As I’ve told many of you in person, I went through a mini crisis after my talk at Heart of Clojure because…
After I gave the talk, I realised that I was turning into the very thing that I was getting really annoyed about in the “"”future of coding””” scene at the time: I was getting increasingly frustrated with all the hero worship or the focus on a small number of special individuals in the scene. Yet there I was: making myself sound really impressive on stage / making it all about me.
I mean, sure, I come from the comedy world, so I love being the center of attention! but I’d always felt like the underdog or the outsider. I think Heart of Clojure is when that stopped.
Yes, that’s when I lost my underdog status, and it made me freak out!
This might sound like a first-world-problem to you. Like “woe is me: i’m not an underdog anymore. how tragic!”
And I want to make it clear that I don’t think that! In the grand scheme of things, it’s really not that bad. Much worse things have happened to me and even worse things happen to other people all the time so it’s worth keeping that in perspective.
No no yes yes this panic that I had was more about: I was worried that my entire creative output of the previous decade had been going in the wrong direction. I was worried that: Maybe I needed to stop.
I zoomed out and reflected on my artistic practice from a more zoomed out view. and I guess I’d never done that before. I’d always been lost in the weeds and the technical detail.
That was the point, after all! The reason I did it all was: I did it all as an emotional outlet.
Well … that’s how it started out. But for sure, standing on stage and speaking to a conference-full of people is not a good emotional outlet. If anything, it’s the opposite.
Yes, I realised that my motivation had changed at some point. Step by step, things had changed slowly, and it was so gradual that I didn’t notice it, but when I looked back over a longer period of time, the change was clear.
I mean, yes, giving a talk is fun! For sure! But that’s not the same as something being an emotional outlet. And… hmm yes.
If I’m completely honest with you, one of the main reasons I like giving talks so much is that it feels like one of the few things that I’m actually good at. And I’m bad at so so so so many things! like coding! and remembering names! and words! and… oh wait I already wrote a blog post about this. Here it is: Things I am bad at. But it’s not a very exhaustive list really.
Anyway, I liked giving talks. It feels good to do a good job at something. Of course it does!! and it didn’t really matter what the talk was about at all. I’d still get that enjoyment either way.
So… if it didn’t matter what the topic of the talk was… then I may as well talk about something that I think is worth sharing, right? So I guess I tried to make those talks helpful in some way. And I think this became another motivation for me.
The problem with giving a “helpful” talk is that it’s easy to make it sound accidentally preachy. It turns into a sermon too easily. You end up telling everyone what to do and they end up listening because you’re the one with the loud voice and the spotlight.
Tragically, people who are good at speaking are rarely the people you should be getting advice from, and I say this as someone who is good at speaking.
Or at least, “how good someone is at speaking” is not a good indication of “how good someone’s ideas are” and it made me uncomfortable that people were judging my ideas on the basis of my talks, because: To put it bluntly, that’s how you get cults and dictatorship. It doesn’t help that there was a joke about being part of a cult at the start of my talk at Heart of Clojure!
So I guess I realised something: I would either have to do NO MORE TALKS or NO MORE IDEAS
and we all know which one I picked
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