a huge barrier in my ability to share. But when you see people who you care about confirming things they think you’re good at, it’ll be super encouraging and motivating to say, “wow they said that they think one of my strengths is writing, and I actually have written 47 poems that I want to share, so maybe I am good and I should share and it will be well-received!”

Again, I really don’t know anything that I’m talking about, but I wanted to write this anyway, because it’s a personal step in creating and sharing. So do what you want with it. And if all else fails, at some point, life is about taking risks. You’re going to have to suck it up, block the h8ers, and just do the damn thing - JUST ASK MY CURRENT GIRLFRIEND.

Luke Rutherford

(we fact-checked this article, and Luke does not actually have a current girlfriend)