Mind, Body & Soul Series — Post 4
I was listening to an Adam Buxton podcast — Emma Diddy, as it
happened — and she used a phrase that was slightly coarse and completely
right. Something you’d only say to someone you were comfortable with.
Unselfconscious. Accurate. Funny because of that.
And I thought: that’s the version of a conversation I actually
want.
Not the polished one. Not the one where both people are presenting
their considered selves, choosing words carefully, performing a version
of who they are at their most appropriate.
The one where somebody drops the register because they’ve assessed
the room and decided it’s safe.
🎭 The Abstraction Layer
There’s a concept in software development called an abstraction
layer. It sits between the user and the actual underlying system. It
simplifies the interface, hides complexity, makes things
presentable.
Most people have one of these for social situations.
The abstraction layer is polite, well-presented, carefully modulated.
It’s not dishonest — it’s real, just edited. And in certain contexts
it’s entirely appropriate. Job interviews. First meetings. Professional
settings where the full version of you would be premature or
misread.
The problem is when the abstraction layer becomes the default. When
it runs 80% of the time instead of 20. When the edited version is what
most people see most of the time, and the real version is a pressure
valve that only releases around a small number of people.
The inverse should be true. The edited version for the contexts that
require it. The real one everywhere else.
🔒 Why We Keep It On
There’s a fear underneath the maintained abstraction that’s worth
naming.
If I drop this and people see the actual version — the informal one,
the ranty one, the one that makes jokes in bad taste and interrupts too
quickly and uses the phrase that’s slightly coarse because it’s exactly
right — they won’t like it. Or they’ll think less of me. Or it’ll be
misconstrued.
And sometimes that’s true. Some people genuinely prefer the
abstraction layer version. They find the real version too much.
But those aren’t the people you’re trying to connect with. Those are
the people you’ll spend years performing for without ever building
anything real with, which is its own kind of lonely.
The people you actually want in your life — the ones where the
connection has genuine warmth and depth and that particular quality that
makes you leave a conversation feeling better than when it started —
those people need the real version to show up before the connection can
form.
You can’t have the connection without the visibility.
⏱️ The Timing Question
There is a real question about timing. Not whether to drop the
abstraction layer, but when.
The honest answer is: sooner than you think, later than your
instinct.
Most people err in one of two directions. Either they maintain the
layer indefinitely — polite, pleasant, perfectly managed, and never
getting past surface depth. Or they drop it too fast, in the first
conversation, before there’s been enough exchange to establish trust and
shared register.
The sweet spot is a calibrated read of the room. Is this person able
to receive the real version? Are they offering some version of their
own? Is the energy mutual?
When the answer is yes — even provisionally — let the register drop.
The conversation that follows is usually the one worth having.
🌊 What This Has to Do
With Creative Work
Everything, actually.
The creative voice that resonates — in writing, in painting, in
teaching — is always the real one. The edited version produces
technically competent work that doesn’t make anyone feel anything. The
real one is unguarded enough to let the reader or viewer in.
The posts and articles I’ve written that people respond to most
aren’t the ones where I wrote carefully. They’re the ones where I wrote
honestly. Where I said the thing that felt slightly too exposed to say,
and said it anyway, and it turned out to be the thing other people
hadn’t been able to say themselves.
Your voice — your actual one — is the differentiator. Not the
abstraction layer version. Everyone has one of those. Yours is the one
underneath.
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