Compensation

More than once over the past handful of years I’ve adhered to a contractual rule that my landlord didn’t realize existed.

It’s almost always a quibbling, silly little line-item of no interest or importance to anyone, included in the boilerplate so they’re not liable for some theoretical category of damage that could (maybe, possibly, in some reality) result from some unlikely act of god or war—but I try to work such rules into my thinking and routine, just in case.

I picked up this tendency of (arguably) over-strict contract-adherence when I first decided to try living in the US again after spending the better part of a decade on the road, popping around from country to country for months at a time.

It began as a sort of compensation for my lack of recent, in-country rental history, as my documentation and references from earlier periods of US-based housing had disappeared in the years I’d been gone.

The only credentials I could offer my new, would-be landlords was bank-provided evidence that I had some money socked away and the earnest promise that I wouldn’t set anything on fire, run a drug den, or do any of the other things I expected these lessors to care about.

More recently I’ve learned that renters mostly only care about your criminal and credit history (and I’m in a good spot in both of those regards), but I’ve lately noticed similar preemptive, presumptive counterbalancing attempts in other aspects of my life and habits, as well, primarily aimed at assuaging concerns I worry other people might harbor about my unusual lifestyle and career choices (and in some cases at my own anxieties about potential shortcomings).

In 2016, for instance, I realized that my professional work had become almost exclusively short-term, project-based, and thus incredibly feast-and-famine prone.

I wrote books, I gave talks, I periodically had other little projects here and there, but there wasn’t anything consistent or stable baked into that larger mix.

So when I came up with a project I thought would benefit from constancy—a weekly news analysis podcast—I decided that I would release an episode every week no matter what; nothing would stop me from putting out a new episode every single Tuesday, come what may.

As it turns out, that sort of commitment can help one learn the ropes of podcast-making (and other things) fairly rapidly, and it has indeed served as a self-reminder that I can do difficult things, over time, dependably—even when I’m feeling less than capable of accomplishing anything at all.

It has also been a little much, at times.

I’ve made episodes while sick and barely able to croak comprehendible words into the microphone.

I’ve made episodes from locations where partitioning-off enough aural space to produce something other than a garbled vocal mess was all but impossible.

I made episodes the day after breakups, the day of birthdays and holiday parties, and during, leading up to, and just-following major life milestones.

Many of these over-exertions probably weren’t necessary (or advisable), but part of me felt like if I ever backed down from that cadence, that promise to publish a new episode every single Tuesday, I would be showing the world that I was unreliable, inconsistent, maybe even untrustworthy.

And that almost certainly wouldn’t have been the case.

If one of my favorite podcast hosts failed to produce a show because of sickness or grief or other such tumult, I might be momentarily disappointed to not have a new episode in my feed, but it wouldn’t negatively reshape my perception of them. If anything I would probably respect their (possibly difficult) decision to take a step back and get their house in order.

Over the past year or so I’ve started to address elements of my life that seem like they might be predicated on this sort of overcompensation, rather than rational attempts to balance legit weak-spots in the way I do things.

Efforts that—though ostensibly heroic and the good kind of self-sacrificing—actually probably diminished my capacity to make and live and learn and grow, rather than amplifying it.

I gave myself a week off from that aforementioned podcast at the end of last year, and that was wonderful and liberating and great for my psychological well-being, but also terrifying in an ineffable way.

I personally think it’s healthy to be honest with oneself about weak-spots and areas of possible improvement, and a sign of strength to acknowledge and shore-up these facets when possible (and to look for ways to sustainably compensate for that underperformance when it’s not).

That said, there’s a point at which this sort of self-reinforcement exercise becomes unhealthful and unhelpful, fueled by unwarranted anxieties rather than reality, and at times even wringing us out instead of building us up and helping us become more balanced.

I’ll probably continue reading (and attempting to understand and adhere to) contracts, as that feels like a generally reasonable, bulwarking flavor of gap-filling, but I do feel like I’ve proven my credibility (to myself) in many of the spaces I’ve previously flagged as potential vulnerabilities. And my hope is that this’ll help me work more give into some of the structures shaping my life that, up till this point, have been deleteriously rigid.

If you found value in this essay, consider buying me a coffee :)





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