#6: Be Cringe About Being Seen
Month 6 in a year-long practice to be more authentic (and yes, more cringe)
Be Cringe is a year-long experience centered on showing up more authentically — even when it feels embarrassing. Each month, I share a theme, reflect on how I’m working with it in my own life, and invite subscribers to explore it alongside me.
Welcome to Month 6: Be Cringe About Being Seen. It’s time to show the world all that is you (or maybe, it’s time to show one person one thing that makes you you).
Below, I’ll share insights from our fifth month, Be Cringe About Trying, as well as how our sixth month will unfold. I can’t believe that, after this month, we’ll be halfway through the challenge!
The insights from the previous month are free to read, and the full Be Cringe experience is available for paid subscribers.
You can read about Be Cringe, and learn how to join us, here:
Month 5 Recap: Be Cringe About Trying
Month 5 was the first month where the ‘work’ of this challenge happened outside of just reflection, questioning, and inner work. While in other months, a lot of that has led to action (both from myself and what I’m hearing from some of you), being cringe about trying asked you to try something tangible, in the real world, beyond the page.
Over the last five months, a lot of the other themes led me to take specific action — being cringe about my why led me to start my All of the Above column and being cringe about wanting exposed the fact that I really did want to give self-employment a real go and was the catalyst that had me finally start my podcast (after wanting to do so for so long).
None of the prior themes actually required any action, but I found that when I set my specific intentions and uncovered my inner reasoning, I couldn’t not take action. So this past month, I felt I was faced with something I wanted to personally distinguish: how is being cringe about trying different than all of the other ways I’ve been trying all year?
I decided I would do more trying with a little less thinking. A lot of what I’ve done this year has been the result of thinking, of journaling, of reflecting. For month five, and in order to really be cringe about trying, I decided to be more impulsive and try things that sounded good in the moment, even if I didn’t know why I felt that way.
There was a good deal of reflection this month, too, but it came after the action, after the trying, and that helped me understand how I felt.
So, the first thing I tried was to adjust how I tried. To reclaim my impulsivity, a character trait I used to see as a flaw and am now seeing as a strength.
On Reclaiming my Impulsivity
I have spent most of my adult life trying to fight the impulse to be, well, impulsive.
This brought a lot of good, and I’m realizing that leaning into impulsivity makes sense at this stage in my life. I’m trying to get a self-employed practice off the ground, and while ignoring impulsivity and embracing strategic planning is what listening to the business people would have me do, I’m realizing that’s not where I am right now. If I were to try to plan, I’d be looking out into space, thinking, and maybe getting a spark or an idea, but nothing firm could take root. I just can’t see that far out in front of me right now.
So, I embraced impulsivity. And one day, a phrase popped into my head, I bought a domain, and a week later, I’d fully launched Customer Product Ops, my consulting offering after not being able to figure it out for the last few months. This isn’t a business per se, and it doesn’t actually change some of what I was hoping to put out into the world on that front, but it allows me to experiment with the positioning and labeling and give it a go.
While I’m convinced that Customer Product Ops is a gap, I’m not convinced it is a gap that founders and startups are willing to pay for — the level of suffering that comes from when your customer-facing teams and product teams are out of sync is pain that a lot of us are just expected to deal with (and are often handled in the background). But I won’t know until I try.
I also launched what I’m calling a Virtual Water Cooler Chat, a low-stakes way for remote folks to ease into their days with the company of others. It’s not co-working, it’s not really anything I’ve seen anyone ask for, but so far I’ve led two sessions that have had FIVE unique guests.
Why you need a 'Virtual Water Cooler Chat' in your life
Six years into remote work, and I can confidently say that I never want to go into an office (at any sort of regular cadence) ever again.
I have no idea if this is something that’s just novel up front and will lose its steam, but I’m going to keep trying as we enter June. If you’d like to join us, you can check out the event calendar here (which will be kept up to date for as long as trying here makes sense).
There’s also an unexpected cost of trying that I realized when I was reflecting on my month: when the things I try stick, that creates more work, more time spent doing those things, and less time in my day for everything else. I recorded quite a few podcast episodes in April, but was only able to fully edit and share one (partially due to some platform issues, but also due to myself struggling to find the time). I also launched my All of the Above column. I posted one essay for that column in May, and I haven’t gotten my act together to share the article I’ve been teasing since that launched.
I’m excited about that column, and I want to see where it goes, but I found myself having to pick and choose between too many options. What happens when all the things you try work out? The downside to leaning into what impulsively comes to me is that the newer thing is often the shiny thing I want to work on, so I’m going into this next month trying to find a way to be a bit more balanced. Impulsive and willing to try, yes, but also with an understanding of what happens if I want to keep trying, and what that means for the other things in my life.
A final note about trying — for me, what I tried in month five demanded I be seen almost immediately after trying. I shared about my consulting work on LinkedIn, and the very nature of a virtual water cooler chat is that people need to show up (and so, they need to see me doing so).
In a way, I got a head start on Month 6 and got to flex my ‘being seen’ muscle a bit. In other ways, I know I’ve just scratched the surface. I also tried things that stayed more ‘private’, like a new workout routine, a calendar embed I secretly added to my website to see if anyone even wanted to book a call, and a new way of journaling. These didn’t immediately go anywhere, and I kept them to myself after trying. So if you tried but haven’t been seen yet, that’s okay. That’s what Month 6 is for.