A Confidence Confessional

I have no self-confidence.

I don’t know when it happened. But somewhere along, I Marie Kono’d my confidence. Unconsciously I held it up, asked if it sparked, & when I realized it didn’t … I tossed it in the trash.

Over time, confidence seemed like the bright shiny thing that makes you connect to a job. And after being let go from almost every job I had, it seemed like being invested & excited about my future was null.

Confidence never helped me. I always felt that confidence was tied into optimism & optimism tied into naivety. And after each job reamed me, I took a chunk of confidence out of myself.

I understand that people don’t like hearing that. I spend so much of my time pretending to actually have confidence. Or else I’m reassuring people that it’s fine because I’ve adjusted to the bland pragmatism that takes its place.

But seriously! people get really upset when I tell them I don’t feel confidence in myself or my work. That I’ve stopped dreaming big; there’s no answer from me on “what’s your dream job?” or “if you could do anything, what would it be?” or even “where do you see yourself in five years?”

I realize too that no confidence can make it hard to advocate for myself. Its absence leaves a very flat blandness that people find disconcerting. I don’t have a lot of emotion when I talk about past or current work -- it just becomes a recitation of things.

And if pushed to talk about something or a project I’m passionate about, well, that blandness goes away ... but it’s replaced by dread.

No confidence means that when my name is attached to something, I worry. I get stressed. I get anxious. All my thoughts start running towards how the thing is trivial or unimpressive; stereotypically gendered, or somehow a topic/person, etc. that people hate or are annoyed by. 

Writing this post means that I'm aware of my vote of no confidence. It’s something I evaluate, think about, & try to work on. But I’m also very tired of falsely reassuring people of my (lacking) confidence. It does nothing for me to share my lack, only to have someone inform me, “No! You have so much confidence! What you do is awesome.” It means I have to go back & erase that moment; the focus is now on making you feel like the world is filled with shiny people, instead of y feeling.

I also don’t handle the platitudes well. The whole no confidence thing means when I hear them, they ring false. My mind tells me you’re being polite, saying I’m good at something you’ve heard others say about me. That’s the reason why the comments are turned off on this post. And why, any DM’s or comments on social won’t even be looked at before I delete them.

This post might be more of a self confession reflection. Maybe it speaks to you & how you feel about confidence. Maybe it horrifies you that someone could function with no self confidence.

Whatever it is, this is my post. 

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