NOTE: this post is directly pulled from my 6/2/21 email newsletter without any edits. if you would like to receive my weekly note in your inbox along with additional sections and features not included here, you can join my email community.
it is 12.01am on wednesday june 2nd. this email goes out in six hours. but i am still beginning. kicking and screaming inside— i am beginning.
and it’s a biggie; i wanted to make this first one juicy for y’all.
sidebar: i don’t know if longread vibes will continue to be a theme here, but just in case, maybe psychologically prime yourselves for this newsletter to read more like one of your favorite substacks :). if that ends up not being your vibe, you can always scroll to the end for the other sections (which i'll preview a bit more next week).
so much turmoil over an email newsletter. over the type of thing i’ve written for instagram on my toilet, on the subway, absentmindedly walking a city street, bleary eyed in the dead of night.
to unpack this matters. because fear has become so ritualized for so many of us that it has become mundane. and then forgotten. really good, really elaborate, exceptionally subtle stories borne of this fear have become our way— our beginning and our end.
this is how too many of us deny our gifts and what otherwise naturally flows through us.
i’m a virgo sun, virgo mercury. while i don’t put my whole world into astrology, i do believe it holds profound wisdom. in many ways, i’m very much a virgo and in other ways, i’m totally not; that’s when discovering you have a whole ass eerily accurate astrological chart and not just one sun sign blows your mind and you begin to pay more attention.
one trait commonly ascribed to virgos is that of a highly detail oriented perfectionist. add to that a scorpio moon and we getting into obsessive tendencies (it me). lethal combo. perfectionism ruled me for much of my life, but with time, i learned to let go— learned to leave things better done than perfect, learned to not agonize so much. i really thought i’d left my most limiting perfectionist tendencies behind— until recently.
i realized that what really happened was that my perfectionism just morphed into something much more subtle and sneaky; how subconsciously trying to be perfect keeps me from ever doing certain things at all— out of fear of getting it wrong, fear of not being good enough. looking stupid, being rejected. fear of having tried and wasted my time because i was going to be a failure anyway.
that inner critic, let me tell you. girl is a lot.
the thing that helped me catch my lingering perfectionist tendencies? recently learning what underlies the perfectionism behind many people’s procrastination habits. it’s the fear of being unlovable if we’re not perfect. of believing that our worth and others’ perceptions of us are so fragile, that the slightest hint of being human will damn us irreparably. the solution: do nothing and sit very, very still.
fuck. that hit.
a micro-adjustment to my awareness brought game changing insight. i never cease to be amazed by this phenomenon.
i decided to apply my new understanding to my inner battle with getting this newsletter off the ground. here is where we get very meta— in characteristic seher fashion.
for a long time, i really didn’t want to do an email newsletter. i was repelled by it as being awkward self-promo. but as the transience of social media degraded my sense of true connection and wellbeing over time, i started looking at email as a more meaningful way of connecting and sharing value inside community. i started to get excited and vision my newsletter as a vehicle for encapsulating things on my mind and heart week to week— what’s moving me, what i’ve found helpful, what i’ve learned, what i just wish i could tell everyone about.
and then, as i often do, the idea got bigger and bigger and bigger. i crafted a whole entire magazine, y’all. it had like thirteen sections. and everything had to be in right order (code for perfect) before i could launch. but there was a pandemic, life was doing a lot of life-ing, and i was tired. and now— overwhelmed.
the overthinking, the neuroses, the raging inner-critic— combined with a still persistent-enough need for approval and fear of rejection— keeps me from beginning a lot of things and also from sticking with things; i’ll give up if there isn’t external validation soon enough— “see, i knew i didn’t matter anyway, i knew whatever i had to offer was useless.”
yeah. we’ll talk about self-love and my inner critic another day...
before i started my first venture, i was ranting to a friend about how i couldn’t buy a domain or get business cards until i had the right name. and because i didn’t have the most perfect, most soul-stirring, most striking, most resonant business name yet— i couldn’t start my business. and then i told him about a placeholder name i had that i didn’t really want to use.
my friend stopped dead in his tracks and told me that i needed to get over myself and use that name. get a domain and get some business cards— i could change the name later. getting started, even imperfectly, was my wisest move in that moment.
i kept that business name for eight years. that business moved me from the bay area to brooklyn and spurred a decade-long photography career.
like this friend, some other friends (shout out to maya, allison, ryan!) recently help me cut through my newsletter melodrama and told me to chill with the fall fashion issue energy. “start small and build from there,” they said. just start.
after stalling just another two, three months for good measure, i made it here to your inbox. and i’m not ashamed. in the larger context, i’m proud of myself.
prior to that intervention, my procrastination loop of fear, anxiety, overwhelm, and insecurity turned days to weeks to months— and then to a whole year. granted, i’ve also been navigating some huge personal shifts this year and conscientiously decided to effectively pause my life in the search for some peace and clarity. to be real, i was hoping for a lot more peace and clarity than i’ve come away with so far, but i’m still grateful for what i got. i’m reminded, for the billionth time, that we must continue our journeys even as we tend to our ever-present loose threads; too much isolation and contemplation becomes circular— even dangerous.
so i decided that today (actually yesterday, now) was the day. as an accountability exercise— motivation vis a vis the avoidance of shame, really— i published on all my social platforms that the newsletter was going to go out this morning. “strapping myself to my desk! pray for me.”
yeah, ok, girl.
i went out for a coffee, got a snack, listened to a podcast with brené brown and sonya renee taylor in my car, canceled a study group because “i had deadlines,” handled the other deadline, did some other work with no clear deadline, meditated (even though these days i’ve been putting it off until bedtime), and ate a leisurely dinner.
i mean… seher? seher.
right. so, the day passed, as i anticipated it would. but i’d told myself: even if i don’t sleep— this thing is happening. do or die.
it’s now 2.15am. i have a chinese energy medicine class in just under seven hours. i normally honor ample sleep time as sacred (and actually really, really need it). but today: we out here.
so that meditation earlier? i cried.
i’d unearthed the mountain of undue pressure and expectation i’d been piling on myself. with this newsletter, absolutely— but i also knew that this orientation is part of my way with myself.
self-imposed pressures and expectations— that’s where we really get into the meat of the perfectionism-procrastination dance i’ve been doing with this space.
the thing about a newsletter is that it’s kind of like decorating your apartment. it’s a curated a statement about what you’re about, what you’re into, certain value you have to offer. it’s part of the reason i take so long to furnish and decorate any new home and why people perennially think i’ve just moved in (i’m also somewhat of a minimalist). it’s also why i became so overcome by the pressure to have an epically meaningful business name. sometimes if i can’t present in the exact intentional way i mean to, i don’t present at all; i just opt out of existing in that realm altogether. working on it.
but also, a newsletter just feels more intimate and vulnerable than social media— somehow i feel more naked? maybe it’s because an email is more permanent; i can delete an instagram post, but what lands in your inbox, you have forever.
an email address is our internet phone number. it’s personal. i don’t take it lightly.
i am honored by each and every person who signed up to join me in this community. simultaneously, i’ve been confused; the part of me that can’t acknowledge my unique value is like, “why would people want to hear from me in a space as precious as their inbox? they must think i can give them something that i can’t.”
all these people i don’t want to disappoint. who i don’t want to look like a fool in front of.
there’s a relative who i was estranged from for years until recently. they’re on here. and though i’m the one who invited them to this space, i’m still scared.
there was my brother who i invited and then uninvited. simple anticipation of the fact that sometimes family got too many opinions.
there are colleagues and dear friends and people i know and admire here.
much of my instagram community— who i’m awed want to hear more from me— is on here. i don’t want to let y’all down. i don’t want to bore you.
and then there are the random people with nondescript email addresses like becky63829251@hotmail.com. are you a bot, becky? or did you find my random viral blog post about calling the new york unemployment hotline and fill out my email pop-up thinking i was gonna have more hot tips on how to get this money?
but seriously. not having any idea at all who you’re writing to is a special kind of nerve-wracking.
finally, there are those of you who have been on this list for months or even a year-plus. and with the time passed, my internal pressure to be profound, to be significant, compounded. will the wait be worth it?
i half feel like my newsletter needs to be a vegas show or something; that the only way you’ll stay is if i give you something breathtaking— some magical fantastical value beyond anything i’ve offered before.
and, yet still. here we are. here i am.
i am significant if only for the reason that i exist. and what a reason.
and my words and shares are valuable to you because *you* decided. who am i to question that? who am i to get in the way of that? i relent.
sometimes you must defy yourself to become more yourself.