Be Authentic.

What does it mean to be "Authentic?" How does that change when you read the room? How can we "keep it real?" Why this is so important in the Age of AI.

I was spoiled. In my career “bubble” there were many safeguards to avoid fears of someone “taking my job.” The concept of “train your replacement” was instilled early and was a key to mission success. I imagine that allowed us to operate with a sense of authenticity I took for granted.

One major change I’ve felt in the civilian world and struggled to identify until this week: my authenticity is always questioned. So is my integrity.

If that was the case in my career, it was the exception, not the rule. Or, I’m a completely different person. Or both.

This doesn’t mean everyone assumes I’m “wearing a mask”, being fake, or lying. It just means the default assumption is I’m simply “going along to get along” or “playing nice with others.” When I “keep it real” it tends to surprise people. ;p

Being a civilian is new to me.

I am attempting assimilation into my own native culture.

Authenticity is a big key to figuring out how to do this. It will also be a major guardrail in my writing. :)

I am swimming in a sea of advice and there are two things that keep coming up here, stand out above the rest, and seem legit:

Write more.

Be authentic.

In the subtitle of my guardrail post I acknowledged I need to do these two things. These guardrails sat at the top of my article largely unnoticed, but vitally important.

Last week I shared my thoughts on writing more.

Today, I want to address the other big guardrail of Authenticity.

Let’s go. :)

Outline:

• What is Authenticity?

• Read The Room: Authenticity Perceived in Different Situations

• “Keep it Real”

• Bonus: Authenticity in the Age of AI

What is Authenticity?

I’m pretty sure my way of being authentic or “keeping it real” has been a bit off-putting to many people. For the most part, I was either oblivious or frankly didn’t care. I’d rather have a little friction in personal (and professional) relationships than build them on false premises, shaky foundations, or manufactured smiles. That is authenticity to me, or at least, it has been.

Writing has made me chose to become more authentic. Now I need to figure out what that means and how to apply it in my life going forward. 8^)

If I don’t like my job, I’m not going to spend the day telling everyone I hate it. That may be authentic, but it’s stupid - and lacks empathy. In the same scenario, plastering a fake smile on my face and spouting copium¹ to my colleagues may be empathetic but certainly isn’t authentic. I envy people who easily find a healthy balance between those two.²

When I looked for thoughts on authenticity, I found many others who captured the idea I wish to convey quite well. According to them,

Authenticity means:

• You have no image to maintain

• You can be yourself

• Consider “Fears” vs “Values”

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No Image to Maintain

Ana Calin

figured this out.

The best part of being authentic is that there is no image to maintain.

Why waste energy on something generally unnecessary?³

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Be Yourself

In Voice Acting: The YOU Part Matters

Where should we direct that energy we spent on maintaining an image? Perhaps we should direct some of it inward.

In my case, right now, that means examining some rough edges of my personality and perceptions of the world and trying to figure out how to smooth those out. I keep my head on straight in the process by remembering my perspective, my voice, is unique and important.

Samara Bay

speaks here from the perspective of voice acting. I believe she nails the concept of Authenticity and being yourself.

She and I had a single session, and all we did was talk. But I told her what I’m telling you—that our voices reflect our life experience. That our life experience counts. That owning it is the new sound of power. That if authenticity means talking about what you care about it like you care about it, the YOU part matters. How do you sound when you care?

The Radical Act of Being Cool With Your Voice

I’ve used the phrase “finding my voice” here several times. This article really spoke to me about that concept.

Another quote stood out to me from

Ilyse Hogue

:

She said simply: be proud of your life. The one you’ve actually lived, including the setbacks and mistakes, what you might be ashamed of or not yet over or what happened to you when you didn’t get a say in the matter.

Take the time to own all the parts.

If you’re going to speak up in any way, own all the parts. You don’t have to speak about them all—but show up as someone who doesn’t need to hide.

My takeaways: Reflect. Own all the parts. We don’t need to say or share everything to be authentic.

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“Fears” vs “Values” - Writing Online and Valuing Privacy

Mollie Fox

doesn’t use the word “authentic.” Her video primarily addresses the fears of writing online and balancing that desire with valuing her privacy.

One key thing I hear perspective on grace:

I trust myself now to know that my future self will not be embarrassed about the fact that I was trying and learning and growing. I trust that my future self will have grace for me now and be proud of what I'm trying to do now.

To me, this is a shining example of authenticity.

Occasionally, being authentic has gotten me in trouble or added some unnecessary tension in relationships. Once or twice I may have gone a little further than I should have here by oversharing or dipping a tire off the road and denting a guardrail that direction. I’m workin’ on it. :)

I hope my future self will give me grace for doing my best now to heal and grow.

Read the Room: Authenticity Perceived in Different Situations

Many times, we don’t recognize our opportunities to be authentic, or we don’t seize them. Often, we run on a form of auto-pilot going about our regular routine and don’t give authenticity much thought.

An argument could be made that “play nice with others” means “don’t be yourself” or “be less authentic.” We recognize times when we temper our “true selves” for appropriate situations. After all, we are civilized beings, or should be. ;p

Most of my life I’ve tried (and failed) to hold my tongue or stay silent when I want to say something and know I shouldn’t. Apparently, I have a rather strong personality. Perhaps part of the reason I’ve tried so hard and so often to temper or moderate my actions is because they are frequently over the top. Go figure.

“Shut up and color” worked just fine for me - when my agency was removed. The Air Force painted very clear lines of how much authenticity was warranted in most cases. Thinking more about it, social situations in general are where I tend to have the most difficulty. They tend to have fewer rules - written ones, anyway.

Searching for perspective this week, the most common comparison I saw to being authentic was oversharing. That made me realize the perception of oversharing vs being honest or authentic is really based on “the room.”

Civilian life is different than military life. Home life is different than work life. What we should share and how our authenticity is perceived changes based on our environment.

I spent most of the last 7 years in small and rather restrictive environments — then suddenly found myself with very few guardrails. Maybe I should have expected a need to re-wire my brain a little bit. ;p

Authenticity “Rooms”

Perhaps we should consider different environments or relationships like rooms. Each environment has a slightly different set of rules. Authenticity can be perceived differently in each room.

This is a flexible framework; your beliefs and life situations are likely rather different than mine. Every family is different. Every job is different.

Some of these may also shift and blend together from time to time. Individual events (weddings, new job, births, deaths, graduations) may blur some lines and make areas overlap.

God - Some religious faiths use a relationship with deity as an example of the most open or authentic relationship possible. If there’s a place to have “no filter,” this relationship is probably where it belongs. Authenticity should be raw.

Spouse or Partner - About as authentic as we should be. We’re in this together. Authenticity should look like no, or very, very few secrets.

Family - Authenticity here may involve holding back, setting clear boundaries, and adding a distinction from your personal life.

Friends and Colleagues - While it may be important to craft or conform to an “image” we should make sure we don’t lose our authentic selves in the process.

Online - Social Media - These relationships can be complicated and vary widely based on platform and your friends list. So much of what we see is not authentic - and perhaps we don’t want it to be. Oversharing is easy. Connection is possible and being authentic helps.

Substack - I need to mention this because it is quite personal to me right now. Writing here is a unique, new, and different “room” for me. This post is my way to define the important guardrail of being authentic. I think I’m doing okay with keeping authenticity in my writing, but part of my struggle here is with branding and marketing. It still seems “fake” or not authentic, probably because I’m not sure what this is - yet. As we go along here, I’ll have to figure out the brand, how to be authentic with it, and how to separate myself from it or integrate into it… but that’s a discussion for another time.

Personally, I prefer as little difference as necessary from room to room. I’d like to be the same, authentic “me” all time. Real life doesn’t typically allow a full alignment so we have to stay flexible.

Keep it Real

I’ve always been a somewhat naïve person — certainly when it comes to perceiving the perceptions of others. I’m not even sure exactly what that means, but like so many things, I’m workin’ on it. That character trait (flaw? feature?) was reinforced in my military career because it was relatively safe to assume that where it mattered, my peers saw things the same way and wanted the same things I did. In that sense, being authentic was easy.

When I said things that seemed out of place, I frequently said I was trying to “Keep It Real” — but I never really stopped to think about what that meant… until now.

Here are three examples of what I think it means to “Keep it Real”

“Keeping it Real” means saying things no one else will say even though they need to be said.

Leon Macfayden

writes real, raw stories of life as a police officer on the streets, and his decades long recovery that followed. In “polite society” we don’t really talk about trauma and recovery. Leon “keeps it real” at his Substack,

Trauma to Strength

. His writing is hard-hitting and authentic.

“Keeping it Real” means to recognize the outward image we project and then to adjust to be more authentic.

I will be more authentic here by making my “About” page more ‘professional.’ It is raw and rough around the edges. That’s fine, and certainly authentic. But now that I know a bit more about how it will be perceived, and perhaps more importantly, who I want to speak to when they perceive it… Making the page more professional is not just marketing or branding. It’s being more authentic.

My About page is just one small example of an outward image I can easily adjust to ensure more authenticity. Perhaps there are real life symbols of “about pages” I should work on…

“Keeping it Real” means oversharing - sometimes.

By writing here, even people close to me are learning things about me. Not because I was hiding anything before, but because this is a different venue, or a different “room.”

In my Glass Ball analogy I felt I approached that line of “oversharing.” It concerned me so much I closed the loop in my next missive. It probably seemed like I overshared because I left out the most important part of the story.

Bottom line, I will be authentic here by being open and honest. Sometimes that may look like oversharing. :)

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Wrap-Up

I will try to remember to be myself, respect that my voice is unique, balance my fears with my values, remember to read the room, and keep it real.

I hope to remain authentic in my writing and with everything I present here to you, my dear reader.

I hope these thoughts help you find more authenticity in your life. Please add a comment below if you find something particularly useful or insightful.

Thank you again for your time. I‘ll see you next Saturday.

Take care,

- jofty 8^)

Bonus: Authenticity in the Age of AI

2025 is going to be an eye-opening year for anything and everything “AI.” This simple sub-heading could become an entire publication of its own. For today it deserves a mention because I believe authenticity is going to become increasingly difficult to find in our online world.

Keeping up with AI growth is going to be impossible for the experts, so I won’t try here. AI fascinates me. I’m trying to stay informed but not ready to dive in. I told my kids that in 2025 I would likely “develop a relationship with an AI.” Their reaction was… odd. It took me a few minutes to explain my intentions (to use AI as a productivity tool) and calm them down. ;p

There are plenty of AI tools out there already in effective, daily use all around us. In the writing community, AI tools are used for everything from analytics to marketing to actual content generation. Though you could argue a spell checker or grammar checker is an “acceptable” AI tool, waters get a little muddy with current advancements…

Regardless, we are already searching for authentic content. I believe

Michael Simmons

nailed it when he said:

We'd be living in a world where human-generated ideas and actions would be like rare artifacts in an ocean of AI-driven activity.

If you’re curious about the current state of AI or where we are going, this article provides a fascinating perspective. 2025 is going to be an interesting year on the AI frontier.

Convergence Effect: Why Artificial Superintelligence Will Arrive Faster Than Experts Predict

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1. From Wiktionary.org :

Blend of cope (“delusion, coping mechanism”) +‎ opium. First cited usage points back to the album entitled Copium released by American rapper Keak da Sneak in 2003. The term was popularized in 2020 by a reaction image of Pepe the Frog hooked up to a gas cylinder labeled "copium". Sometimes reanalyzed as cope +‎ -ium.

Noun

copium (uncountable)

1. (Internet slang, originally 4chan) A metaphorical opiate taken in order to cope with loss or disillusionment, often leading to one becoming detached from reality and in denial of their situation.

   Cryptobros have been huffing copious amounts of copium after yesterday's devastating Bitcoin crash.

2. Personal Note: I’m pretty sure I’ve been hypersensitive for a long time. That doesn’t pair well with wearing my emotions on my sleeve. I instinctively assume every question is a critical inquiry - Why? I’m being authentic, why would they question me? I tend not to ask probing questions. Why? I don’t want to question someone’s integrity or intelligence - or authenticity

This was different as a flight examiner. As far as I know, I only made one person cry.

In a similar vein, when people express interests that align with mine I tend to mistake “play nice with others” for authenticity. I’ve mentioned my challenges with balance and moderation repeatedly here. This is another relevant area. I don’t typically do anything half-heartedly. I forget that many people do. When I agree to something I’m likely to do so understanding there is mutual, enthusiastic agreement.

I’m starting to realize there have been many, many times in my life when I interpreted someone’s placating agreement or insincere offer to help as authentic.

One very unique thing about writing here — many people have told me they like what I write - for different reasons. I don’t think those comments are fake. Not most of ‘em, anyway. I think those comments are authentic. Most of ‘em, anyway. ;^D

3. Yes, there are many times when maintaining an “image” is important and necessary. With the examples of being professional, or showing up to formal occasions, there are sometimes rigid rules that dictate the image we present. I’m talking about in general, everyday life… we waste time and energy maintaining images that aren’t always helpful or healthy.