I am functioning pretty okay today.
But underneath the functioning, I feel a mix of
anxiety
despair
dread
guilt
shame
embarrassment
uneasiness
disillusionment
Ah....now I'm thinking that the last one might be the cause of the ones above it.
I think what happens is I sometimes feel great joy and excitement about small things. Then I suddenly realize those small things aren't as good as I imagined they would be.
OR...
Is it the opposite?
Are the other feelings causing my joy-for-small-things to fade?
* * *
In other feeling-news, I think I'm torn between three plans.
A) Stop creating new content. Give up as much as possible. Fade into the background. Spend the rest of my life being more of a listener and content consumer. (though still planning to make book-books from stuff I've already written in case it's my destiny to be more appreciated after I'm dead)
B) Keep creating content but expect and be okay with rarely having readers, listeners, viewers, etc. And also that nagging feeling that the little attention I receive is probably hate-reading or pity-reading.
C) Keep creating content. Maybe this will be my year.
C feels incredibly doubtful to me.
A feels the most comfortable to me, but I keep failing at it. Like for example: I'm writing this post.
B is depressing and stressing. It kind of makes me spiral. Because I tend to have this belief that it's my destiny to fail.
I tend to imagine that it's my destiny to create stuff that rarely gets seen and when it does get seen, it's almost always going to be disliked and/or rejected.
And I think that's actually kind of narcissistic, because maybe (I hate to admit this) there's that underlying feeling of: I make good stuff but the universe is punishing me for some reason and no matter how brilliant my creation is, I will continue to be rejected, because....
I'm cursed or something.
You know...instead of having the mentally healthy and reasonable stance of: The content I make is not total shit, but it's a little shitty. Keep working and one day, it might be good...or great.
No...never mind that mindset doesn't work for me.
If I was younger, maybe it would.
Now I'm old and feeling that if, after all these years of writing, I'm not good enough...I will never be good enough.
I mean it's not like I'm a cute little 50-year-old woman that suddenly decided to pick up a writing-hobby. I've been doing this writing and failing thing since the age of twelve.
If I'm a bad writer, it's NOT from a lack of practice and training.
* * *
I have a lot of ageism.
Or maybe it's realism.
I know that people are successful in their 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, etc. I know old people can do great things. But I think usually they were already very successful...or they were at least nicely climbing their way up to success.
I don't think there are many cases of people being failures and then suddenly past 50, they're suddenly successful. Sure. It does happen. But it's rare enough that when it does happen, somewhere someone is probably going to write an inspirational article about it.
* * *
I'm actually now thinking (hoping) that maybe my delusional feelings aren't narcissistic. I think with narcissism, there's a belief that we're brilliant and superior; but other people, because they are inferior, are unable to appreciate our wonderfulness.
I don't feel that.
My feeling is more along the lines of: the content I create is good enough. Like all content, it's going to be brilliant, mediocre, or terrible...all depending on who is reading or hearing it. And not because they are superior or inferior to me but just because we all have different likes and dislikes.
(For example: The Sandman is a 9 to some. For me, it's like...a 7)
What I imagine is, I will continue to fail, because it's my destiny to create stuff that's usually not seen or heard at all. And in the rare cases that it is seen and heard, it's going to be seen and heard by people who don't like me or my creations.
* * *
I think a lot of autistic influencers write angsty stuff like this.
Woe is me.
I'm awkward.
I don't feel loved enough.
I'm a failure.
I've always been unpopular.....
Their content is very relatable to other autistic people.
Then one day it becomes: Oh cool! I have a few followers. This is SO wonderful.
Then: Oh wow! I have two hundred followers. People like me!
Then: If you're interested in supporting me, please join my Patreon. It will give you access to my private chat group.
When they get to the point of being successful influencers, does it make sense for them to continue to take on role of the lonely, rejected, angsty, awkward, autistic person? That's been their shtick. Should they keep on with that?
This is something I've thought about lately but am not personally worried about. Because A) I don't have much hope in being successful B) If my curse and my destiny changes; (yeah, I'm going to fall back on that narrative) even though I have a fair bit of angsty posts like this, I have other stuff as well)
* * *
I turned off comments on this post, and I think I'm going to turn off comments on any future angsty posts like this.
Because
A) I worry, that in parts, it sounds like I'm fishing for compliments.
B) I HATE getting compliments, reassurances, pep talks, etc. when I'm in this kind of mood.
C) If I leave comments open; I see people reading; and no one is saying anything, the automatic assumption is that they hate me, I'm a burden, my blog's a burden, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
* * *
I wish I could say that writing this post has made me feel better about things.
But really...it just makes me feel stressed and behind with the various things I meant to get done today.
* * *
(Edited to add)
I think I might be coming up with a plan for myself.
I'm going to make it public, because it will push me to stick with the plan. Because breaking private plans is hard enough. Breaking public-made plans is humiliating.
So....
My plan for 2023 is to.....
A) Take a year-long hiatus from blogging. I'm going to publish my 2022 What-I-Watched post and maybe that will be my last post until I do my 2023 What-I-Watched-Post.
I say maybe because if my curse is lifted and a miracle happens; if my blog suddenly becomes popular, I give myself permission to exit the hiatus.
B) I'm going to try to post less on social media—spend more time consuming than creating. This will save me the angst of wondering, why are my cousins never liking or commenting on my posts. And...Did this person really like my post or are they just going to my profile and quickly liking the last few posts?
C) I'm going to make four more episodes of my podcast before completely giving up. If I still have only 1-2 listeners per episode, I give myself permission to label that venture a failure.
Note: I'd be totally happy with having only one or two listeners. But I'm pretty sure the listeners I'm seeing listed in stats are just my own self.
Note 2: I just got back to doing my podcast. I did two episodes in May and gave up. Then I realized that if a miracle happens and someone does see my podcast listed and it IS a subject they're interested in, they probably won't listen to it if they see that there are only two episodes and that I haven't made any new episodes for seven months. But today, I did a third episode, and I plan to do four more in the next few weeks or more.
D) I don't need to feel guilty about my hiatus, because I am going to be working on making a concrete, tangible Lulu version of one of my novels and some of my blog. So it's not like I'm abandoning my creative side all-together.
E) I'm trying to ignore the nagging voice that's saying I should at least create the content that promotes other content. AMPLIFY VOICES! But I have such low influence. My weak promotional whispers aren't really amplifying. And I'll be at least quietly amplifying the books I read with the little Goodreads widget to the right.
F) I will be honest and brave enough to admit that there's a part of me that believes I AM cursed and the cure to this curse is to go on a year hiatus. I will spend some parts of this next year swimming in this delusion. But mostly, I'm going to replace my content-creating time with content-consuming. I'm going to hopefully read more, watch more, and listen more.
 |
| The hardest thing will probably be not sharing all my AI art. But someone on Mastodon said something that made me think. They said that There's so much art being created and probably not enough eyes to see it all. So we should probably just make it for our own eyes. Plus, I know the concept of AI art is terrifying and offensive to some. So I feel somewhat uneasy when I post stuff. |
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