i'm replaceable, what now?
on overidentification
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I like to think that my main value proposition on this platform and beyond is being ultra-transparent and digging for truth with precision. Ironically, I had no idea I was capable of pinpoint honesty until it was brought to my attention. That’s been the overarching sentiment, and whether genuine or backhanded, I’m not one to question a good word.
It all comes down to knowing your place and occupying it elegantly. I’d wake up every day feeling unique in what I do. Many of us do. This is still true, but not without exception. Acute anxiety tremors are telling me I’ve cornered myself into a commodity cul-de-sac: it’s all gotten to my head, and now I see myself as a product first, person second. Which is, well, to be expected — integrity doesn’t sit well with pimping your thoughts out on the internet. Let’s be honest.
Here’s the thing, though: when you find something you love doing and get good or even great at it, you’ll feel the best at it until you don’t. Being the best, by definition, is not just a subjective, but a transient state. And it’s not so much about skill, rather perceived excellence. You’re the trailblazer until you’ve paved the way to the accessible, evident surface. You’re inventing until somebody else steps in to do a better, more inventive job, and do it more effortlessly than you ever could. Any gain in expertise is a symmetrical loss in spectacle. This isn’t some high horse ideology or superiority complex talking — it’s just the cyclical nature of creativity, of nature, of discovery, of common sense, of life.
The more time you spend doing a thing, the more habit supersedes novelty, and you start to notice the reality around you: suddenly, you’re far from the most original, the most creative, or the most eloquent. You’re just one of. There’s a certain rhythm of repetition. The instinct then, of course, is to frantically lock in, work harder, and drop the pretense of preserving the ubiquitous ‘balance’. No balance to be found where you’ve self-reduced to profit margins.
As a writer, I let my ideas flow and rest and die down and get back up again. I’m aware that a mind of scarcity is spiritual suicide.
As a marketer, I know that if all goes to shit, I’ll reinvent myself, I’ll come up with something else out of necessity. As one does.
As a woman, I’m concerned about my fear of being replaced. Specifically, the lengths I’ll go to avoid it. I don’t want to be algorithmically tolerable — I want to be a forever sensation.
Fascinated by the process of dissecting the unfathomable, I believe naming fears makes it easier to metabolize them. There’s one where you’re afraid of taking a big leap of faith or approaching a cute stranger at the bar — the anticipatory fear. Will I get rejected? What if I’m not enough? Can I strategically predict the future? There’s one where you’re afraid of your own decisions, specifically choosing wrong, which keeps you stuck and frozen in time. The fear of the outcome, whether good or bad — could be grouped with the fear of the unknown. But the worst one doesn’t glide on the page like butter on velvet, and isn’t easily transcribed. No fear has come close to the terror of being replaceable and forgotten.
It lends itself to a multitude of other fears layered underneath, like a big scary Matryoshka doll: to be replaceable is to accept that we’ve come to see ourselves a commodity or a byproduct of our doing — we cherish the doing more than the doer. This is true both whether we’ve hit a big milestone or shared something from the heart online. It’s also to surrender to others getting bored with you, which, I think, is icky for any creative. Finally, most helplessly, it is to recognize that our very best attempt may just be somebody’s effortless afterthought. The “there’ll never be another you” perspective is stellar and indulging in theory, but it’s never offered me comfort — so what if there’s no one like me if there’s people a million times better? Please.
