I finished Felicia Day’s book today, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)… it makes me sad. I want more! I want to be her friend! 🙁
For those who don’t know, Felicia Day is an actress who has been in a few popular sci-fi and fantasy TV shows. But she is most known for writing the popular web series The Guild. If you haven’t seen it and want to watch a hilarious show about a group of online gamers meeting up in real life, I highly recommend it.
Something that made me think a bit was just how much I look up to her. When I started reading, I thought, hey, I want to be like her! Maybe I need to act like her and people will think I’m as cool as she is! Wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I liked to pretend in my head that that would work.
I got to talking to my boyfriend about it, and he made me realize that I had one fundamental difference from Felicia. I noticed she often would make the effort to go out and find a group of friends, and revel in the fact that she had that group of friends. She would look forward to seeing them, and she actually seemed to like video games the most when she had this aspect of community there. She would actively seek guilds to join in World of Warcraft, and interact with the guildies every day. Me? That’s not me. I am happy with a few close friends. I don’t need to have a community of people to really get into a video game. My idea of the perfect lazy weekend is holing myself up in my apartment and reading/watching/playing something fun. Maybe with one other close friend (who may be a cat). I’m that guildie that rarely ever says anything, and is always off questing by themselves, or with one close friend. Some people prefer to get together in big groups all the time. Maybe they like to go to parties. But that’s not me, and I realized that would never be me. It’s not something I could just change about myself.
I had this preconception in my head that extroverted people were more successful, especially in social situations. However, being extroverted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re self-confident. Felicia herself struggled with self-confidence a lot. And being self-confident is what actually contributes to success. In hindsight it seems obvious to me, but it felt like a revelation to find out that it’s possible to be a self-confident introvert! I don’t need to change my style or my hobbies to be successful. But I do need to change my attitude towards myself.
Like many other people, I struggle with self-confidence. Like Felicia, I struggle with perfectionism. I feel like when I write, it has to be perfect from the beginning, which often gives me terrible writer’s block. I know logically that it’s impossible for it to be perfect, but there’s something inside me that gets hung up on doing my absolute best in everything I do–and that, coupled with having very high standards for myself, makes me put myself under a lot of stress. Felicia actually said it in a great way herself, when trying to write the pilot script for her show, The Guild:
And all that time I was lying to my support group. I told the ladies, “Sure! I’m writing!” when I wasn’t. Yes, I could have filled all those newfound minutes with actual work, but I had no confidence in myself. I was a fraud. Who was I to pick up a pen and expect anything good to come out of it? I expected perfection as soon as the pencil hit the paper, and since that’s impossible, I couldn’t get myself to start. Then I felt guilty about not starting, which made me want to start even less. And with no game to bury the feelings, I got very depressed. No wonder I didn’t book any acting jobs in the last half of 2006. No one wanted to hire a clinically depressed person to sell snack foods.
I haven’t gotten as low as feeling clinically depressed, but I know that I do end up burying my feelings of inadequacy in video game binging. “I can’t create anything amazing, so I might as well indulge in this game. At least I don’t feel like a failure when I’m playing it!”
It’s difficult for me to find a balance between being self-confident and giving myself permission to write crappy things in order to get better. If I try to feel confident in my abilities, I make myself believe I can do good work, and then I pressure myself into writing non-crappy things. I’m slowly working on new projects, but it feels like a long road ahead of me that may or may not be enjoyable. Reading books like Felicia’s makes me remember that I’m not alone in this fight for creativity. And that I don’t have to suppress or fight against my introverted instincts to be successful as a writer… one day.
As an aside, my recent reading of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has made me very introspective. And I honestly think I wouldn’t have gotten as much out of Felicia’s book if I hadn’t read Seven Habits first. I think everyone should read it, since it’s applicable to everyone looking to improve their lives in any way. Felicia’s book I’d recommend to gamers, geeks, nerds, or just anybody who considers themselves weird. And creative types. I guess that’s everyone? Or just everyone I surround myself with. The best kind of people, I think. 😉