My shitty first draft
If you're reading this, it's too early
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”
— Ann Lamott (Bird by Bird)
This is my shitty first draft. I write it out of regret. A regret born of a first draft I never wrote when I had the chance 10 years ago. I write it in hopes that my future self avoids the same.
The shitty first draft I wish I wrote
It was 10yrs ago, my junior year of high school. I wanted more than anything to look like Chris Evans in Captain America. Bulging pecs, arms threaded with firehose veins, abs like those of Ancient Greek statues. A real-life superhero.
I remember one evening, walking over to my bathroom mirror with the hunched-shoulder gait of a defeated lobster. Looking up at the face staring back at me, I pulled my shirt up over my head. There I stood, the picture of a high school baseball player's body. Muscles existed, to be sure, but you couldn't tell that from the naked eye. Remnants of hours of functional movements, they hid under a thin layer of adolescent fat. It was a body so average that it feels redundant to even call it average.
But I didn't want to be average. I wanted to be a superhero, I stared at my reflection for a protracted minute wanting to avert my eyes the entire time.
That was my chance. Of course I would only learn that later, forced to reckon with hindsight’s unforgiving clarity. What I hadn’t known was that my shitty first draft stood ready to be taken, staring back at me. It would have been as simple as pulling my iPhone out of my pocket, pointing, and shooting.
My embarrassment prevented me.
This was the first draft I never wrote: the picture I never took.
Quieting the voices in my head
Still, that night I carried the weight of my inadequacy to the gym. There, muscle-bound Adonis incarnates maneuvered to the tune of out-of-place early-aughts throwbacks and their own syncopated grunts. They threw around hulking blocks of iron with the smoothness of a swimmer’s stroke. I scanned, all around me, for one person. Just one person who wore the same deer in the headlights expression as I. No one.
You have no clue what you’re doing.
The voice in my head grew louder.
You don’t belong here. You should just leave.
I planted myself at the first machine I could find. I at least knew better than to pick up a dumbbell. The machine would, in theory, prevent me from dropping a weight on myself. I pumped out my first rep. That first rep soon found its place in my first set. That first set in my first workout.
Day by day I continued to show up. Pretty quickly the days became weeks, and months. After about 6 of those months, I remember approaching my old foe: the mirror. This time, my shirt clung onto my body more tightly. Pulling it off posed a bit more of a challenge. I ventured a look into the mirror. My chest no longer curved inward. My previously two-dimensional arms grew a z-coordinate. Veins traversed my forearms.
I continued to work out nearly every day since, this year marking a decade. I wanted to share that milestone, as both a personal point of pride and inspiration to others. The only issue: I never took that first picture 10 years ago. When I scrolled back through the archives the best I could offer was a picture that was taken around 6 months after, so I shared that on Instagram:
Go ahead and ask, I’ve come to expect it in its many forms:
What're you cycling?
Are you on gear?
These questions irritated the old me. I hated answering to a crime I never committed. Nowadays, I don't much care. Better to just let people assume what they want than to burden yourself with the explanation because the explanation cannot possibly convey the countless hours behind the scenes.
A piece I read from bookbear express captures this idea nicely: "if someone’s much better than you at something, they probably try much harder. You probably underestimate how much harder they try."
That should come as no surprise. It’s easier to just mark something as unattainable rather than come to terms with the fact that it is attainable but you just haven’t attained it. You have not exerted as much willpower, put in as much effort as someone else out there. I only know this because I still fall prey to this nasty absolution of personal responsibility.
So I offer a better alternative, the one I learned from my fitness journey. Instead of hiding the truth in the fog, confront it head on. Instead of being ashamed of the now, be excited for the progress you’re about to make. Instead of never putting yourself out there, write your shitty first draft.
I end this shitty first draft with two brief notes: one to the proud reader, one to the cynic.
Note to my future self
Dear Future Self,
This is the embarrassing first mirror pic I never took a decade ago as a scrawny self-conscious teenager. Right now, I publish it with the nakedness of exposing myself on the world's stage. This time, though, it’s liberating. It feels like I’m yelling from the mountaintop "This is where I'm at, just wait."
No doubt you’ve suffered through so many blank pages, scrapped drafts, half-baked ideas to become the excellent writer who reads this now. You should be embarrassed by what you once wrote, this shitty first draft. If you’re not, you will know you have done something wrong.
Godspeed,
Present Self
Note to my critics
To all the critics, the ones who share this link in ridicule with their group chats instead of support, who text around me with silent screams of their own self consciousness instead of write their own first drafts, I leave you with this:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt