Spirit of the Universe, is there any hope for me? I go through periods where I do better but then I go back to seeking validation from people who really couldn't care less about me. Am I really this broken, Spirit? Am I really this goddamn stupid and pathetic? Am I really going to spend my entire fucking life being nothing but a worthless wannabe?
I say I don't need people to like me, but I obviously still care about people's opinions enough that I can't set myself free to just write what I want. I say I don't care about people's opinions, but I obviously care enough that I avoid working on this project because I worry readers will think that I'm just rehashing the same subject because I'm too thick to understand it and too much of a whiner to do the work to make the changes.
I think I'm fucking hopeless, Spirit. Truly I do. Why bother trying? I'll never be anything but a fuckup and a reject. I truly was crafted from the leftover dregs of whatever rejected souls were cobbled together prior to mine. I'm a reject's reject. I want to give up but I can't stand being just a passive observer. Why was I born with such big dreams when everything I do turns out to be just one more disappointment? Why the fuck do I keep doing this?
I am and always will be fucking entirely alone in it.
Nonetheless, I enjoy analyzing things. It's another annoying and not particularly productive quality of mine. So here we go.
For each struggle and roadblock in your writing, can you determine which are internal and which are external?
Sure.
Being on disability, which doesn't pay enough to actually live on, is external.
By the way, I give no fucks if anyone reading this dislikes my split infinitive.
One reason I want to eventually publish one of my shitty volumes of crappy ruminations is that I want to show how utterly goddamn demoralizing, Draconian, and just completely shit the disability system in the United States is. When a person must either suddenly amass such significant wealth that they no longer have to worry about SSD and its plethora of shitty rules or they must keep their savings to less than $2000, it's bullshit, and it's downright abusive. In other words:
“I'm not totally useless. I can be used as a bad example.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Right, now that we've got the demoralization of being perpetually broke and afraid to do anything to better my circumstances bit out of the way, let's address the internal fuckery.
I've been unhappy writing nothing but pieces for consideration in anthologies, which is what I've been doing for the past six months. My labors of love, reviled though they may be by others, allow me to get to know my characters and through my characters, myself. I told myself that this was childish, and I needed to become a grown-up writer doing the adulting and filling my inbox with rejection slips.
While I think I should do more of that than I have in the past, I deeply dislike being depressed and utterly alone, so I've gone back to prioritizing my LOLs (Labors of Love), and anyone who doesn't like it can go fuck themselves. I realize I'm a friendless loser whose characters become her friends. Why the fuck should anyone else make it their business to sneer at this? Fuck off entirely.
People who sneer at the pain of others are shitty excuses for human beings anyway, and I wouldn't want to waste my time in their presence if you paid me. This includes those who ridicule the homeless, those who mock someone who can't afford the latest fashions (of course some of us simply don't give a flying fuck about the latest fashions), those who mock the physical appearance of others, and those who mock another's psychological pain.
If you're the kind of person who does any of the above, I'll say it nicely this time. Have a look at yourself. I mean a really long, hard look at yourself. If you realize that you don't want to be the kind of person who does this, then congratulations, you don't have to be. If, on the other hand, you're the kind of person who truly enjoys doing this shit, then fuck you.
The next three thoughts come from the 52 Weeks of Writing journal.
We avoid things for a reason, and my reason was that I was afraid to uncover the truth about why I wasn’t happy.
I've avoided writing my thoughts or working in this journal for that reason. I actually know why I'm unhappy but I feel like there's nothing I can do about it.
I'm unhappy because I live in poverty. Things would have to change significantly for this problem to resolve.
As for the writing aspect, I love the creative part of things, obviously. I enjoy editing. I enjoy formatting when it's going smoothly. I love self-publishing. Mostly.
Here's what I don't love about self-publishing.
I hate networking and promotion. I feel it eats up time that I'd prefer to spend creating. I'm shy and socially awkward, so interacting with others is always precarious. I'd rather leave the promotion of my books to someone who actually knows what the fuck they're doing, but when one's advertising budget is zero, one really doesn't have that luxury, so guess what? I'm stuck with my shitty networking and promotion skills.
I’d journaled before in my life, and it had always felt like a useless exercise.
This! I don't want to be spending time contemplating my navel or telling myself that:
“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
--Stuart Smalley
Somehow those types of affirmations always feel like a bold-faced fucking lie. I don't feel like I'm anywhere near good enough or smart enough and I don't think that most people like me. I think some people put up with me, some of them feel sorry for me, most people aren't even aware of me, and very rarely, someone sees a spark of some sort of potential in me. I don't think anyone who really knows me could like me because I'm such a colossal garbage fire of a human being.
It can take an awful lot of times of writing down the exact same answer before the next layer surfaces or before you’re ready to take that deep breath and acknowledge what you couldn’t in the previous weeks.
I always worry about this. Why the shit would someone want to read a book where I reiterate the same thing fifty kazillion different ways and I still haven't figured that shit out yet? Why haven't I internalized my own bullshit enough that I can be a fully functioning adult at just nine days shy of being 57 years old as of this writing? I mean, fuck's sake, how much of a pig-headed fuckup can one person be?
Why would someone even want to read a free blog post about me trying to figure the same goddamn thing out for the bajillionth time but phrased slightly differently?
That's why I've been avoiding doing these journal exercises. Not because I think they're useless but because of what other people might think.
Fuck's sake.
Am I ever going to get beyond needing validation from people who wouldn't blow a fart in my general direction if they saw me lying in a gutter bleeding out?
Fucking pathetic.
For each struggle and roadblock, what do you need to overcome it?
For the poverty thing, I'd need the goddamn miracle of having a sudden influx of readers gobbling up my writing like I was the female Stephen King. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
For the other mess, I guess I need to keep needling myself until I genuinely no longer give any fucks about needing validation from others. I need to truly accept myself as I am.
That's another split infinitive, and I don't give a fuck what my grammar checker thinks.
Maybe that's a start.
~Ornery Owl is sick of her own shyyyyt and wants coffee~
Enjoy your coffee. Sadly, despite not being creative, much of what you wrote here comes from my song book.
ReplyDeleteI tell myself often that I don't need validation. But I lie.
I get high whenever people praise my writing. Fortunately, I've never allowed that sort of thing to go to my head. Sadly, the praise is pretty rare. I really don't get those people who get tons of likes and compliments on their posts or tweets or what have you. I guess my energy has always said "stay the fuck away or I'll straight-up murder your ass." Sadly, it doesn't work on creepy-ass dudes.
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