To #GirlBoss or #GirlyPop
On writing, procrastination, and being stuck somewhere between 13 and 30
I’ve been big P procrastinating on this article. In the time I said I would use to write, I altered my Halloween costume, ordered a bunch of clothes, ate a slice of pie, called my friend, and started making a playlist.
Now it’s 10am on Sunday, and I have diddly squat.
As a kid, I always did my homework. I’d grind until the wee hours of the morning to get my five-paragraph essays written, my French verbs conjugated, and my quadratic equations mapped. I never handed in anything late. I never left something incomplete.
I bent myself backward to be in the good graces of teachers who definitely already knew I was a keener and who definitely didn’t care as much as I did.
Being an A student from elementary school to university gave me an immense amount of pride. I had quantitative proof that I was smarter than most people, and I took it to heart. Especially since I wasn’t cooler than anyone.
I told myself that I was playing a long game. My good grades meant that I would be a total vixen in adulthood. Everyone was just intimidated by the places I was headed. I was going to be a corporate baddie with a huge salary, a tight pencil skirt, and a “don’t fuck with me” attitude. All I needed was to bide my time and learn how to walk in high heels.
Now I’m approaching thirty as a people-pleaser with exactly zero pencil skirts and a strong feeling that I misjudged the situation.
Are tryhards born or made? This is the great question of my #girlytrend TikTok feed.
The Snail Girls and recovering #girlbosses are reimagining their lives at a slower pace. They saw how years of hustle culture wore them down and are trying to opt-out. It’s a slow de-programming.
Meanwhile, Rat Girls and Tube Girls are living in pure anarchy. No Doubt’s “I’m Just a Girl” plays incessantly in videos where women claim they are too young and too girly to have responsibilities - something an innate people-pleaser could never do.
I’m somewhere on the periphery, forcing myself to (sometimes) take lunch breaks and vibing to girly anthems from the 90s. I embraced Tween Girl Summer with a fervour known only to former gifted kids who thought they were “too mature” for the Jonas Brothers.
Often, I wonder what growing up would have been like if I hadn’t cared so much about getting my homework done. Why didn’t I ever use being “just a girl” as an excuse to goof off? Why can’t I publish my blog late?
Y2K nostalgia has given me a perfect entry point to do my childhood differently. I’m bonding with other adult women over smutty fantasy books, pop music, and Barbie. I’m hosting seances and slumber parties and playing dress up every weekend. I’m embracing my cringiest obsessions (and writing about them on my blog). I’m leaning hard into what the “cool kids” were up to while I was doing homework.
I may not be a high-rolling executive, but I do own G-strings and two sets of clip-in extensions. I went out last night in low-rise jeans that definitely did not make me insecure and Pamela Anderson makeup that I totally nailed the first time.
That has to count for something.
Sadly, this teenage girl still has deadlines (and bills and chores and back pain and anxiety). Specifically, she has a blog 30 minutes two hours overdue.
Not that I’m freaking out about it…
I’m just a girl, remember???? #girlypopvibez
Learned or not, being a tryhard is exhausting. I overthink everything and am constantly seeing ways I don’t measure up. That said, I can’t deny the feeling I get from crossing off an ambitious to-do list. It’s the closest I will ever get to acing a report card ever again.
I’m not sure that I could give that up.
My relationship with stress has been the hottest, most toxic passion of my life. I need it to survive. I thrive in the throws of panic. If I don’t self-impose deadlines, how will I know when I’m failing? If I don’t berate myself constantly, who will? Diamonds need pressure! People need rules!
My relationship with writing is equally complex:
I love to write.
I hate to write.
I’m proud of my work.
I’m embarrassed if people read it.
I’ll tinker with a paragraph for hours.
I’ll die before reading something I wrote.
I spend Sunday mornings hunched in the corner of my room like a sleep paralysis demon, fighting with myself to JUST. HIT. WORDCOUNT. Mark occasionally slides things under the door to keep me from gnawing off my own arm.
BUT! Every once in a while, I smack that keyboard just right and impress myself. The days of beating my head against the wall and screaming that I’m terrible and worthless are instantly quelled by one well-written sentence.
A sentence you might not even notice while skiming your inbox. Something that might make you say “hmm,” if you see it.
It’s a labour of lunacy. The tryhardiest of tryhard activities.
On Friday I got tea with a fellow writer. I was nervous and uncharacteristically spitty while talking about how I was approaching my novel. Do I even have an approach? Am I even a writer? I was sure she’d sniff me out as untalented or not serious.
She talked about her book with a level of detail and admiration that I can’t muster for my own projects. She likes to “spend time” with her characters. She has plans for multiple books in a series. She has pages and pages and pages of lore for the world she’s created.
I, conversely, am still trying to discern the best genre for my draft.
I told her that I was afraid to read my work back. That I’ve been procrastinating. That the thought of editing my 200 pages feels impossible. That I’ve been focusing too much on the “amassing an audience” side of writing to actually have time to work on the book, and now even my blog can be a struggle to maintain. That making writer friends is really hard. That I’m constantly berating myself for not writing enough. That I can’t understand why I’m compelled to do the one art form that seems to stress me out the most.
I showed her this meme:
And we laughed in mutual understanding. Our process might look different, but the end anxiety is all the same.
Why do we even want to do this? Wouldn’t it be easier to “just a girl” our way into a Sephora instead? It must be a relic of my #girlboss upbringing that fuels my need to be a novelist. I want to be vindicated that the hours of homework and stress were worthwhile.
See!? I was going places! Those report cards mattered.
I find myself torn between two worlds: There’s the disciplined adult I wanted to be as a teenager and the fun-loving teenager I want to be as an adult.
I am constantly toeing the line between the two, and not fully appreciating either. How helpful is it to force myself to get words down when I want to be giggling at brunch? How useful is it to be at brunch, when I want to be working on my craft?
I yearn for a clear rubric that will tell me how to get the perfect grade. Although, maybe that’s the exact last thing a tryhard like me needs.
This blog is almost three hours past due, and I’m going to end the post here. It’s unfinished and unpolished *gasp*, but maybe something will stick with you anyway.
Hanging Thoughts:
I’m petrified because I told my new writer friend that I would show her my blog and now she will know that I spit things out as I go and am actually not good at this at all and also slightly unhinged. She’ll see that there’s no plan and no rationale and that maybe I don’t even know what an essay is? And maybe she’ll say “Gosh, you actually were super spitty when we met and that was super gross." Or worse, ” Why are you writing about me?” Or worse still “I thought you said you wrote literary fiction.”
I had quoted another writer in this post originally and then got nervous that they’d see it and actually read my work. It was too risky.
Yes, I know that literally hundreds of you read this, but for my sanity, I have to pretend that no one does. Kay cool? Thanks.
Much of my procrastinating has been because of Halloween- the ultimate tryhard holiday. Choosing the perfect costume - that’s funny and sexy and topical and unique - has taken up a lot of my time.
Questions:
If you write, is it the worst AND best thing in your life? Or am I being dramatic?
Do you want to relive your teen years as an adult?
Did this essay make sense?
Do you want to see my Halloween costumes this year?
Do you like me?