Thursday reflections on Halloween, performance, and the exhausting work of seeming normal.

Tomorrow, some people will put on costumes and call it Halloween. And I think there’s something honest about that. It’s the one day a year we can openly admit we’re performing a version of ourselves that isn’t quite real.

To me, what’s interesting is what we choose to become. The accountant dresses as a pirate. The quiet librarian becomes a vampire. The anxious parent transforms into a fearless superhero. We don’t just wear costumes. We inhabit our alter egos, the parts of ourselves we don’t usually let show. 

For one night, we give ourselves permission to be the contradiction we actually are, all the time.

But what about the other 364 days? The versions we perform when we’re not calling it a costume?

The performance nobody calls performing

I don’t live in a community where most people know what I do. I’m just Jonni, the lady with the ducks. But every now and then, someone finds out I’m a psychologist, and the energy shifts immediately.

They get self-conscious and start editing themselves. I can see them running a quick mental inventory: Did I seem normal enough? Did I say anything that revealed too much? Am I being analyzed right now?

The irony is exquisite. They’re not wondering if I’m performing. They’re suddenly performing for me! They’re trying to seem like they have it together, like they’re the kind of person who doesn’t need a psychologist. 

As if there’s a “right” way to be. As if normalcy is something you can successfully fake if you just remember to smile at the correct moments and keep your contradictions hidden. lol

The exhausting math of acceptable versions

I know we all do this to varying degrees. We curate different versions of ourselves for different contexts. The professional self who shows up on LinkedIn. The family self who shows up for holiday dinners. The social media self who posts only the highlights. The private self who unravels on the sofa.

And we’re good at it. We’ve been practicing since childhood, learning which parts get approval, which parts get judged, and which parts are safe to show versus which need to stay hidden.

But sustained performance is absolutely exhausting. And it creates a strange internal fragmentation where you start to lose track of which version is actually you.

Are you the calm, capable professional? The overwhelmed parent? The enlightened spiritual seeker? The person who has it together or the one barely holding on? The answer, of course, is yes. All of it. Simultaneously. Often contradictorily.

The complexity we’re not supposed to admit

We contain multitudes. We feel different things in different moments. We behave in ways that seem inconsistent to outside observers because they’re only seeing fragments of a much larger, more complicated picture.

You can be deeply spiritual and still petty sometimes. You can love your life and still want to burn it all down on a given Tuesday afternoon. You can be committed to growth and still choose familiar dysfunction because it’s comfortable. You can know better and still not do better. You can hold opposing truths in your chest without either one being a lie.

That’s not hypocrisy. It’s being human.

The only thing that stays relatively consistent — if you’re self-aware — is your core moral code. Those are the values that don’t shift with context or convenience. But even then, how those values express themselves can look wildly different depending on the circumstances.

What authenticity actually costs

Real authenticity isn’t performing wellness or enlightenment or having-it-together. It’s not the Instagram version of vulnerability where you share your struggle only after you’ve overcome it and packaged it into inspiration.

Real authenticity is the whole contradictory mess. The parts that don’t make sense together, mixed with the moments when you’re wise and petty in the same breath. The days when you’re generous AND resentful, open AND defended, brave AND terrified.

But you can’t expand into what wants to grow if you’re still performing the acceptable version.

The breakthrough energy I wrote about on Sunday, the sense that things are finally flowing after months of resistance, only works if you drop the performance long enough to let what actually wants to come through, show itself. Not the version you think should be, or the growth that looks good on paper. The real thing, in all its complicated, contradictory glory.

Who finds their way here

The people who eventually work with me (almost always through referral) aren’t looking for someone to help them perform better. They’re exhausted from performing. They want someone who won’t flinch at the contradictions, or ask them to be consistent or tidy or easier to understand.

They’re tired of seeming normal. They want to be seen as they actually are.

And that’s the work, really. It’s not becoming some perfected version of yourself as much as just stopping the performance long enough to remember what’s true under all the costumes you’ve learned to wear.

Tomorrow you might dress up as a pirate or a vampire or a superhero, and you’ll call it Halloween. And you’ll be honest about the fact that you’re pretending.

But maybe the real question is, what are you pretending the other 364 days? And what becomes possible when you finally stop?

I appreciate all the complicated, contradictory humans who refuse to perform simplicity,

Jonni