I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d been interviewed for The Blair List podcast and that I was kinda nervous about how I’d sound when the interview finally came out. Well, the interview came out, and despite the great performance of Blair Cassutto, a terrific interviewer and a savvy editor, I don’t think I came across all that well.

It’s not awful! It’s not damning. And there were some foibles that I asked her to omit that she thankfully acceeded to (on the day we spoke, I’d just learned about the sexual assault accusations against Blake Bailey, a biographer on whom I’d been training a pretty rhapsodic spotlight of attention and analysis for a couple months, and after I went on a kind of shell-shocked riff about the shock, and asked her to omit said riff from the final product, she granted my wish).

It isn’t so much that I sound stupid in our conversation as just fractured, and all over the place.

Also I’m just not particularly interesting to myself, frankly, which is a slanted judgment because, obviously, the voice I was hearing (my own) wasn’t saying anything that sounded particularly new to me, but I also just fuckin meander so much. Can’t give a succinct answer to seemingly anything. 

Nor do my meandering answers amount to anything particularly coherent, let alone profound or worthwhile.

This is why I script my own podcast, is cuz I know that, if there’s no leash on me, I’ll talk a hundred circles around the topic at hand before then ambling back to it and saying nothing of insight or interest. 

I mentioned a few posts back that I’m dating someone at the moment, and that it’s going really well, and I’ve been telling you for a while now, both here and on the podcast, that I’m really digging my job at the bar, and that I’m fairly pleased with the couple ebooks I’ve released over the past year; obviously it’s a great honor when somebody tells you you’re interesting enough that they wanna feature you on their podcast, or they wanna interview you in print, but I’m finding that it creates such anxiety–I’m thinking I might just swear off of it. No more interviews

Just do my thing.

Sell cocktails, write ebooks, record podcasts, go on dates.

The quiet life. Unassuming.

Clearly I want an audience for the things I create, and it’d be really cool if that audience became so robust that I could earn a living off of the creative stuff that I do; but at this point I’m not sure I’m doing myself any favors by pursuing exposure. Because what these interviews prompt me to do is encapsulate my creative output, interpret, and justify it. That’s not to say that the interviewer is asking me to do anything unjust or unreasonable, just that they are inviting me into a situation where I am letting myself do something that I’m not equipped to do.

Ever since I was in high school I think I entertained this fantasy of being interviewed by journalists who’d bring a great sense of purpose to the encounter, and I’d be dropping wisdom in response to hard-hitting questions and the interviewer would rub their chin and nod very soberly and say, “I hadn’t thought of it that way, you’re so smart, it’s making you more attractive,” but now that I’ve been given that opportunity on a handful of occasions, with newspapers and podcasts and radio, I think it’s best that I stick to expressing my ideas on my own platforms. Cuz it never comes out in a way that makes me feel all that good about myself.

Which is probably just a personal problem, I know, but hey: I’ve got a personal solution. 

I’ll probably sing a different tune the moment somebody approaches me and asks if I wanna talk on their show again, cuz my ego’s a fickle and unruly thing, but for now, I think it’s best that I spend a few years just doing things, and not going on the record with people to talk about the hows and whys of my doing them.