Get in Your Go-Cart and Go, Little Sister

Saying yes to myself, and to being seen...in the presence of a lot of "no" energy, both real and imagined.

Get tickets…

“All of this is part of being seen, and you will never be able to control how people see you.” -

Elizabeth Gilbert

I very much needed Liz Gilbert’s introduction to today’s installment of her Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert newsletter. It’s all about the importance of ignoring the naysayers, the people who don’t *get* you and your work, whose harsh voices might otherwise keep you from showing up and producing what you need to.

Unfortunately, my own inner voice can be the harshest of all, and tuning out that one is near impossible. It’s part copycat—a voice impersonating those of real, live ninnies—which makes fully drowning out the ninnies even harder.

***

Liz’s post arrived exactly when I needed it. In the run-up to the first-ever

Oldster Magazine

in-person event—a variety show I’m putting on this Wednesday, the night before my 60th birthday—I am, rather predictably, doubting myself and my choices, and imagining the worst. I recognize this as a regular, if unfortunate, part of my creative process. Before I can enjoy things it takes chutzpah to give myself, or put out into the world, I apparently have to first ruin them in my mind, making sure I’ve played out every possible worst-case scenario, perhaps in a misguided attempt to ward them off. Or maybe unconsciously I believe preemptive suffering is the price of admission.

I did it to myself before getting my first tattoo. I did it before taking part in a 40-Over-40 photo shoot. I did it to myself for literal decades before publishing my memoir.

Now here I am again, about to take a flying leap, one I dreamed up a long time ago and worked hard to screw up the courage for. And I can’t stop picturing all the ways I might belly-flop, followed by all the naysayers and cool kids of Internet High pointing at me and laughing.

***

Unfortunately, those monsters don’t exist solely in my mind. Recently a man, a media gatekeeper, asked me—with a rather condescending sneer, in front of other people—why I felt “the sudden need to rush into the event space.” Excuse me, sir, but for THREE YEARS I have been talking a good game about creating in-person events for the magazines I work so hard on—for fun, and so that they are more than just “Substacks.” I want Oldster and Memoir Land to be real, three-D media properties with presences beyond the particular platform I happen to publish them on.

If anything, dude, I am way overdue achieving this goal. My 60 birthday felt like a shit-or-get-off-the-pot deal-breaker deadline. So I’m doing this finally, as opposed to suddenly.

A few days later someone who has bullied me and shit-talked me to mutuals in the past let me know, in a public way, that they once again have their eyes on me. They seemed to be saying, “Know your place and keep to it.” Message received. (I’m keeping it vague because I’m afraid of this person and their tremendous influence. Why someone with much greater success and a much bigger platform ever had me in their cross-hairs, or ever apparently felt threatened by me, is beyond my comprehension.) Their words put me on notice and fucked me up in a big way. They validated the negative messages already playing on a loop in my brain. Right before I’m about to not only host an event that’s very dear to me (and kind of tender in a theater-geeky way), but also get onstage and sing two songs before a fairly large audience.

***

Like many writers and other kinds of artists, I have a complicated relationship to being seen. It’s what kept me hiding myself as a ghostwriter for so long instead of writing my own books.

(As I wrote in my

Memoir Land

Author Questionnaire, I’m glad, in hindsight, that I didn’t get a deal from a big publisher, that my memoir was published by a tiny press, because it afforded me the best of both worlds: I got to publish my book, but in a quieter way—a way that didn’t call more attention to me [and the people who might not prefer to find themselves in my story] than I could handle. It found its right audience, and I’m content with that. I’m as “seen” as I want to be on that front, thank you very much.)

My strongest, most consistent gut instinct is to put myself out there, an instinct I’ve harbored from a young age, and which, honestly, has never really steered me wrong. But that instinct gets overridden for long periods by a secondary instinct—to keep myself small, and fall in line—to know my place and stick to it.

When I posted about the event on social media, I wrote, “I guess I’m really doing this…?” After which my friend,

Carolita Johnson

—who’ll be telling wonderful story at Wednesday’s Oldster event—asked me, “Wait, are you feeling shy about this?” Yeah, I am. Shy, and afraid of owning the fairly ballsy imperative to do this.

When I’m self-consciously talking about the event with people I don’t know well, I conveniently blame it on my inner 10-year-old. (I did this in the Oldster post about the event, too.) I’m talking about this kid, who actually had a talent agent and went on big auditions, here posing for “professional” shots taken by my dad:

It’s at least partially true, though. She’s really running the show on this.

And thank goodness for this little ham, who is very much alive in me, because without her urging—without her constant presence in my mind, like a separate operating system running in the background of my consciousness—I’d have given in to the ninnies and kept avoiding something that I know, deep down, I really want to do. She’s the one letting me say yes to myself, and to being seen.

Thank goodness for her voice, shouting back at all the negative ones, real and imagined. I hear her cheering me on, telling me we’re doing this anyway, naysayers be damned. Her voice is getting louder and louder, the closer we get to Wednesday. Hopefully by then she will have completely drowned out all the others.

In any case—whether she manages that or not—it’s too late for me to back out of this.

P.S. The headline refers to a lyric in “Yes” by Morphine, which has also been running through my head as I try to embolden myself for Wednesday. So basically, my inner 10-year-old’s voice is being accompanied by that of the late, great Mark Sandman.

---

• Tickets for Wedneday’s event.

• My contribution to Liz Gilbert’s Letters From Love.

• My books.

• Botton, Ink.