If Competence is Hot, What Does That Make Me?

tl;dr - Changing course mid-career means you USED to be really good at what you did for a living.

There’s a concept in romance-reading circles that is both psychologically valid and slightly embarrassing to type: “competency porn.” (Alternatively, “competence kink.”) Don’t worry, this post isn’t about to go adult rated. These are simply tongue-in-cheek ways to describe the benignly enjoyable experience of watching someone do something they’re really, really good at. In a romance book, this is usually one of the romantic leads being skilled in a way that benefits the other. Ex: Your house is falling down? I’m a carpenter!

In today’s update:

• Why Competence is Attractive

• What Competence Means for Our (Okay, My) Self-Image

• My Complete Lack of Competence at This “New Career”

(I understand if you mostly stick around for that last one.)'

Today’s Countdown Clock

It’s June 6th, 2024. Time remaining to become a competent writer:

Click here for more about the countdown.

Competence is Attractive

It just is. Almost certainly for reasons rooted in base physiology. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors benefitted from partnering the best hunter, cook, weaver, etc. Today, this is why we get a thrill watching elite-level athletes compete, or hearing doctors use big words we don’t understand, or watching someone paint perfect edges on a wall without dripping on the baseboards.

Don’t believe me? How often do you watch rec league sports? Or manage to not Google advanced medical terms when your foot hurts? Heck, there’s an entire (hilarious!) Instagram account devoted to mocking carpenterial incompetence:

Source: https://www.instagram.com/pleasehatethesethings

Competence is hot because it signals experience. Dedication. Skill. When someone shows competence at a given pursuit, we gleefully hand them the reins for any and all related challenges, comfortable in the knowledge that they’ve managed this before and can do so again. Which gets me to…

What Competence Means to Our (My) Self-Image

Competence isn’t just about attracting others. We also deeply value it in ourselves. From a very young age, we start to identify areas where we excel. We get positive feedback for being good at something and continue to develop that thing, intuitively understanding that if “good” = praise, “great” = more praise.

The things we are good at become things others value in us, and therefore things we value in ourselves. (This isn’t about us lacking confidence or independence, it’s just a natural outcome of being social creatures.)

By midlife, I suspect many of us have followed this dopamine-triggering cycle down paths we never imagined. For example, things I became unexpectedly good at include:

• Being the professionally comedic party in a Microsoft Teams group chat

• Brokering peace deals across warring departments

• Leading digital transformation initiatives

• Editing any email down to three to five bullets

• Clearing roadblocks for people much smarter than me (literally, anyone who ever reported to me in a professional capacity)

Guess what I don’t do anymore? Any of that.

Now I spend most days sitting alone at a computer. There’s no one to entertain in a group chat. No project to manage other than my daily productivity. Editing still matters, but no one wants their novel formatted as a bulleted list.

This Week’s Crisis of Incompetence

With all that as intro, here’s what I got up to this week. Err…month. In fact, I’ve spent the better part of two months endlessly laboring over a document called a “query letter,” which is a key artifact for securing a literary agent. This letter must sell my 90,000+ word novel — and the person who wrote it — in ~500 words. It must adhere to a strict formula, but also stand out amongst the thousands of such pitches agents receive every week. It’s a piece you know is going directly into a slush pile, and so you write and rewrite every last line, hoping one is attached to a buoy that will bring your pitch to the top.

What does getting to the top of the slush pile get you? A request to send over your manuscript, so that hundreds more pages can be judged on merits you don’t fully understand.

I often tell people that this writing experiment feels like being 22 again, and I don’t mean that in a positive way. I feel like I’ve gone from having 20 years of experience to lean on (competence), to being a Day One new hire who doesn’t even know where the bathrooms are (incompetence).

Before you jump in to reassure me — although don’t let me stop you entirely! — I know this isn’t really a “crisis.” I still have my brain, and my work ethic, and plenty of resources to study as I work to acquire competence in this new field. But I don’t have 20 years. Nor do I have any of the comforting corporate structures of a job matrix, a promotion template, or even a clear set of office politics to navigate.

I just have a dream, and a bit of savings, and an occasionally-flagging willingness to run incompetently into the unknown.

Speaking of which, I could use some motivation on this journey…

Have you ever started something with relatively little competence? Did it work? (Seriously, please tell me it worked.)