In my blog post on overcoming bitterness, I talk about wanting to act like the person future-famous-me would be proud to have been. It sometimes helps, to remind myself of that, when I read about someone’s three-book deal or this other person’s announcement of getting an agent, and I think “Why not me?” I banish the pang with, “Someday, me. And I’ll want to have been gracious, now.”
Some time in the past year, I crossed over into a weird new world, where there are people who know me, or know of me, that I haven’t ever met. It’s not fame, but it’s fame-adjacent, the training wheels thereof, and of course all I can think is, “giiirl it’s female celebrities of the extremely-minor variety that are the most likely to get get cancelled over weird shit.”
So, obviously, I find myself more and more thinking about Dumb Shit I Have Done and Said.
I am SO cancellable. In fact, I will award a free ebook to whoever can show me an offensive social media post of mine from the past so I can expunge it.
(This is a real offer. Help me un-cancel future me.)
I’m self-aware enough to know that I crave attention, and I conduct my casual friendships much like a comedian working a crowd. I shoot off my mouth without thinking, and most nights, I lie awake thinking about all the stupid things I have done or said, months or even years in the past. As you do.
So, what can I do to be less cancelable?
Obviously, I should forgive myself, make apologies if I can, and if not, promise to think more before I speak in the future. (And shush, brain, yes, I’ve been promising that to myself since I was five… it’ll start working any day now.)
Recently, my husband said to me, “As you get more visible, your online presence is going to naturally become more… neutral. Safe.”
And, while I can feel myself hesitating before I drunk post that thing that drifted into my head and sounded hiLARious these days, I also cringe at the idea of being “Safe.” I am MARIE the VIBBERT. I sass and joke! I struggle constantly with my political conscience, and I invite ridicule by daring to identify as working-class because I grew up that way when now I am a cushy computer programmer of the elite, and really, even when we were poor, lots of people had it worse…
I massively digress. The point is, no one gets context and subtlety in 140 characters.
As I try to think about how to conduct myself as more people are looking at me, I can think of a few guidelines:
- Be honest.
- Be humble.
- Be quick to apologize
- Let yourself lose arguments. Gracefully.
That last one… I’ve had friends get into twitter-storms and later say, “Why did I double down? I know not to double-down!” It’s not their fault, it’s human nature. When we perceive attack, we double-down. No one wants to admit they were wrong, and most people want to get in the last word.
You don’t get to do that, when you’re in the public eye. You have to be wrong, you have to lose, you have let someone else get the last word. It feels exactly as natural as unicycling backward.
I’ve already been practicing the “not getting the last word” thing in my normal, un-famous life. So that’s good. I’ve also been working on my self-esteem, which means not having to hide myself, which helps with the honesty part. I’ve always been quick to apologize — too quick, in some cases. (I recall jokes about how the first words I learned were “I’m sorry.”)
Humble? It’s beginning to mean something new to me. I have actual things to be proud of now, very big things. How do I make sure I’m being humble and not, say, fishing for compliments?
Part of humility is saying, “I know, thank you,” when someone tells me, “You’re having a great streak of publishing success,” though internally I want to say “I’ve been rejected by 58 agents so far!”
I don’t know. I don’t know what it means to behave in a manner befitting minor fame. I do know that it feels like showing my un-retouched cellulite ass to the world.
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