The Cheese Grates the Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp: Stranger Thoughts

Image by Chris Van Allsburg

Prompt Used:

A Writer's Nook

Isn’t it odd that sometimes a stranger’s words mean more than those around you?

Everyone goes through it to a degree, but for people living with certain kinds of mental illness, it can be even more pronounced. I will tell it from my perspective.
I create what I think is an inspired bit of writing or artistic piece, or a blog post with fantastically fascinating information--and it's utterly ignored. If I'm hypomanic, I say, meh, who gives a shit, people have sawdust for brains if they can't see the greatness in my work. I go on and create something else, happy as a hypomanic lark, and everyone else can go fuck themselves if they are unable to get on board with this thing of beauty.
If I'm euthymic (alas, how seldom that happens) I may find myself wondering why I'm not getting any responses, but I don't really let it bother me too much. I have something to say, so I'll say it, even if the only ones listening are a bunch of lonely ghosts. Lonely ghosts need something to listen to, after all.
If I'm depressed, I start thinking "I should stop writing. Nobody cares. I just suck."
If I'm experiencing suicide ideation, I add to that "I should probably kill myself. I'm worthless."
If I'm paranoid, there's a whole 'nother level of shit that starts happening.
What this all boils down to is, why the hell do we care so much what strangers think about what we do?
Practically everyone born human has a desire for approval. If you don't get appropriate levels of attention as a child, you start to seek approval outside the family. I come from a family which was very perfectionistic, and I was an absolutely imperfect specimen. I could never do anything well enough. I began seeking approval outside the family, often from very toxic people.
The problem is, most people don't actually care, they're simply curious. After they've sated their curiosity, they move on. They're looking for the next big thing.
Any popular thing can be compared to a big banquet. Once everyone has taken a piece, the feast is over. The populace moves on, looking for a fresh feast.

The words of wisdom that we unpopular folk need to try to keep close to mind and heart are these:

"Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self." --Cyril Connolly

Being popular can be a double-edged sword. People tend to say cruel things about those celebrities who somehow disappoint them. It really never surprises me when I hear about a celebrity being addicted to a substance or ending up dead from suicide or an overdose. Such levels of public scrutiny may initially feel like one has found the acceptance they were craving but often prove to be a curse rather than a blessing. Once the public appetite has been sated, they will be off looking for a fresh feast. All that may be left following their feeding frenzy is a skeleton.

Craving approval from strangers never leads to anything positive. 

If one has something they wish to create, they should create it, and the public be damned.

Create for yourself. If anyone else gets on board, great. If not, do it anyway.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

Cross-posted to:

Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp

One Love

Compound Carrion: A Poem

Poem written by The Real Cie and Writing Sister Opal Zushaquon for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads and NaPoWriMo. There is no official Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp post this month, as we are participating in NaPoWriMo. However, you are welcome to follow all the weird and depressive poetry along the way at poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com and starrydemons.tumblr.com

Image Source

Lady in search of peppermint

And sweetmeat

Instead found eyeballs

And rattlesnake hamburger

When she followed the fireflies

To the moonlight schoolhouse

Where the supergiant throwbacks skateboard

She was seeking homemade popcorn

A slice of shadyside honeydew

A sweet morsel of honeycomb

Instead she found an overabundance

Of undercut forefingers

In the underground household

Of the underage bootstrap babysitter

And the weekend watchmaker

With his supersensitive, supersonic pacemaker

And the lifeline, lifeblood keyhole on his forehead

Somehow the sunbathing superwoman found herself in the supernatural underbelly

Behind the bookshelf in the bookstore belonging to the bookmobile bookkeeper

While looking for the washroom in the firehouse

Where she sought a ballroom friendship with the supercool fireman

Her bellbottom daydreams now in upheaval

Her dishpan hands clasp the newspaper

Where she seeks the carefree undercurrent

Along the moonbeam superhighways

Once a moonstruck firecracker

With a crush on a sweetheart schoolboy

She instead found beneath the moonlight

One too many a hookworm playboy

The afterimage of the life that could have been

Reflects mockingly in her stoplight eyeglasses

Everything has been a comedown from her tailspin pinup dreams

So she orders shortbread takeout

And climbs warlike to the housetop

Her tailcoat flapping like a skylark in the wind

On the sunroof in the sundown

She watches the watchman in the watercolor watchtower

The downbeat wastewater waterlogs the waterfowl below

She walks down to the woodshop

To say goodnight to the waxwork scarecrow

She adjusts his sunray bowtie

Before stepping onto the centercut turntable

A blowgun to the forebrain

Nothing to forewarn the foregone horseman in the forecastle foreground

On the moonlit grassland

Her foredoom was foretold

Her washrag fallen in the rainwater

Flows downstream to the uptown washhouse

Where the cardstock newsman reports as an afterthought

The death of nobody and nothing

~Cie and Opal~

This went much further than we ever imagined it would!

Prompts used:

Why Bother Writing When No One Reads What I Write?

I still go through this. Not as often as I used to, but it still happens.

I went through most of my life not being accepted. 

When I first started blogging, I figured that statistically there had to be other people like me out there.

I was both right and wrong. 

There were people who had some of the same interests. However, I was still an oddball.

A person who has never been accepted will sometimes jump through hoops to be accepted, changing everything about themselves, and still find that they aren't accepted.

It was a long, hard road discovering that if I was going to write, I had to do so for the love of what I was writing, not to try and grow an audience and certainly not to try and make people like me.

So, why put it online at all?

In case someone needs to read it.

In case someone wants to read it.

Because I fucking want to.

By the way, if you have a problem with salty language, this probably isn't the blog for you. 

~Cie~

Welcome

The CCCC has been a sub-feature on the Crazy Town in Looney Land and Netherworld Writers' Guild blogs since late 2015. I felt it would be simpler if it had its own blog. I will publish reposts of past CCCC's.

The CCCC meets on the sixth of every month. If you wish to write a participating post, please share it in the comments.

~Cie~

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