Gee, even typing that made me feel like I was tempting fate. What the fuck do I think will happen? I am too much the materialist (in the philosophical sense) to think the universe is just waiting for the cue to come beat me to death with an irony stick.

Anyhow, I feel like pushing the old ego forward today, so that is what I am going to do. I apologize in advance for the fact that some of this will be things I have said before and hence the thing comes off as a tad ritualistic and compulsive.

But I have many years of self-loathing to counteract, and it is going to take a lot more than one dose to do it.

It seems crazy now to think of how long I have hated myself when the evidence of the opposite was so apparent. (What a neat phrase. ) Lots of people like me, both in person and online. How does that jibe with self-loathing? Do I think all these people are stupid, or somehow defective?

I guess it’s another case of impostor syndrome. I felt I was fake, a fraud, like the people who liked me would reject me with a vengeance if they only knew the “real me”.

If they could see all the ugliness and filth inside me, if they could see what a horrible, useless, pathetic, low creature I was, they would push me out into the darkness out of sheer disgust.

But now I can see that they were seeing the real me. I am really like that, a sweet friendly understanding dude with a wicked wit and a brain the size of a planet. It was the dark and disgusting me that was the illusion. Others saw the good in me when I did not, and I am very grateful to them for that.

And I won’t lie. Self-esteem is still a struggle. That paragraph about how I used to see myself was very dangerous for me to write because I could feel all those old feelings of self-loathing rising up like a ghost inside me.

And the really awful part is that in a very sick way, those feelings tempt me. There is a satisfaction in self-loathing, a feeling of perverse protection, in just giving up on yourself completely and letting the dark tide win.

But I am on the right path now, and I will not step off again. I will push back against the darkness until I drive it out of my head entirely. I am in this to win it.

So maybe it is good to bring up those feelings every now and then. All the better to defeat them.

Now where was I? Oh right, what a great guy I am.

I know we’re not supposed to acknowledge how awesome we are. I know it is considered very arrogant and selfish to talk about how great you are. But I don’t care. I am increasingly convinced is that the only way to destroy a big depression, at least for me, is to have a big ego.

Like I have said before, there is no middle ground. You can’t change the balance of the scale by sitting in the middle. You need to add weight to the opposite side.

So, I am a pretty amazing dude. There is no reason why I should not go out into the world to seek my fortune. I have nothing to be ashamed of and I have a lot to offer in my correct milieu.

Granted, I am not much good at the practical side of things. But this modern world does not require that of everyone. You can be an entirely impractical person and still contribute invaluable things to society. I have a lot to offer the world as a writer and creative type. Works of the imagination are treasured in this modern life.

Compared to that potential, all the little things of life seem pretty unimportant. I could very well make a living via writing, and then I can hire people to take care of the other stuff.

So what if I’m a hothouse flower, ill suited for life in the real world? This world has no shortage of hothouses, if you know where to look and you keep an open mind.

I am blessed with many talents. I should be very grateful for that. Viewed as a whole, my talents provide a formidable toolkit to use against a cold and uncaring world. Intelligent and sensitive with a great depth of understand and crazy good verbal skills… sounds like a writer to me.

And I need to keep reminding myself that I excel at the other side of writing. I do fine on the first side of writing too, of course, the stuff about sentence structure and paragraphs and tight writing and all of that.

But my real genius is in the less tangible stuff, like imagination. Notice how often critics praise an author’s imagination (especially in sci fi and fantasy) and how rare it is that they praise the spelling.

Also, it is very important for me and for all struggling writers to remember that it is foolish to compare your writing to the writing in one’s favorite books, because the writing in the books has benefited (really? Only one T in that word? Looks wrong. ) from the hard work of a professional editor and a whole slew and a half of other people who work for the publisher.

So sure, your prose may not seem as polished and perfect as theirs, but that’s only because you are comparing your rough stones to their cut diamonds. If you had the same people working on your book, it would look just as good.

So cut yourself some slack. The important thing about a book is that it be enjoyable to read. What a publisher wants to see is writing with that spark of life in it, and that comes from creativity, not technique.

That doesn’t mean that you can forget all about the other stuff, it just means that it does not have to be as good as the books on your bookshelf before you dare send it anywhere.

No publisher expects to have perfect prose dropped in their lap. “Wow, this is perfect! Send it directly to the printers!”

They just want something they can work with.

I think that lowers the bar to achievable levels.

That’s it for today! Seeya tomorrow folks!