The relief of not trying to be cool

Achieving the impossible: making smocking and a Peter Pan collar look cool. (Smithsonian Institution)

Often, I’ll be in the middle of editing a video when I hesitate over a particular moment.

“I just looked really awkward right there,” I might say to myself. Or I cringe a little because I’m coming off as overly earnest or sanctimonious.

However, in order to share my work on the Internet, I’ve had to accept that the earnest, awkward person in those videos is the same one I look at in the mirror. The likeness is accurate.

And just as I leave the house with my face looking like it looks, I inevitably have to ship those videos the way they are. Nothing I can do to fix it at this point — the video or my face. I am who I am.

It’s easier now for me to get my head around this than it was when I was an adolescent. Back then, I thought that there was some way that I could learn to be cool. I now understand that the people I would have learned from — whether they were the ones who played sports as effortlessly as they flirted with boys, or the ones who lined their eyes as black as their Doc Martens — didn’t have to learn. Not like I did. They observed and adapted, whereas I could have had a private tutor in Cool and still not gotten it.

I am just not cool. I’m exuberant, eager, puppy-dog like. I don’t have shrewdness or reserve. I don’t have good proprioception. I don’t like breaking rules. I can’t keep my eyes open when there’s a camera flash.

For so long, I didn’t want to be that way. I wanted to hide my uncoolness. Finally, I’m learning to embrace it. I would like nothing more than to be the Mister Rogers of TikTok. What could be better than that?

It’s a relief to show up exactly as I am, unapologetically. I get to be into the things I’m into, dress how I dress, and dance how I dance. As a person, I’m still learning and growing, but I’m not likely to fundamentally change. I have the strengths I have, and a sense of cool is not one of them.

A video in which I’m a little corny or goofy is a realistic preview of who I am, for better or worse. Some people won’t like me, and some people will. It’s liberating to realize that I can’t influence that.

Leading a live call yesterday with more than fifty people (one of them Seth Godin), I tripped over my words. At first I felt flustered. Then, I realized that I could laugh about it instead of getting frustrated with myself, hopefully putting others at ease thereby.

By this time, shouldn’t I expect that I’m not going to be so smooth and polished? Shouldn’t I plan on being pretty much the way I’ve always been, only older?

What if there is actually nothing wrong with me, just the way I am? What a soothing, affirming thing.

I’m letting go of trying to be cool. I’m letting go of being cool. I never had a choice anyway.

I’m settling into being myself. Which, ironically, is pretty much the coolest thing a person can do. But don’t worry — I’m still going to be awkward as heck and ruin the vibe. It’s what I do.