The Terrible Trivium

daniel jacob self
May 20, 2023
3 min read

Updated: Jun 27, 2024

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❣️ Are you a current client? First time here?

I'm self conscious

I want to take a moment to talk about what you're going to hear here.

This is a place where, through the medium of heightened, poetic prose music, and sometimes even dance, everything from the minutia of day to day neuroses — so often written off as petty or melodramatic — to the depths of isolation and despair — so often obfuscated, lest it show us to be weak or sick or incapable — can be given voice without judgment.

Many of us silence these parts of ourselves, but especially, ironically, those of us who facilitate healing for others.

All of the philosophies and practices I share in my writing and my facilitation are the fruits of my own lifelong healing journey. The wisdom that I've been gifted by mentors and family and friends. The community around me and the community within me. All the parts of me: the angry, the hurt, the joyful, the resilient, the despairing.

So much of what I'm able to offer to those I work with comes from some initial moment of pain or discomfort in me that has led me to seek out greater wholeness. Which I'm then able to share with you: my community and my clients.

So often we see the fruits of a healing journey, but don't get any insights into the labor: the twists and turns along the way.

We see the shiny outcomes, but not the pain that often motivated us to seek the healing out in the first place, or keeps us committed to the work of collective healing.

So Self Conscious is, in essence, the place where I honor my 'uglier' sides. The parts of me, that in my journey of learning to care for them, have proven that old Leonard Cohen quote so very true.

"Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Self Conscious is also the place where I honor my inner angsty teen and, let's be real, my inner angsty adult! I hope it might speak to yours as well.

However, please know that the monologues in Self Conscious, while based on my own experiences, are works of artistic expression.

Some of them come from different parts of my life. Some of them were written when I was much younger or are about experiences when I was much younger. Some of them are amalgamations of different moments in time, sometimes told with different details for the sake of the heart of the artistic expression of each piece.

As Pablo Picasso once said,

"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie. That makes us realize the truth. At least the truth that is given to us to understand."

So my only request in breaking with the norms that would encourage me to keep this form of artistic expression very separate from the rest of my work in this world is this:

If you are someone I work with in a coaching, therapeutic, or facilitating capacity, please take a moment to discern for yourself if you would like to hear these more vulnerable parts of my journey.

For some, it can be radically humanizing and affirming to hear being able to see the humanity and vulnerability of someone who holds space for us and offers guidance. For some, it can feel off putting or distracting: taking away from our experience of having a place we're able to go that can be wholly and fully about our experience without the complexities that can come from the awareness of another person's struggles, feelings, differences, and similarities.

So I ask you to give yourself the gift of discerning for yourself.

What would be most in alignment with your own healing journey right now?

And to remember that what you do here will not necessarily be current time, literal truth, but artistic expression: drawn from experiences across my lifetime— some of it expanded or shifted for artistic purposes.

All that being said... if you decide, you'd like to listen. I hope you enjoy.

I encourage you to listen with the parts of yourself that perhaps have always felt too melodramatic, or too much, too sensitive, or all alone in parts of your pain.

I hope you can laugh with me at the neuroses and perhaps cry with me at the moments of hopelessness. Some perhaps relatable and some perhaps very different to your unique travels through this sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful journey of life.

If you do proceed, thank you for receiving these vulnerable parts of me.

If you decide not to proceed, thank you for honoring what feels right to you right now.

If you do proceed, I hope if nothing else, these pieces resonate with and help certain vulnerable parts of you feel they deserve expression. No matter how small or how large.

And as always, please join in by commenting below.

I'd love to hear what you connect to, what you feel moved by, and what comes up for you as you listen.

Because ultimately...

I don't know.

What do you think?

I'm self conscious

At this point, I'm becoming increasingly certain that I may be trapped in my own custom tailored Matrix-like purgatory.

If Sartre's Hell was Other People, I think mine might be Comparative YouTube Videos...

There's this book I read as a child. It's called The Phantom TollBooth, and in it there's one character that's always stuck with me — or rather there's one act brought about by this one character that's never left me.

The character is called The Terrible Trivium.

And the task he asks our hero to help him complete is to move a pile of sand from one place to another — grain by grain — using a pair of tweezers.

Again and again in my life, I find myself deep diving down rabbit holes of preparatory tasks I believe at first to be deeply meaningful, only to find myself days, weeks, sometimes months later feeling completely sucked in by them, consumed by them, and with very little, if not nothing to show for it. And it always somehow relates to the trappings, tools, and techniques associated with a certain meaningful project or undertaking I wish to embark upon.

Whether it's finding the best website builder, the best online course builder, the best podcast host, the best microphone for that podcast, the best blog host, the best video editor, the best note taking app, the best note taking technique, the best all in one... Whatever, the best way to organize quotes, the best way to highlight quotes, the best way to do something with the quotes you've highlighted after you organize them...

A particularly insightful, incisive, and painfully poignant quote from the Terrible Trivium is when he reveals his reason for being — his foundational argument:

"If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones... which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing."

So, okay, I've been through this tweezer squeezing, grain of sand transporting act enough times to see that — well — I devote exponentially more time to the trappings of the creative act than to the act itself.

What is so terrifying that I have to cram full every moment of my time sinking into the consumer capitalist wonderment of comparison videos and free trials, ordering and returning and canceling and signing up... Abandoning this service when I discover it doesn't have that one feature I really need and moving over to this service, which does that better, but misses out on this... before I ultimately realize that the feature most important for me to fully express my creative vision... Well... it seems that actually this is missing that feature. ... Why did I cancel that first service again? Maybe that really was the right one... ultimately...

What is so terrifying?

I suppose... upon reflection... Everything.

Everything to do with the act of simply saying, "good enough." Good enough for now, good enough to begin, good enough to engage in the hard work of the thing itself. Trusting the value of the work will shine through the imperfection of the tool.

Because that's the other thing: while all of this obsessive researching, comparing, and trying out unfolds, I drink less water. I move my body less. I eat poorly, I sleep more irregularly. All of the structures that support my greatest wellbeing and creativity begin to crumble in service of the pursuit of the tool sets that will most perfectly aid the manifestation of my greatest wellbeing and creativity...

I've been through it enough times by now to see it... It's not really that subtle, if I'm honest.

However, it would seem I might need just a few more times through this initially appealing and ultimately tortuous pantomime before I'm ready to find a different way to support myself in facing the fear inherent in my creative manifestation day today.

Cuz there's this one app that I think really might work better... I'm just gonna pull up this one video before bed...