Cosplaying As Myself

When you don't have the courage to step into a new version of yourself.

18 months ago, I experienced a system reset—like I was put back to factory settings.

I was in the hospital room with my wife and our newborn daughter (our first) having what felt like a psychedelic experience. If you’ve ever experimented with any type of psychedelic, you know that feeling where the day-to-day hustle of work and business suddenly seems like a ludicrous pattern of behavior we’re all trapped in.

Holding my daughter, between the waves of overwhelming joy, I felt intermittent spikes of panic. The stakes of work had never seemed lower (“who cares?”) while, at the same time, the need to provide had never been higher.

With this new dimension of my life, would I ever truly care about “work” again?

But, like any psychedelic experience, the separation between that moment and my normal, day-to-day reality closed after some time. I was once again a fish, swimming around asking, “What’s water?”

I got back to work, but…it’s never been quite the same.

My values shifted. How I wanted to spend my time shifted. Fundamentally, who I am, completely shifted. I started seeing social media as stealing my (increasingly scarce) attention away from my family and my business, which complicated my feelings about creating content on social media.

I began valuing privacy for me and my family more highly, which is at odds with showing up—visually—on social media and YouTube.

I wanted to talk about these things—and how hard being a new dad is—but that doesn’t really fit inside the Creator Science container.

And would anyone care anyway?

But the business was eight years old. The business, while having it’s own name and brand, was still so tethered to me as an individual creator. I had eight years of showing up as Jay Clouse—the guy behind Creator Science. Only…suddenly…I wasn’t sure who Jay Clouse was.

This has slowly simmered and festered, developing deeply conflicting feelings with my own business. The cognitive dissonance has gotten louder as more time has passed. The business is a machine that runs (to some degree) with or without me. But instead of feeling like I was confidently driving the bus, I began feeling like a passenger to my past decisions—along for a ride I don’t even want to be on some days. Creating content for content’s sake wasn’t exciting. The work suffered. Outcomes from the work suffered.

I’m a new version of myself cosplaying as a former version of myself—because that’s what the business (and presumably the audience) expected.

But is that story true? Is it serving me? At least one of those answers is “no.”

I shared this with my mastermind group—a handful of other creators in The Lab.

One of them, a friend named Austin, asked, “Have you given yourself permission to reinvent yourself?”

I have not.

I think about it all the time. I yearn for it. But I haven’t had the courage.

Our brains are math machines. We can easily calculate a potential loss (like revenue), but have a hard time predicting potential gains with the same confidence. So the equation is one-sided—and it’s not pretty.

But…maybe modeling reinvention is exactly what other creators need to see. And if not creators, people from all walks of life need the courage to reinvent themselves—especially today.

I’m working towards it. My courage grows by the day.

I’m still discovering who new Jay is. But I don’t think I’ll discover my new self until I give myself permission stop cosplaying as my old self.