Eeep, no wait, don’t!
Today is Therapy Thursday, and I just got home from today’s session. And one of the subjects we got into was my inability to promote myself.
Tht’s my main achilles heel as a creator. I can make it. In fact between my novels, my videos, my short stories, and my blog, I have made an impressive amount of stuff.
But I never draw anyone’s attention to it. Ever. At all.
Heck, the only reason anyone reads this blog of mine is that I have some very good freinds who love me enough to read me.
So to all potential friends in the future : that is literally the best way to show me that you care. Read my blog, even though it is not written primarily to entertain, but to get out whatever words, emotions, and ideas I have floating around and free up some space in my head and in my heart.
As I was talking over this inability to self-promote with Doc Costin, it occurred to me that this was basically a manifestation of my social anxiety. To promote myself would be to draw attention to myself and leave myself open to rejection, and every socially anxious fibre of my being (and there’s a lot of them) screams that exposure means danger, attention means peril, and rejection means annihilation.
Dramatic but true.
So when I try to imagine myself entering any sort of forum or arena and shouting “This thing I made is fucking awesome!”, I just shrivel up like a mimosa leaf inside.
I quail at the very thought.
That’s a very serious roadblock. Whatever I do, if I want it to be anything other than merely an act of creative masturbation. I am going to have to, at some point. put it in front of people and draw attention to it.
I have heard of a lot of famous people who got ahead, at least in part. due to being shameless self-promoters who are all to happy to tell you how awesome they are.
Apparently, if you tell enough people how awesome you are, they eventually start to believe you. And I find that mindboggling.
My time applying for things on UpWork taught me that, much to my surprise, I can be extremely confident in my abilities and promote the hell out of myself that way.
So the problem really is just about promoting my work. And I see two solutions :
- Build up a big wave of confidence in my work by reading the best stuff from it then ride that wave to Self Promotion Island, or…
- Forget about promoting my works and just find appropriate venues for promoting my amazing, wizard-like skills
The second one seems more likely, even though it means looking for jobs, not venues. If i can promote myself on UpWork,, surely I can do the same for other creative type jobs I am totally sure I can do.
In theory, I could go back to UpWork, and I still might,. But I fucked things up so badly last time that I feel too ashamed to “show my face” there again.
Surely there are other places where I can angle for freelance gigs, or maybe even,. dare I dream it. ACTUAL EMPLOYMENT.
I know I can kick ass at pretty much any kind of creative work.
It’s just a matter of going out there to get it.
Negative Emotion Dump
Aw crap, it’s that time againj. Time to let my bad stuff out.
I fucking hate my tiny stupid pathetic life. My existence is meaningless and futile.
I might as well be a soupcon of snail shit at the bottom of the Mariana Trench for all the impact I have one the world. I would have more impact on society as compost.
At ;least then, the worms and bugs would get some use from me.
I just can’t stand this wretched existence any more. Nothing I do satisfies me. And all that dissastifaction builds in my mind until it feels like my head is going to pop like a zit and all my demons and devils and wretched sinners will spurt forth in a sickening wave of vomit and poisoned blood.
I am sick and tired of feeling like a tiger in too small a cage. I want to bust out and spray my unfiltered id all over the world.
My, we’re squishy tonight.
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. Somewhere in me is a raging inferno of anger, hate, and bitterness, and it’s going to torment me for as long as it takes for me to finally let it out.
Anjd to be frank, every day I get sicker of all its bullshit and the temptation to give in and set loose the whirlwind within grows.
I am tired of being the fire’s only fuel as well as the only one to suffer from its heat. I want to feed other people into my flames just to get a few moments rest from my eternal torment as the flames devour their flesh.
Instead of mine.
I get so frustrated. I have alll this energy, talent. intelligence, wit, charm, and sheer power locked up inside me because of a stupid mental illness I don’t deserve.
I did nothing to deserve being crazy. I’m crazy because of a lot of things done to me, and I didn’t deserve those either.
If the world was fair, I could reverse the universe and make the people who hurt me crazy, and take their sanity for my own.
I can’t even unleash my sexual energy most of the time. Alone, I have to fight the goddamned “sexual side effect” of my antidepressanjts/.
With another, I have to fight both that and a lot of bad wiring that got installed when I got raped and make me a stupefied, terrified, horny idiot.
Just once I would like to feel free and healthy and strong like a wild stallion on a distant plain who can just run and run and run for however long it takes to burn off that untamed energy and get himself a little peace and quiet.
Or just fuck the mares a bunch. Same idea.
But I have been caged all my life by the trauma done to me and the insanity it caused, and I am so fucking sick of it.
Something, somewhere has to give.
And God help us all when it does.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.