The Worth Engine

Confessions of a Part-Time Self-Loather

Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash

The last two weeks have been hard for me. I don’t have a good reason for it. Nothing went wrong—not exactly. But there was something wrong with me. There is something wrong with me.

By now you’ve probably realized that I have a lot of big ideas and, with a little inference, you might guess that I probably have a big ego. If I didn’t think I had something to say, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing it. If I didn’t think other people should read it, I wouldn’t hit the ‘publish’ button. But I’m an artist. Ego comes with the territory, right?

Would it surprise you to learn that I struggle with feelings of self-loathing?

I know I'm not alone in this. Almost everyone has at least something about themselves that they don't like—that they would change, given the opportunity. Everyone struggles, at least from time to time, with feelings of inadequacy, and from what I've read of the personal lives of even the greatest authors of the last few centuries, Imposter Syndrome is a common issue for creatives like me. 

It's a funny juxtaposition, really. Some days I think very highly about myself as a writer. I think I've got something to say. I think people should read it. I finish a writing session and tell myself "I'm brilliant. A genius." Then the very next day I question why I'm doing any of it. Question if I'll ever be good enough. If anyone will ever truly like my work.

For better or worse, I extract a great deal of my value-of-self from my work. When I'm hard at work pushing forward on a draft that I'm really excited about it, I ride an emotional high that can carry me for months. When I'm in between projects or struggling to put words on a page, I feel the weight of my own ego grinding me down, asking "What are you doing? Don't you know you're nothing without your work? You are what you produce, and if that's nothing, then you must also be nothing."

And again, I know I'm not alone in this. It isn't even an artist problem. Everyone decides for themselves, consciously or unconsciously, what they think they are worth at any given moment. We commonly call this 'self-esteem', and celebrate those who have it as being strong while pitying those who struggle to hold onto it. I think it is easier to grapple with if we think of it as an engine—the Worth Engine. Everyone extracts their value-of-self in a unique way and from unique sources—sources that can shift over the course of their lives. I don't know if most people are self-aware enough to consider where they extract their self worth from. In my formative years, I did spend some time considering it, but in the recent past I've generally let that awareness slip. 

Let's take this out of the abstract. I am a writer, so I extract self-worth from my writing. Simple, right? But that's not enough, as I referenced above. A writer cannot always be writing, and in the times between, however long or short, they must have mechanisms in place to avoid a mental and emotional implosion. So I'll broaden my view. What else (does my subconscious believe) gives me value?

I'm a scientist. I extract value from doing well at my job and at school. I am a husband. I extract value from making my wife smile, from being there for her when she needs me. I am a father. I extract value from teaching my children new things and from having positive interactions with them. I am a gamer (combining chess and video games here). I extract value from victory, from feeling clever and feeling powerful. I am a son. I extract value from my parents being proud of me and my accomplishments. 

While this is only natural, the strategist in me recognizes that by de-centralizing my sources of self-worth, I insulate myself against mental and emotional damage that might arise from a failure in any given category. So what if I didn't get any writing done today if I did a big project with my wife and we're both proud of the results? So what if my kids were being troublemakers today if I did well on my most recent exam? No matter where I'm falling short, I can always lean on something else to help me cope—to get me through the brief time of difficulty and get back to where things are good again.

There are, unfortunately, a few problems with this. What if, on a given day, I'm failing in all of these categories? What if I got a poor exam grade, came home frustrated, lost my temper with my children, upset my wife, disappointed my parents, couldn't get any writing done, and lost every match of a game I decided to play to cool off? It's not even that implausible of a scenario. A big enough hit on any front can send someone into a spiral (in gaming, we call this "tilting") that results in worse and worse results in terms of physical, mental, and emotional aptitude. Every move you make to try to dig your way out only makes things worse because you're not thinking clearly, and every wrong move makes you think even less clearly.

And that's only one problem. What happens when one of your sources of self-worth becomes baseline? I've always been a good student, ever since I was very young. 'A's and 'B's were the norm for me, and for a period of my life I was able to extract self-worth from this being the case. But after years and years of repeated success, it's easy to start to take these sorts of things for granted. If the only grades I ever get are good, then that will slowly become my expectation. Once this has occurred, getting a good grade no longer gives me the dopamine tingle of "I did well, I'm worth something". Instead, it feels like all I've managed to do was tread water. By contrast, if I get a bad grade (a 'D' on an exam, for example) this will hit me far harder because not only is it bad, it is also unexpected. 

Let's talk about this in terms of writing. When drafting, I usually aim to write 1000 words a day. It isn't an unreasonable goal, taking between 30 minutes and 3 hours, depending on how things are flowing, and the constant progress has effective long-term results from my experience. In the early phases of a draft, when things are the most exciting (mostly because it's something new), the self-worth result from finishing a 1k word session is significant. By the later half of a book, however, the routine progress slowly starts to feel like a status quo that must be met. The novelty (ha) of the novel has worn off and I am left with the stark reality of meeting a deadline. Days that I succeed at my word count feel neutral, rather than good, and days that I fail feel even worse than normal. I actually have a sticky note on my desk in my office which reads "1k a day keeps the self-loathing away"—a reminder that exemplifies this exact phenomenon and flaw in my psyche. 

So we've got problems. Not only does the de-centralization of sources of self-worth fail to solve the problem of catastrophic failure due to tilting; individual sources can become muted to the point of meaninglessness—subtracting from the number of ‘valid’ sources in a way that is as subtle as it is insidious. Without realizing what is happening, one can find themselves hanging precariously to only a single source of self-worth, and in the event of its failure (no matter how small that failure objectively is), a self-destructive spiral can begin.

Which brings me back to these last two weeks.

Revision is always hard for me. I don’t feel like I’m creating in the way that I do when I’m drafting. Though I cognitively know that it’s a completely necessary part of the process, I don’t get the same satisfaction out of it that I do with drafting. School is going well, but as I described above, I have begun to take that for granted. I have been struggling to find a part time job since the move—something else that I normally extract some self-worth from—and though my parents have been patient, I know that they expect of me the same thing that I expect from myself: I have the time to do a part time job, so why don’t I have one already? My kids (4.5 and 2.5 yo) have been exceptionally stubborn and difficult over the last few weeks and seem to be making a point of making every mess and destroying every object they can feasibly get their hands on.

Amidst all of this, and despite my success in putting up words for the revision, the amount of time I have been spending playing video games has been steadily rising. I didn’t really think about it when it started. I was playing a lot with my wife. Playing with friends. It was fun. There wasn’t anything unhealthy about it. And I was getting my school and my writing done, so what was the problem? With how hard the kids had been, I deserved the break, anyway.

Slowly, without my realizing it, the balance of my sources of self-worth shifted toward gaming. I noticed that something was off a couple of days ago when I realized that even the slightest thing going wrong felt like a massive blow. I was supposed to be gaming to relax. To hang out with Julie and with our friends. Instead, I signed off each evening more and more frustrated about everything in my life without actually understanding why.

I’m not sure I’m going to publish this. I probably shouldn’t. I’m embarrassed about a lot of what I’ve written here. I don’t want people to think that I’m weak. I don’t want people to think that I’m fragile. I don’t want people to think that I can’t deal with my own emotions and figure out my shit for myself.

And what if I can’t?

It isn’t always like this. Most of the time (90-95% of it), I do a good enough job of propping up my various sources of self-worth to keep these feelings locked in the cellar of my mind. I’ve heard a lot about depression and while I’ve wondered a few different times whether or not I have it, I have always reasoned that these feelings are not frequent enough to match that diagnosis. Since I am not a psychologist and self-diagnosis is dubious under the best of circumstances, I cannot say one way or another on the matter.

I can, however, foresee a problem. As I think I’ve made clear, my greatest source of self-worth is my writing (when things are going well). With my first novel coming out this December, I am taking a big step toward realizing my dreams—but I am also putting myself out there in a way I never have before. If, hypothetically, the release goes poorly, what will that do to me? How will I manage my sources if that is the case? What if, instead, it goes so well that I have trouble putting out anything else for fear that it won’t be as well received?

Well, I wouldn’t be the first artist to collapse under the weight of their first failure or their first success.

The root of the problem, it appears, is the Worth Engine itself. If extrinsic sources of self-worth are 1. prone to failure, 2. fickle in nature, 3. susceptible to spiraling collapse, and 4. mutable by time and repeated use, why should we rely on them? Why should anyone rely on them? It’s a poor foundation for the house of the heart and the psyche. We can’t possibly trust it.

We need something better.

I hope that you all feel worth it this week and will join me as I dig deeper over the next post (or two) and try to uncover something useful from this rabbit hole.

No promises, though.