Sharing Is Caring Except of Course When It Comes to Writing & Creative Arts & Vulnerable Yearnings & What the Hell Am I Even Doing Here

On hiding my writing (and even this Substack) from loved ones. For now. Okay? Okay?!

One of my favorite creatives of late, Amie McNee (@inspiredtowrite) ((shoutout fellow Amys/Amies/left Twix/right Twix)), commented something in a recent Instagram post of hers that superglue stuck:

**OG post here**

“so often the artists family and friends are triggered by our commitment to our art. Please remember that your art is needed and that your family and friends are not your audience.” 

Excuse me, eye bulge. Please retreat back to your proper resting space within my skull.

I commented. Oof. Big oof. Big oof still dominating some booming brain space. Here we go. 

Vindication, baby!!

This is why her words first resonated. The fireworks of validation. The succinct wording of something felt for so long that could never quite be playdoughed together. 

I don’t want to shoulder others’ judgements. They’re rough edged, hard to balance, easily bruise. I don’t want the antennas of my waking attention pointed further outward, outward. It’s loud enough. 

I — like so many of you on here, like so many of us everywhere, like really everyone in some capacity with a squishy beating heart — find sharing the personal to be excruciating. Addressing this struggle is a half-life inspiration behind this very Substack, a first step across a mental high beam that’s not made up but certainly isn’t as slippery as I’ve imagined it to be. Thanks, imposter syndrome/perfectionism/bad middle school memories/lack of attunement/lack of consistent others’ enthusiasm/encouragement/sincerity/creative care. Ya done got another one. 

📷 cred

So no. I have rarely, freely tapped someone on the shoulder to read my shtuff. Especially when that person actually means something to me. I laugh easily, but forgetting is rarely so sing-song. Your opinions hurt.

There’s no shame in the turtle’s shell. I’ve told myself it was protective, even smart. I told myself writing could and should be truthfully for me. I told — and tell — myself writing is a verb, not a noun, and tacitly accepted external creative recognition with a peaceful internal monologue with a vibrant creative audience with an equally enthusiastic personal circle will be a lifelong conflict featuring ever-imbalanced scales of want. It probably won’t ever even out.     

All that is true. All that is an excuse. 

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I expect too much of others, I expect too much of myself 

There is liberation for the perfectionist, for the overthinker, for the psychologically naked and afraid, to validate the privacy of their work. Or its confusion, or its very purpose. That doesn’t let you off the hook from sharing it anyway.   

McNee is right in way that special that’s so often frustrating because it’s so clear. When art making, your friends and family are not your ideal audience. They’re actually very often your critics. It’s very tender indeed when they’re your cheerleaders. But none of this is the same as your audience. 

To expect anything otherwise is to tripwire the very thing you’re so afraid of experiencing with them: judgment.  

Creative judgment from loved ones is unbearable, but it’s also unavoidable. It’s also also also likely just one piece of the rope braid that binds you — binds your candor, your commitment, your open routine, your celebration, your weirdness, your levity, your light. 

Desiring every person in your life to gaze wide-eyed and appreciatively at your work is an act of self harm. It’s also just pretty damn unfair. I rarely have that kind of energy for anyone else — why should they of me?

Do not lose something within yourself wallpapering family and friends’ names, faces, reactions alongside your art. Stop using them to judge yourself.   

I do not mean this condemningly, just pointing you around the neighborhood. We’re all doing our best here. But not everyone will like your yard. Not everyone will enjoy your work. It’s a hard pill to swallow but my god, when you let it sink into your stomach, when you give it its instructed kick-in time, you’ll wonder why you could never before accept such relief.  

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Real understanding is a gift, which is why we cherish so hard those who see us — and why we probably first began to create: a credo  

Those special people squeeze, squeeze, squeeze our hearts. We worship their power to understand our minds. We want to ever be around them. We want to keep drinking from the open bar of their acceptance. They make us feel so good. 

I dislike how heavily I drank, still drink, at this kind of party but it’s the damn truth, so why let it collect dust?

• Sometimes I will share things and I sometimes I will not. Sometimes I will honor the un-self-serious spirit of this Substack, sometimes I will want to cry. Mostly I will do this for myself and try not to do it so much to please others, to earn their approval and therefore finally earn mine. Though I’m human, so I’ll slip up. 

• I will try to hold consistent the kind of love for my loved ones that creates healthy differentiation. Sharing what we hold dearly vulnerable is scary, and will not always make sense to others, no matter how much we feel it should in order to feel peace. 

• I will commit to practicing appreciation and adoration and upliftment and generally some balanced daily sunshine energy projected outward during interactions because life is a goopy bog and most of us are trudging through that shit with ill-fitting waders. We are validated by others and that validation is a real human need, like water, like air, no matter how much contemporary culture has tried to shame or sell it away. 

If I love you, I want you to love my writing because it signals you love my brain, my spirit, my personhood, me. You are the helium in my hot air balloon. We are forever connected, and I’m better for it. But you scare me more than anything. All these truths can exist at once.    

I will make myself share my writing, and I hope deeply you can too, however you sense you need understanding most. I’m still unsure if I have the right motivations to do so here. Or stamina. This is a roll of the dice. Sometimes though I do like me some board games.

📷 cred here but also technically Labyrinth (1986)