Before the meeting you take a breath and you check yourself. You straighten your shirt. You mentally rehearse a version of who you are about to be. Confident. Competent. The kind of person they expect. After the meeting you replay it in your head. Did you come across right? Did they see what you wanted them to see? Did the image hold?
K's claim about the self is industrial. The "me" isn't a stable thing you have. It's a thing you make. All day. The printing press runs constantly, producing images of who you are for an audience that consists primarily of yourself. The images get displayed inwardly, evaluated, adjusted, redisplayed. The self is the running of this press.
Most people think they HAVE a self. K's reframe: you have a self-MAKING. The press is the self. Stop the press for a moment — actually stop, not theoretically — and what's there? Not a hidden true self. Just the cessation of the manufacturing. Quiet. Air. Whatever was being held together by the constant production loosens.
The press has a feel. A slight tension in the chest. A low-grade rehearsal running underneath conversation. The body doing the work of being someone. When the press stops, that tension goes. Most people don't have language for this experience because they've never stopped the press long enough to feel its absence. The press has been on since they could speak.
You are not a self that has images. You are an image-making process that produces a "self" as its main output. The output gets defended. The process keeps running. K's whole concern was what happens if the process slows.