In 2020 during the COVID lockdowns I was spiraling mentally and in a bid to stem that spiral I started taking very long walks. I cannot remember why I took the first walk or if I went on that walk because I thought it would help but boy did walking help. Walking helped so much that it would become pretty integral to my life and wellbeing. 

Feeling agitated? I take a walk.

Overwhelmed? I take a walk.

Unable to focus? I take a walk. 

But this essay isn’t about walking per se. Lately I decided to start replacing my morning walks with morning runs, at least on some days. I’m not sure when exactly I made that decision but the decision has taken effect and I’m running on some mornings now.

This morning I woke up late. I typically want to begin running by 5am and be back home long before people are out and about. But, I woke up by 6:30am today and almost decided against running today because I woke up late, but at the last moment I decided to run all the same. 

And while I was out running today, I realised that the reason I picked such an early time (5am) to go running was because I didn’t want people to see me “running badly.” I’m very self conscious about being seen doing something I don’t typically do because I don’t want to be seen doing it badly. 

I’ll come back to that in a bit, but first it’s important to note that my routine up until this point has mostly consisted of a 1 hour walk in the morning. And I don’t think I have ever woken up at 5am specifically to walk. Typically I wake up by 7am and walk till 8am. But even on days I sleep late and wake up late, I still walk. I have woken up by 10am at least once and still gone for that one hour walk. 

My point? I’m not self conscious about walking? I don’t particularly care who sees me walking, but I am deeply self conscious about running. Again, I do not want to be seen “running badly.” And I think this ties into my deep fear of failing at things publicly.

I don’t want people to see that I can’t run as well, as consistently, or for as long as a really good runner. And this is absolutely crazy because I just started running! Of course I can’t run as well as people who have been running for a while. Why should I expect to?

But for some reason, I do. I expect myself to run as well as the pros even though I’m just starting out. And this goes beyond running too, I expect myself to write code as well as the prodigies in the movies I saw growing up even though I’ve been coding for only a few months. I expect myself to design as well as the guys on Spotify’s design team even though I only finally cracked my Figma course open a few days ago.

And of course, a corollary to these unreasonable expectations is that I don’t show my work in public at the beginning stages of trying to learn something. An approach which is just foolish and ultimately makes it more difficult to learn because an integral part of learning anything, especially in the beginning, is getting feedback from people who are farther along than you in that discipline. But because I hold myself to unreasonable standards and don’t want to fail in front of people, I hide my work from much needed scrutiny until I think it is good enough to be shown.

Exhausting.

Today I almost stopped running when I realised that people were beginning to come out and go about their day. I had to keep reminding myself that I’m running for me not for the public gaze. And what makes this all the more absurd is that these people most likely don’t even care about me. They’re probably absorbed in their own life and its challenges and make no more than a passing mental note of the guy running. But there I was torturing myself nonetheless. Crazy.

At any rate, this is one thing I’d like to work on during what’s left of 2024, this deep seated fear of doing things badly in public, even when I’m just starting out. To borrow a quote from the great Nigerian philosopher Speed Darlington, “may self consciousness die ten times!”

(Somewhat random, but, I don’t think I had this self consciousness when I started walking but I think that is partly due to the fact that I started walking during lockdown and everyone was indoors, and partly due to the fact that there is technically no right or wrong way to walk so I can’t really.)