The Consequences and Benefits of Extreme Honesty
As a performer and songwriter, throughout the years I’ve put myself in a position of emotional vulnerability. Every breakup, every struggle, every moment of joy and happiness — it’s all available for someone to listen to if they choose to. I express myself to an audience whether it’s online or on a stage regularly. Yet, songs act as an abstraction of emotions and experiences. They’re a glimpse and most certainly not a fully dimensional view into my life and perspective.
Last year, after some serious struggle with my well-being, I made an active decision to try and become as honest and open as possible to those who choose to follow me in whatever context they wish. There’s a somewhat strange phenomenon when having an online presence that causes us to have multiple personalities. A radio voice for podcasts. A comedic or strategic persona on Twitter. A showcase on Facebook. This feels disingenuous to me, and I didn’t want to support this habit as an artist nor as a human being.
I decided I wanted to be one person. I would be one person on Twitter. I would be the same person in my songwriting. I would be the same person when I editorialized my experiences in long form writing. I wanted people to become acquainted with who I really am, rather than a persona. My songwriting became more honest, my tweets became more personal, my visual art became more true to what I was experiencing.
I wrote about my suicide attempt. I tweeted about my struggles in romance. I let people know when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was in need of self-care. I documented these things because I felt that without that documentation, nothing that I put into the world would have context — and thus nothing I created could be experienced in the way that I wanted the world to experience it.
I knew that being open about my mental health would bring consequences, both positive and negative. I, perhaps naïvely, didn’t realize the extent at which this would affect my life.
People reached out to me to let me know that they related to what I was going through or what I had gone through. They supported me and let me know that I had helped them. They provided me with more opportunities than I could ever imagine. Yet, those who did not understand what I was doing, or who chose to only consume certain aspects of what I was doing, didn’t react well to it.
It’s incredibly noticeable because I am always job hunting. I am currently self-employed, and am always looking for new contracts whether it’s doing development or making music. I’m also currently considering the option of having a more stable situation as an employee of someone.
If you google me, you will immediately see pictures of my naked body, you will see me write about the fact that I’m not mentally stable, you will see me talk about sex and anger and feminism and politics. You can listen to podcasts where I detail dumb stories that relate to poor (but funny) decisions I made while drunk. All things my parents told me to carefully consider before making public. Advice which I choose to ignore.
I ignore my parents’ advice because having these things public has given me much more space to be myself. To not have to worry about what people think of me or how they will react. To truly Not Give A Fuck. There’s very little someone can do to destroy my reputation because I’ve chosen to be so public. I draw the line at not making who I smooch public, not telling people about my poops too frequently, and letting my friends choose if they want our shared experiences to be part of my narrative. People have watched me grow, they’ve watched me change, they’ve watched me learn from mistakes. I’ll be the first to admit that I make a lot of mistakes. Hi, it’s me, I’m human!
When being interviewed, I’m often asked about all of the things I’ve presented. I’ll also often be very forward about addressing my problem areas since I’d rather be able to communicate for myself than have someone fill in the gaps for me. I am very assertive in the fact that extreme honesty is good for all parties involved. I will admit my shortcomings in taking care of my mental health if someone asks me about a hurdle I’ve had in my career. I will admit that I have very bad days, and very good days. Mania, as part of the bipolar disorder that I am diagnosed with, can make one extremely productive. Depression can leave me in my bed for days. I know how to cope with these things, and I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to exist as a forward-moving individual within my own personal constraints. I know this. I try to explain this. Many aren’t receptive to it.
So, given the fact that I’m ambitious and that I want to have a fulfilling career, I’m often asked “Why?”
Because I’m a millennial. Just kidding, that is a flimsy answer no matter who is giving it.
What it comes down to is if someone is not interested in giving me an opportunity given the data that I’ve provided, I’m not likely to be able to have sustainable happiness taking that opportunity. I’ve learned that sustainable happiness is a much more important to me than a prestigious job title. I am very ambitious. I want the opportunity to have a prestigious job title and a hella lot of cash. But, I need to take care of myself and keep myself in a place where the good days are more frequent than the bad.
Often, though, having to make these compromises feels very disappointing to me. I won’t be offered a job. I won’t be given a second interview because of an article I wrote. I won’t be considered for a position that someone else feels is “too much for me” or that I’m not conservative enough for. At this time, it seems like so many people encourage openness and removing the stigma about mental health — but when given the space to make a choice that would actually help change the stigma, many will get nervous and put up barriers. I don’t want to have to put up barriers about my own self in order for them to be more comfortable with themselves.
Keeping my walls down means I will be criticized more frequently. Good. I truly don’t think I’d be able to learn what I have learned if I obscured the negative aspects of myself. I will relish in criticism, if I see it as constructive, even if it stings momentarily.
It is impossible to prove to anyone that I’m okay. That’s only something that I can confirm with myself, and I use my own self-measurement of well-being to decide what I have the capacity to do. Can I make a deadline? Can I learn this new technology? Can I volunteer my time? Do I really just want to sit at home and eat pizza and not talk to anyone for a little while? Only I can answer those questions. This puts me in a position that I need to build and earn trust so that others know that I’m being honest when I answer those questions. It means that I have to say no. This means that I have to be very assertive about when I say yes. This means that I have to dive even deeper into the honesty about who I am.
Unless I want to join a commune and completely change my life, disconnect and start farming beats, there’s not really a way that I see that I can turn back. I can’t close myself off very much. I can’t delete my reputation and start again. I can only move forward.
To be honest, despite the fact that it often sucks in the short term, I believe that in the long term this is the best way to move forward for me. I hope that sharing my experiences will help others be more open. That people can speak up without fear of losing opportunities. That people will stop closing doors to those of us who choose to be honest. That, in this honesty, we’re able to have the data to make decisions and tools to build environments where people can experienced balanced joy in their work and in their lives.
Vulnerability in itself isn’t something that in itself is a negative. It’s how the world chooses to react to such vulnerability that decides whether we grow or we remain stagnant. If we don’t pay attention to these vulnerabilities as humans, and don’t find ways to make room for them and to strengthen ourselves by being aware of them, we lose out on so many beautiful and interesting possibilities.
There’s always bugs in the code when we don’t consider all of the use cases, and we learn to write better code from refactoring and reanalyzing how we approach problems. We make space for human error in our software. Why don’t we make space for human error in our day-to-day lives and workplaces?
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