Self-Doubt Part 1-Of Caramel Lattes and People Watching

This is part one of a two-part series in which I look at ways I’ve underestimated myself, and how I came to realise maybe I’m not as terrible as I thought.

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I’ve always underestimated myself.

As most teenagers do, I felt self-doubt about everything and anything I did. From my schoolwork to socialising with people my age to just doing basic chores. There was always something to worry about, always some self-imposed expectation that I was failing to live up to.

That has gotten better, though. Now that I’m a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and a little bit more sure of things, I don’t doubt myself as much. And yet I still find myself subconsciously doubting my own actions and abilities.

For example, I’d always assumed, and rightly so in a way, that I had a short attention span. Even writing this right now I’m constantly distracted by the plethora of people around me, shuffling and chatting and getting on with their lives while I watch them with curiosity.

I will admit that I enjoy people watching, despite how creepy of a hobby it sort of is. I just find people inherently fascinating, mainly because I don’t understand them in the slightest, despite being one. Watching them interact with each other and chat is always really interesting, and I honestly could spend hours just observing these humanoid creatures in their natural habitat.

A really great place to do this is in coffee shops. Now, I really love coffee. Or, rather, I like one coffee in particular: a caramel latte. Good God do I love caramel lattes. They’re my go to choice in whatever coffee shop I go to, whether it’s a big chain, or a small business.

Because of where my college is situated, there aren’t a lot of big chain brands around. There are no Costas, no Starbucks, no Café Nero’s. There is, however, a lovely little café that has become my frequent haunt, and will likely remain so until the very day I leave college.

But I never did any work there.

Whenever the thought would cross my mind, a voice would always say, “Don’t be silly! You can’t possibly concentrate on working in a place with people milling around you, don’t be absurd!”

Admittedly there was and still is a voice that says, “Also, you really can’t be bothered anyway, can you?”

But, I digress.

The point is I never believed I had the capacity to work where there wasn’t complete and utter silence.

I never tried, though. I told myself something I didn’t know for a fact.

Now I’m taking the whole writing thing a bit more seriously, I decided to try it. It seems to be a cliché amongst most writers that they spend all their time drinking coffee in coffee shops and furiously typing/writing within them.

So, one day, I decided to try it. “It won’t work,” I remember telling myself, “But there will be some coffee, so that’s something.”

I then proceeded to walk (I absolutely despise buses, you see, and would much rather walk everywhere) to the nearest hub of activity, and headed into the Café Nero there.

I bought myself a large caramel latte, and sat down.

Then I didn’t do anything. I’d gotten my laptop out, and just stared at it for a few minutes.

“What’s the point? You’ll just get distracted, you already are!”

And I was. I kept looking everywhere and at everything, barely paying attention to my computer. I thought it was hopeless.

“But you’ve not tried,” I told myself. “At least give it a damn try you lazy bastard!”

So, reluctantly, I put in my headphones, put on some music (I use a soundtrack of a video game I really like, if anyone’s interested I’ll link it in the comments) and got stuck in.

That day, over four hours, I ended up writing over thirteen thousand words. Half of which was planning for a story, the other was completely a short story.

Now, I’m not sat here bragging about this. I’m not holding up a sign saying, “LOOK AT ME, I WROTE THIRTEEN THOUSAND WORDS, I AM A TRUE WRITING PRODIGY THAT NOBODY ELSE CAN EVER MATCH.”

But I am proud of the fact that I managed to sit down, with my coffee, in the middle of a bunch of people and actually produce some work. The word count doesn’t matter. I genuinely didn’t think I could. And why? Because I didn’t try.

I don’t want to make this blog a super preachy, endless amount of optimism type thing. But from that experience I did genuinely learn something. I learned that maybe I should stop doubting myself so much, and maybe I should try new things as opposed to just assuming.

Because assuming, sometimes, merely holds you back.

I apologise for the somewhat ranty and perhaps not particularly interesting nature of this post. I wanted to put it out here so that you, the reader, can get a bit of information on how my mind works and the sort of madness that goes on within it.

In the final part of this ‘series’ of blog posts, I’m going to talk about my actual writing, and how I thought I was terrible at a specific type of genre and then promptly gave up on it for a long, long time.

Until somebody took my sandwich.

But that’s a story for another time. Thank you very much for reading, and hopefully see you back here again soon,

J.Fenton.