Why is everyone so damn performative?

 In the unfortunate stage of my approaching adulthood where I am forced to apply for internships, I began building a portfolio of creative writing. The company I was applying to (who I will not name, as I am still waiting for a response from them), claimed they wanted to see any kinds of writing, from Notes app ramblings to finished pieces. It was the former that made me somewhat curious. I, of course, did not submit any of my Notes app thoughts in a professional portfolio, but I did include a few pieces that I was quite proud of that I think gave them a better look into my brain than any tear-soaked phone screen could possibly give.

     It makes me wonder, is that really what they want to see? There is a scene in Dork Diaries (a childhood favourite) where she claims that no one really has a diary anymore, and her ideal scenario would be publishing her juicy secrets on an online blog that everyone wants to read. That is, of course, implying that she has an audience. Nikki Maxwell, however, is fictional, and in universe she is only writing for herself, and not for any kind of audience: except, in one book, where Mackenzie Hollister steals her diary and reveals she has actually been jealous of Nikki's dorky, perfect life! Gasp! Anyway, I digress. Dork Diaries still takes up a large part of my brain, and if the characters were mine (and, you know, not fourteen), Mackenzie and Nikki would be kissing.

 

Unfortunately, I realised I could never be an aesthetic girl (and, at a similar age, realised I wasn't a girl), at about fourteen (Nikki Maxwell age!). This was in the dreaded era of lockdown, where aesthetics like "cottagecore" and "dark academia" permeated my young, impressionable brain. I was desperate to be like the gorgeous girls on my screen, with their homemade blackberry jam. Eventually, I realised I couldn't fit myself into that box, and for a while, I didn't have a sense of identity, and I lost interest in the thing I used to love. 

 

     These days, I have tried to pick up as many hobbies that have made me happy, and I have realised that while I may not be, you know, "good" at anything in particular (except maybe writing), I still have something I made at the end of it. I like to paint, I like to make air-dry clay models, I love love love collage, I like to sing and dance badly: I am a mosaic of everyone I have loved, and I am just that, a mosaic. I have two tattoos, one of a blackberry vine on my ribcage, and the other of Calvin and Hobbes on my shoulder. I can't pick a theme, and so, I remain a patchwork of sewn together interests and thoughts.

     Of course, there's an element of performativity to everything. A discussion with an ex (of two weeks... yikes), in which I asked, "if you could be an object, what would you be?", revealed far too much about me. We were sat in the park near our university drinking a bottle of wine, and I proudly stated that I would be a tamagotchi. They asked me if I was going off an aesthetic basis, or what basis to go off of, and then a long discussion ensued where we both questioned whether we have any sense of self, and what to base it on.  

 

    These days, I don't think it matters that I don't really know who I am, and I don't mind that I'm a bit performative. I am trying to build up myself again, and this is through my art. I am trying to sit alone with my thoughts. To bring it back to my Notes App, when my internship ask for my Notes App ramblings they don't know it, but they are asking for myself in my purest form, myself when there is no audience. Which, to be clear, is way too much to ask from a simple internship. But I believe that no one can really write like no one's reading. Even a diary has an invisible reader. Even Nikki Maxwell's diaries were read eventually. (Okay, enough about Nikki.)

 

    People are performative (as am I) because they wish to be witnessed. I write in my Notes app, but when I can, I edit it to be able to post on my private Instagram. When I write, I send my work to someone to read over, in a subconscious means of getting praise. When I made my Wattpad account at thirteen, all I really wanted was for my work to be read. In a sense, I crave romance because I wish to be witnessed through someone else's eyes. Is that unhealthy? I don't know. Probably. But aren't we all. 

     

 Well, that's what this blog is. Not quite a Notes App, not quite the cottagecore experience of your dreams. Here, we have the inbetween. Enjoy your stay.