I Am In My Cringe Era. And I'm Hating It
I used think I had embraced my inner nerd, but recently I've experienced a kind of cringe I'm finding hard to bear.
I first started to embrace my cringe when I was in my late twenties. I had done a bit of therapy and realised the things that made me happy weren’t necessarily the things other people thought were cool.
While my friends liked clubbing and listening to niche Swedish artists, I liked Hamilton and Harry Styles, preferring green juice after yoga to greening out after a big night. While people on Instagram seemed to enjoy parties and travel and rubbing shoulders with celebrities, I was more into reading and connection, cooking and mornings and hugs.
I read two things around that time that helped me embrace my nerdy, dorky, joyous self. The first was a post I saw on Instagram, back when my feed showed me more than just GRWM videos and clips of Paul Mescal, that read something like: Being in your late twenties means rediscovering everything you loved at 13, but without the shame. I’d never felt so seen.
The second was a quote from Matt Haig, which remains one of my favourites to this day. He writes: “Never be cool. Never try to be cool. Never worry what the cool people think. Head for the warm people. Life is warmth. You’ll be cool when you’re dead.”
And then, cringe had a whole cultural moment in 2022, when Cringe Queen Tay Tay encouraged NYU grads to embrace it. ‘No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe, retrospectively,’ she said. The quote ‘I am cringe but I am free’ entered the mainstream. Cringe, it seemed, was cool.
I loved these quotes, especially when ‘being cringe’ simply involved enjoying Harry Styles, which was easy, because literally everyone in the world loves Harry except, like, seven of my friends.
But now, in the wild west of freelance life, I have to try hard at things I’m not yet good at, which is a kind of cringe I cannot bear. Posting on Instagram is PAINFUL. Pitching to editors is UNBEARABLE. Having a smaller audience than I’m used to is DEMORALISING.
After a decade of following a well-worn path, staying in my lane, keeping my dorky self hidden at home, I’m trying something new. Writing this newsletter. Training to be a Pilates instructor. Putting myself ‘out there’. And for all the mid-morning walks and long lunches and freedom it brings, it also feels awful, at least 30% of the time.
We always hear these kinds of stories from people when they’ve ‘made it’. When they’re on stage like Taylor Swift, or have a hugely successful podcast like Elizabeth Day, or have a bunch of best-selling books. We rarely hear from people who are still wading through their cringe era, figuring it out along the way.
But there’s value in hearing about the process, the self-doubt, the sheer mortification, from someone who is still in it. Because so many of us are here. Whether you’re falling in love or beginning a new job or trying a new skill or starting a band or launching a business, being a beginner, being cringey, is the price we pay for growth. It’s the price we pay for transformation.
I’d like to skip over this cringy bit of my life. The ‘trying’ bit. I’d love to fast forward to the part where hundreds of thousands of people subscribe to Oceanic Feelings and I own a wildly successful Pilates studio and I say things like ‘OMG! I’ve received so many emails from readers asking me to talk about my favourite books!’ and then dash off a quick article about it that goes viral and nobody ever criticises me or thinks I’m cringe because I am universally beloved like Keanu Reeves.
But there’s no fast forward button. There’s no way to skip this bit.
I just have to keep trying. Keep writing. Keep practicing my teaching. Keep doing what I enjoy. Keep being myself, in all my nerdy, cringy glory. I have to keep believing that there’s space for my voice, that even though the world is full of women like me writing articles like this, there might just be something unique I can offer.
Because when I look at other people doing things they might find cringe, I just see joy. I see loved ones making music and I adore them for it. I see friends launching side hustles and I follow with pride. I see people from high school starting podcasts and I am so inspired by them.
At the end of the day, nobody cares that much about what you’re doing. And if people do judge you for being cringe? Fuck ‘em. Because while they’re criticising, you’re creating, which means you’ve already won.