No, I Won’t Curb my Enthusiasm

I recently discovered a wonderful woman on Tik Tok, Elyse Myers, who is doing life on her own terms, and hilariously, I might add. Her millions of followers are evidence other people find her wonderful and hilarious as well. Among her many idiosyncrasies, catchphrases, and philosophies is one sentence I have decided to champion as my new mantra to combat the voices in my head that accuse me of being too much.

“Go find less.”

Elyse often includes this sentence in posts as part response to trolls who criticize her brand and part reminder that consumers have a choice in who they want to follow. And this encourages me to be my effervescent, enthusiastic self, even if I’m afraid it might be too much.

Watching Elyse in her ebullience, I was reminded of a time recently when I felt particularly comfortable in my vivacity.

On this particular morning, I arrived at a coffee shop ready to meet my dear friend for companionable side-by-side writing. I had been dreaming about this moment, eager to order my new favorite thing, a matcha latte with oat milk. And, noticing the breakfast menu, I realized I could order a delicious egg bowl with spinach. Perfect fuel for writing.

When I placed my order, already tasting the nutty, herbal flavors, I finished by saying, out loud, “I’m just so excited. I’ve been anticipating the matcha all morning.”

When the barista asked my name, I said Mandy, and then jokingly added, “You could also write, ‘Excited,’” to underscore all that I was feeling at that moment.

Later, when my friend and I were well into our chat/write/chat session, she paused and pointed to my cup. Written at the bottom was, “Mandy is excited!”

Not only was my name written on the bottom of the cup… (photo by author)

“Yes. Yes, she is,” I thought.

I have a long complicated relationship with my enthusiasm and its close relative, excitement. As a child, I was very energetic. And somewhere in those early years, I began to believe I needed to contain it, make it smaller, curb it if you will. I was largely unsuccessful, but I still felt self-conscious when my enthusiasm made itself known.

It is fuzzy how this message grew inside me but bit by bit an idea solidified — I can be too much. My enthusiasm and wide range of feelings were not palatable to people around me and keeping my emotions in check became my first, and most important, goal.

Whether I was born with it, or it’s a byproduct of being the oldest child to young parents stretched thin, I developed a hyper (pun intended) awareness of people around me as well as their opinions of me, regardless if those opinions were true or conjured in my mind.

My radar was especially attuned to judgmental looks if I was being especially enthusiastic. I honed my ability to detect the slightest eye raise, a furrowed brow in my direction, or a disdainful sigh. And I wanted to avoid those nonverbals at all costs.

In my early teens, I coined a term for my vigilance, “annoy-a-phobia.” I had the fear of being annoying and the measure of my daily success was not having annoyed anyone that day. It was an exhausting pursuit, but the alternative, being annoying, felt worse.

It wasn’t a perfect system; sometimes I could be annoying. (Sometimes I wonder if I was just being human and there was little space for that.)

These shifts toward presenting my enthusiasm as palatable to people around me also coincided with my burgeoning vocabulary in adolescence. I was often quick to label myself and my high enthusiasm levels with words like effervescent, vivacious, and dynamic while working to steer clear of hyperactive and excitable.

This took root in my spirit during junior high when standing out was intolerable, and my practice was firmly established in high school when I was desperate to fit in at a new high school in a new town on a different planet called California.

Despite my focused efforts, there were moments when my enthusiasm would unexpectedly burp up when I was just too excited about something. And that something could be anything, a favorite song on the radio, a friend coming to visit, spaghetti for dinner. It was ongoing work trying to figure out the best places to let it burst forth.

High school football games, for instance, were a good place to unleash my enthusiasm. Talking with a boy I liked was not. It was a precarious minefield I attempted to navigate.

In college, I felt a little more freedom to be more Mandy, as I came to see my enthusiasm. But, my annoya-phobia was in full force, after one very memorable encounter my sophomore year.

It was a Monday evening and I had just endured an excruciatingly long three-hour class, where my professor droned on at an achingly slow pace. My exasperation neared such a crescendo that I simply had to release it by sharing it with my roommate.

I was so eager, so enthusiastic to share how painful the class had been that when I found my roommate talking to an RA in the dorm office, I burst into the room and began talking a mile a minute. She was not amused or interested in my enthusiasm for the story and her response was to push me back while angrily declaring, “You can’t just come in here and interrupt people when they’re talking.”

This is an important social skill, not bursting into a room and interrupting people, but it was a hard way to learn it. I was mortified. This was precisely the reaction I worked so hard to avoid. I didn’t ever want to be pushed away, literally or figuratively, again. Message received.

I tucked this memory away along with a high percentage of my enthusiasm and made sure I had better constraints in place for the future. The dilemma is it has meant packing away the essence of me. All the restraining and containing meant it wasn’t just my enthusiasm I was squelching, it was me, my Mandy-ness. I am not me without enthusiasm.

Years ago, my father-in-law gifted my husband and me his old car, a Chrysler sedan in pristine condition. It was an extravagant gift. When we walked out to the car before I drove it home, I noticed my smile threatening to take over my face as I tried to keep from jumping up and down.

My excitement erupted before I could shove it back into its box and put the lid on. I felt incredibly self-conscious being so Mandy in front of my in-laws. I quickly apologized “Sorry. I’m just being so Mandy about it.”

I. Apologized.

In my late 30s, I attended a retreat, “Strength for the Journey,” with a group of close friends. In one of the activities during the weekend, my group of friends joined a wise older woman, a psychologist, who led us through a visualization exercise where we would reveal words that came to us about each other.

The word revealed to me by my group was “Fire.” Our facilitator said she saw in me a fire I should let out. Bright energy. It was in me. My gift. Nothing to apologize for.

Fire. A new synonym to add to my list. A good synonym. An opening. A little encouragement to let out a little more of my enthusiasm.

Now, on the eve of 50, I am ready to be free. To dance in my effervescence. To celebrate with wild excitement. To be fully enthusiastic. And if the voices in my head tell me it’s too much, I’ll respond with one simple phrase, “go find less.”

You Don’t Have to Catch it Just Because They Throw It