This Totally Should’ve Been A Substack.
Written by Nicole.
A few days ago, I went on a completely belligerent and—as I so eloquently described in the pre-ramble excerpt—“somewhat coherent” word vomit that I so aptly and creatively named “a prologue”, in which I proclaim a big huge “f*ck you” to self-doubt. News flash: that minute grandiosity faded within seconds (or if I’m being realistic: minutes).
It’s not that the sentiment of the paper isn’t a reflection of my deepest thoughts and passions. It’s more so that I wrote it in a state of utmost confidence—confidence that I wish I could say I had at every given moment. The reality is far less glorious; my self esteem flips as fast as Nicki Minaj’s supposed political associations—you always know the reality (if the ardent defense of her sex offender husband wasn’t enough of a red flag), but it’s nice (or rather peaceful) to be delusional.
Recently, I’ve been facing a dilemma that threatens my incredibly fragile ego: everything I once had utmost (delusional) confidence in has seemingly faltered. At 12, I was engaging in “fanciful”, eloquent debate with every adult in my family. The thing I was most proud of—my capacity for speaking and crafting strong arguments (or as I liked to call it at 12, “bullsh*tting”)—is suddenly at the forefront of my mind in a completely different view, shone upon by the disgustingly blinding spotlight of insecurity.
What the hell happened? Is this persistent brain fog a consequence of the questionable choices (I swear I’m not talking about drugs) I’ve made as a young adult finally given an ounce of freedom? Or alternatively, a consequence of the meticulously-curated chaos built to overload my neurons with so much information that I only have the cognitive capacity leftover to watch Bluey? Is it a lack of slow novelty that’s made my ADHD somehow grow its own brain that also has ADHD? Or maybe, I was never truly as good as I believed I was, and the painful reality of aging into a developed frontal lobe is forcing me to employ multifaceted analysis (otherwise known as overthinking, courtesy of my therapist)…(as I type this out I do recognize that I’m quite literally narrating the exact overthinking I just discussed in therapy mere days ago) (at least I’m self aware).
I’m beginning to think it’s a mixture of all the aforementioned reasons—and some reasons that I have zero awareness of. Perhaps what I once considered logical, I now find lacking nuance and sound footing. Hence why I referred to it as “bullshitting”. I don’t even think I need to question myself on neurological overload being a factor—that seems to be a commonality for every single screenager (which frankly should be renamed to screenellenial, or screenoomer, or screenanity considering my father’s addiction to solitaire and my mother’s fervent love of AI cats). The problem, though, with “intellectualizing” your sudden ineptitude is that despite knowing the origins of the problem, the solution is still not so clear.
It feels like the most bull-faced lie in logical reasoning: figure out the underlying mechanism behind the symptom, and magically, you solve the problem! NO. That’s not how it works. I know that I have a deep respect for boob humor as a byproduct of my mental age; do I know how to fix that? Absolutely not! And I’m not entirely sure how to address this either.
So, what should an aspirational, delusional, moderately-comedic-but-definitely-only-to-myself young lady do in a mortal life filled with uncertainty and doubt? I push through, say f*ck it once more, and do it anyways.
I’ve come to realize that every single success in my life has come from entering rooms I had absolutely no business being in—being aware that I was absolutely under-qualified and doing it anyways. I was 16 when I started streaming on Twitch; six months later, I had 20K followers (a loss of 1.2 million after a despicable botting attack courtesy of a man likely named Joel) and a gracious 180K on TikTok who all followed solely for jokes about Minecraft dating shows. I had, frankly, absolutely nothing going for me in terms of a background in content—unless you count haphazardly created YouTube channels ran by a 7 year old. I did it anyways, and it worked out.
That’s not to say that every room I’ve entered with little to no experience has worked out for me. I’ve had my fair share of failures in life—and my fair share of rejections (on the grounds, of course, of being completely unqualified). But, regardless, everytime I’ve gotten up and pushed through the growing doubt caressing the back of my brain—telling me to give up, sit on the couch and watch a K-drama to self-soothe—eventually, I’ve found success.
I am genuinely terrified. I am absolutely going against my parents who would much rather me completely stick to anything related to medicine; I’m changing up the way I approached content and my digital footprint almost completely (though perhaps the latter needed a bit of TLC)—I’m applying to internships where I have zero experience and feel heavily behind in compared to other candidates, and the bow on top? I have to somehow balance everything and make sure I prove to my eldest cat that I am STILL the dominant feline. But, I’m going to do it anyways.
It feels as though the choice paralysis I have when I decide “yes! I will order DoorDash!” also unfortunately applies to my life. There are SO many options, so many factors to account for, and so many opportunities to fail. But, maybe the cliche is true—maybe failure is just redirection towards success—an opportunity to learn, to grow, to flourish. It must be, as I’ve never had more motivation in my life to learn as much as possible and better myself as an individual. And perhaps, a little humbling here and there is just necessary humility that functions as reminder to never assume you’re done becoming a cooler, better, more knowledgeable version of yourself.
Short note: just found out about Substack. Turns out this is just a convoluted Substack and there was a FAR more efficient way to host this site—though perhaps not as iconic.
Written by a human — no AI was used in the creation of this piece.
