My best friend and I have been texting quite a bit recently, and a couple of her comments have me thinking. I sometimes do my best thinking when I journal, so I’m going to try to process our conversations through writing.
My friend and I share a deep adoration for books and reading. I liked reading growing up, but I didn’t do much of it after college, where I read books for fun throughout the semester. I read mostly nonfiction in college, and I didn’t have much interest in fiction. Then, a few months out of college, I met soon-to-be best friend, and she got me on a huge reading kick. I fell back in love with reading. I used Goodreads to track my books and had lofty reading challenges I crushed every year. I had a few years where I read more than 60 books. When I picked up reading again, I read primarily fiction. My friend introduced me to books and authors that I now love, and I also delved back into some of the classics. I found some of my own favorite authors along the way.
We met in 2015. From 2017 (when I first did a reading challenge) until 2022, I read at least 30 books each year. I topped out at 74 a couple of times. In February of 2022, I met my now-husband, and reading fell by the way side a little. We spent a lot of time together, and I was in the car a lot. I am pretty picky about audiobooks, and I go through seasons where they hold almost no interest for me. I am a visual learner, so audiobooks aren’t always enjoyable. I still read 31 books in 2022, but I didn’t come close to my goal. It wouldn’t be fair to blame Andrew for the dip; in 2021 I only read 33 books, again coming up short of my goal.
The end of 2022 and beginning of 2023 I was planning our wedding. Not much time or energy for reading. After we got married, I just didn’t make time for it. Reading didn’t interest me for months. I finally found a new author and read six of his books in a two or three month span. I only read 11 books in 2023. There are several reasons for this. Being newly married, I wanted to spend a ton of time with Andrew, so I didn’t make time or space for the solitude I desperately need. Andrew and I had quite a few discussions about it. He is also introverted, and I wasn’t giving him enough space. Instead of reading, I usually just scrolled social media on my phone or texted people. I also did not do much writing for most of 2023.
I got a new job last month, and looking back on 2023 after a few days at my new job, I realized I was probably in a mild depression for most of 2023. My old job sucked me dry, mostly because it was boring and I wasn’t using any of my brainpower or creativity. Obviously, writing regularly would’ve helped with this, but when I’m depressed, writing is nearly impossible and I usually end up hating everything I write.
Andrew tried to encourage me to write more all of last year. I finally listened to him and writing again felt good. I did a couple of blog posts in quick succession, and I even finished up one of my books I’ve been working on for half a decade. With the new job (which I love), I haven’t had as much time because I work longer and have to get up earlier, which sometimes means I have to work out after work, which cuts into my evening, and on and on. Exercise comes first for me. It will never get the chop like writing and reading sometimes do.
I know I should give myself grace for last year. There were a lot of new things, and I was in a funk for months. But I can’t help but think about all the time I wasted scrolling and sharing and posting stupid memes on social media. This was the topic of one of my texting conversations with my friend. She asked me why I am judging myself so much for something nobody else is judging me for.
I replied, Why judge myself? Uh. It’s what I do best.
And it’s true. It’s almost impossible for me to give myself grace. And I get stuck on things I did or didn’t do. I’m a very harsh judge of myself. I like to think I do it because I want to improve, but it turns into self-loathing very fast. If I’m not careful, I start regretting 2023, which is completely unfair to myself and Andrew. Our first year of marriage was wonderful in every way. We had so much fun together, and we keep falling deeper for each other.
This regret is basically only centered around the reading and writing thing—because now I realize how important it is for me to make time for those things. I fixate on these things and then sour the entire timeline in which it happened. It’s not really conscious. I just follow the rabbit trail of judgement until I end up hating myself, which is a comfortable space for me.
But why?
And as my friend pointed out in the same conversation, I use that judgement and self-loathing as a subject of my humor.
Guilty.
Self-deprecating humor is my shtick. It’s my modus operandi. It’s like breathing for me. I don’t even have to think about it. My default mode when I respond to almost anything is derisive comments about my intelligence or lack of social skills or my looks or this or that. Anything I can find fault with about myself, I can, and will, turn into a joke.
After she made her comment about my humor, I started paying attention to my responses more. I haven’t changed them. I still do my self-deprecating thing, but right now, I’m observing myself do it. It is crazy how naturally I put myself down in basically any scenario. In this phase of observation, I am also realizing how misleading and untrue my comments are. It probably doesn’t make a huge difference in the grand scheme, and I do get smiles and laughs for some of my comments, but it might not be worth it.
I know I do it. I know I am “good’ at it. I know it’s second nature to me. But now, I want to know why.
Why do I do this?
Why, when I’m in a meeting and someone asks me if I know about vectors, do I say, “I’m not smart enough to know about vectors”? Nobody has ever explained vectors to me. Am I an idiot because of my ignorance about certain topics? No. And I know that—or I do if I spend any amount of time thinking about it. But there is little doubt I feel stupid anytime I don’t know something, and as a defense mechanism, I just go ahead and joke about being an idiot—might as well confirm what everyone is thinking anyway (but of course probably no one is thinking I’m an idiot for not knowing something).
Part of me thinks I might do it to come across as less intimidating. Hey, look, I’m dumb, and non-threatening, please like me. But as I’m writing this, I’m not sure those self-deprecating comments have anything to do with other people.
It doesn’t take much for me to feel stupid. For some reason, I guess I expect to pretty much know a little bit about everything, which isn’t realistic. (On a related note, I also expect to be somewhat good at any task I undertake, and when I am not naturally gifted at something, I hate it and will never try it again—oh look, another blog post.)
When I don’t know something, I feel stupid, and when I feel stupid, the most comfortable place for me is to joke about it. In my new job—a very professional setting—the jokes do not land. Or maybe, they have never really landed and I’m only privy to it now because I’m paying more attention. It’s possible people don’t know I’m joking when I say certain things. I have a dry delivery, and it’s not always obvious I’m trying to be funny. Either way, maybe I should change tack and see what happens.
Going further down this trail, I wonder if I’m even funny. Like, can I be funny without putting myself down in some way? I’d like to think so, but I wrote a 33,000-word satirical book that is full of jokes about how socially inept I am. I find it hilarious, and I know I’m not nearly as awkward as I make myself out to be. To be clear, I’m not going to scrap the book because I might start trying to show myself a little more respect. I enjoyed working on it too much to throw it away now.
I fall back on self-deprecation when I feel stupid; that’s ironed out. Pretty simple equation there. But I do it all the time. It never ends. Do I really feel stupid or ignorant that often? I have no idea. Maybe I do feel that way right now because of the new job and really not knowing much about what I’m doing right now.
Yesterday or the day before, this same friend told me about adding library cards to the library app we use. I tried figuring it out on my own and couldn’t. I also didn’t try super hard before I texted her. She was very helpful (as always), and as always, I made comments about not being smart enough to figure stuff out. I probably give up too easily, especially in my personal life, which, to my friend’s point, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
At this point, maybe I’m starting to believe that I’m dumb, or at least I’m buying into it enough to use it as a copout for not trying to learn new things. That’s really only happening in my personal life, and it’s only happened once or twice, so I shouldn’t blow this out of proportion. Reflecting on the past five or six weeks, I am learning a lot, and I sometimes don’t feel like I have the bandwidth for intellectual activities outside of work. I’m using so much brainpower at this new job, I’m just coasting when I get home. I’ve read 12 or thirteen books this year, but only 1 or 2 of those have been in March. Yet again, I have to give myself grace. Changing jobs is not easy. I cannot reasonably expect to catch onto things in a few weeks, while also experiencing no interruptions in my personal life. But that’s what I’m doing. I’m expecting those things of myself.
So why do I do this? Why are my standards so high? Why am I almost completely incapable of giving myself grace? Why do my friends have to remind me that nobody cares that I didn’t read a million books one year? Why do I hate myself if I can’t figure something out in three seconds?
It’s just a behavioral pattern now. Learned behavior, along with the jokes. And like any learned behavior, it’s unlearnable.
And I have to ask myself if I think it’s worth unlearning the behavior. It probably is.
My best friend tends to do this. She’s been instrumental in me maturing and growing up—I’ve known her nine years, and my friendship with her has fundamentally changed me in a lot of ways. She’s a very intentional person, and she sometimes nudges me in that direction as well. She didn’t tell me to figure any of this out. She never tells me what to do, so I know I’m the one who has put the work in to make positive changes in my behavior. She just points out her observations, maybe hoping it’d spur some reflection on my part. Or maybe she’d just rather see me stop relying on humor to deflect certain feelings and emotions. Either way, I’m somewhat determined to get to the bottom of it, and I plan on writing several more entries to root out some of this learned behavior.
Between Two Poles 