Update # 15 – Stepping Stones

I’ve had a lot to think about these past few weeks, not least of all where I want to go with this blog.  I didn’t consciously decide to take any time away from the writing, but sometimes when life gets in the way of something it’s a good idea to use it as an opportunity to step back and really look at what you’re doing.  They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but what it really does is put things in perspective.

Just to be clear, I haven’t stopped writing – far from it, in fact, because progress on my novel (quality-wise, not so much quantity) has been better than ever.  I’ve solved several plot-holes, laid the foundation for more solid story lines, and uncovered several key truths about my characters.  The work has been slow but rewarding, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.  My writing isn’t in question: the blog is.

The last non-repost/scheduled content I published on this blog had me grappling with where I wanted to take things.  Settle for casual blogging and lose the expectations, or dig in and make it work for me.  Fight my writer’s ego and accept that this is just a hobby, or struggle with the stress and the anxiety that comes with the pressures of blogging out of necessity.

My little trip down memory lane had an unexpected consequence: I was drifting away from the blog long before I actually stepped away.  The lack of fresh material on my part made it a lot easier for me to disengage, and by the time real life got busy I was all too eager to use “no time” as my excuse for the lapse in blogging.  The truth is I’d lost interest, lost sight of my initial intentions for this blog: no intentions at all.

Back when I first started there were really no expectations – no outside expectations, at least.  No one was reading anything I wrote, and I didn’t give a damn.  It felt good just to put it out there, to get it off my chest.  Sharing my work was a bonus: what I really wanted was to share my feelings.  The blog showcased all the things I couldn’t say anywhere else, couldn’t tell anyone else.  It was a venting platform, pure and simple.

It was only as I began to get traction, to get regular readers and meet people whose own blogs I read in turn, that complications arose.  Soon I was tracking followers and likes, engaging with the community on a whole new level.  I was far from obsessive, mind you, and it wasn’t like it was a problem.  But I lost touch with that initial honesty, that quiet self-care.  If I’d upped and gone in those early days, no one would have noticed.  There’s something kind of beautiful about that kind of anonymity, about that level of casual detachment.

It’s only now that I realise just how much I miss it.  I’m not ignorant to the benefits of being involved: the feedback, the support, the friendship.  This blog has been instrumental in my growth and development not only as a writer, but as a person.  It will always be among my most important stepping stones in life, but I can’t make it my platform.  There are far more steps to take, and for all its charms this one is far too small for what I have planned.

I’m going to take this blog back to its roots: a casual place where I can express my thoughts and feelings without engaging any ulterior motives.  This doesn’t mean I’ll intentionally step away: it just means I’ll only do as much as I feel motivated to do.  If I’m not feeling particularly keen on checking in for a while, I won’t.  If I don’t feel inspired to write, I won’t.  If I feel like sharing more fiction, I will.  If I feel like keeping you up-to-date on my novel, I will.  The main thing is that I don’t feel required to do anything.  I refuse to be motivated by stress or my own fears of perceived outer expectations.  From here on out, I’ll only be checking in when and if I feel like I have something to share (or if I’m in the mood for some of my friends’ work).

Maybe I’m still uncomfortable with being tied down.  Maybe the modern leper in me is still itching for an amputation, and squirms at the thought of settling.  Maybe it’s his voice in my ear, weaving tales of romantic detachment.  It’s entirely possible this is nothing more than fears of inadequacy, doubts on whether or not I could handle taking things to new levels.  But if that’s the case then I need that casual safe-space all the more for it.  This is going to be the battleground on which I tackle my insecurities and anxieties, and I can’t be adding fuel to the very fire I’m trying to fight.

 

Business or Pleasure?

I’ve been feeling rather disenchanted with blogging recently, which is part of why I haven’t checked in for some time.  I think the problem is that most WordPress users are here as writers, first and foremost – our role as readers is secondary.  Which isn’t a problem in itself, obviously: there’s nothing wrong with honing your craft and sharing your work.  The problem is that most of us came to this site with certain expectations, expectations that just so happen to hinder their own realisation.  If everyone is here first and foremost to promote their own brand, and one of the only ways (or perhaps the best way) to promote said brand is through mutual reciprocation, then every time someone likes a post or follows a blog it’s with self-interest in mind.

Obviously I’m both generalising and oversimplifying, and I don’t want to be accused of wining about my own wounded pride or anything, because that’s not what this is (well, at least not entirely).  I’d like to believe that most of this is just paranoia and insecurity, and that it’s just a coincidence that the only people who read my posts on a regular basis are the ones whose blogs I read on a regular basis, despite the fact that I have over 60 other followers whose blogs I do not follow, but I’m not stupid: I know a correlation when I see one.

I accept the system for what it is, and I accept that this is just how things work most of the time – I just didn’t have this in mind when I signed up.  I don’t have the ambition or the business sense (a mean part of me wants to say two-facedness, and we’ll allow it simply for the sake of documentation) to put in that kind of effort.  The problem is I have yet to reconcile this fact with my own bruised ego.

I’d be a liar if I said there wasn’t some part of me that secretly hoped, expected even, that my writing’s popularity would soar once it hit the worldwide web.  I think it sort of comes with the territory – writers are nefarious for their uncanny ability to balance self-loathing and pride.  But when I realised that achieving that kind of popularity would take a lot more than simply writing your best, I decided I didn’t want to go to such lengths.  After all I’d come into it for the writing, and I could still write regardless of how many followers I had.  Even so, some part of me still expected the fireworks and the parade.

Not to mention there are certain problems with resigning yourself to casual writing when you’ve also decided “hey, why not make a living off of this?”  Because that’s when things get tricky.  Once you decide you have to do something it takes half the fun out of it.  They say if you do something you love you’ll never work a day in your life, but the flipside of that is turning what you love into work.  Pretty soon the thing you once turned to for pleasure and comfort becomes riddled with anxiety and pressure.  I’ve been staying away from the blog purely because I feel like I should be putting more effort into it: into writing more posts, into reading other people’s posts, into reaching out to more bloggers in the hopes they’ll follow me back.

The point being I’m sort of caught at a crossroads.  On the one hand I want to take my writing to new levels, to take it to a point where I can make a living off of it.  On the other hand I don’t want to feel like I have to do it for any reason other than I want to: I don’t want to taint this beautiful thing with the stresses and the expectations that come with work.  I know there’s a balance between the two: I just have to find it.

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Apologies to anyone I may have offended in this post: just as a reminder, this blog serves as my own personal venting platform, where I can address all the nagging little voices at the back of my head, dragging them out into the light where they can be thoroughly scrutinised, followed by dismissal or confirmation.  There are a lot of insecurities back there, and a favourite pastime of many insecure people is to look for faults in others so they needn’t be alone- after all, misery loves company.  All that being said, I hope you won’t take too much heed in the ramblings of my darker half (or majority).

Update #who-gives-a-shit – End of the Road(trip)

As the above gif and title of this post would suggest, I have officially returned from my road trip.  If this were anyone else the rest of this post would probably be dedicated to recounting fantastic tales of my adventure, but this is me, so instead we’re going to fly right past all that interesting stuff and move straight on to narcissistic self-promotion/self-deprecation.

First off I’d just like to make a little note of the fact that in my absence comments seem to have severely declined, which is hard to believe considering how low they were to begin with.  I’m being petty again, I know, but hear me out.  I can accept that not every post requires or warrants a comment, and certainly if it didn’t stimulate your thoughts enough to deserve such feedback then by all means don’t force it.  That being said, if (and I must emphasise the if) the reason you’re not commenting is because I haven’t been commenting on your own blogs, then we have a problem.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: I follow blogs because I enjoy and admire their content (and by default their authors).  There is not a single person on that list who I follow out of some misguided sense of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”.  If I follow your blog, it means I like what you have to say.  If I like and comment on a post, it’s because it resounded with me.  Generally speaking I’m a pretty complicated guy, but in this I’m simple: I mean what I say and I say what I mean.  All I ask of you is that you do the same.  If you don’t enjoy reading my blog then fine: don’t.  I don’t want people following me simply because I follow them.  I don’t want pity likes or sympathy follows.

I’m not going to unfollow anyone just because they don’t read my blog.  Look- I get it.  I’m not an easy guy to like.  I’m insecure, petty, self-absorbed and self-loathing.  Shit like that gets old fast, and it can be annoying.  Hell, I know it better than anyone: why do you think I hate myself?  The last thing I need right now is to be constantly trying to gauge people’s opinions of me.  I could never tell where my old friends stood, so I cut them out.  So this is it.  If you’re not in it for the long haul, then this is the end of the road.  If you unfollow me now there won’t be any hard feelings.  You’ll still see me on your own blogs (assuming I’m currently following you) and I’ll be just as avid and involved a reader as I am now.

I just need to know where you stand.  If you stay, I’ll assume you really want to stay, and that way I’ll know the difference between when you don’t like certain posts and when you don’t like me.  I don’t want anyone’s pity, and this isn’t a cry for help or a cry for attention.

It’s just me.

Fucking Like

Alright, so I’m not going to lie: the lack of feedback on my novel has been disappointing, which really sucks because the feedback that I have received has been incredibly helpful.  I feel it’s important to establish that I wasn’t looking for glowing reviews and unending praise.  I mean obviously that would have been nice, but what I really wanted was some sign that it was anything other than unremarkable.

An artist’s worst fear isn’t rejection; it’s indifference.  The sole purpose of art is to provoke a reaction in its audience, be it admiration, fear, awe, disgust or anything else.  To have your work accepted without a sound is like having the word “unremarkable” written across your forehead.  Unremarkable.  Not good, not bad, just… unremarkable.

Whoever invented the “like” button clearly wasn’t an artist, because no artist in their right mind would ever settle for something as curt and hollow as a “like” in response to their work.  “How does it make you feel?”  Like.  “What do you think the message is?”  Like.  “What does it mean to you?”  Like.

Like.  Like, I liked it, but not enough to go into depth about what I thought of it.  Or, yeah, I didn’t really like it, but to say that would be rude, so Like.

And what’s so wrong with saying you didn’t like it?  That’s good!  It means there’s a reason you didn’t like it, and once you tell them they can address the problem!  Can you imagine if no one gave constructive criticism?  If schoolteachers simply gave all assignments back with a “thumbs-up” stamp on the front?  We would never learn from our mistakes!  We would never be able to fix what’s wrong, to grow as individuals.

I feel kind of stupid complaining about this, but I created this blog so that I could have somewhere to unload my thoughts, and this has been bothering me for a while now.  I’m so sick of people biting their metaphorical tongues just because they’re afraid of offending someone.

Before all this I felt alone, stranded on an island with only my thoughts to keep me company and no one to share them with.  I had all these things I had to say and no one I felt I could say them to, so when I found this place and these people you can imagine the relief I felt in my heart.  I’d finally found somewhere I could speak my mind and have other people do the same, a place where the silence didn’t exist.

Please don’t take that away from me now.

When They Dig Us Up

“What will they think of us
When they dig us up?”

– Les Jupes, When They Dig Us Up

There’s something kind of sad about blogging.  You write all these posts that reflect and describe who you are as a person, but they all end up getting buried under one another as time goes by.  Eventually you reach a point where some are so far back in the archives that no one will ever read them again, and they’re forgotten.

In a way it’s a lot like real life.  Experiences, memories, pieces of our personalities are all buried beneath newer content over time, and there are parts of ourselves that no one will ever know.  So many of our interactions in everyday life only ever occur on the surface of the deep abyss that is our identity.  People rarely need or want to know what lies beneath.

It makes me sad to think about all those forgotten posts, written but not read.  And this isn’t just another obvious attempt to get people to read through my archives (although feel free to take it as such).  It makes me think about all the parts of myself that no one will ever get to know, be it here or in the “real world”.  It’s kind of like the old saying about a tree falling in the forest, only in a more existential sense, if that’s possible.

The same goes for old memories.  Sometimes I’ll have these flashes of the past, fragmented memories from my childhood that play incoherently across my mind like damaged rolls of film.  There’s a bittersweet kind of feeling that accompanies these incomplete images, a sad kind of nostalgia for what was, but more importantly regret for not being able to remember more.  It’s like the rest of the memory is just on the edge of my consciousness, and if I could only reach a little father I might be able to grab it…

But they remain out of reach, and all I have left are pieces of a whole.

What’s left is buried somewhere deep within my subconscious, far below newer memories which in turn will be buried beneath newer ones as my life goes on.

And in the end what will remain?  What will I have to show for my life when everything is buried beneath the surface?  All the answers to questions no one ever thought to ask, all the parts of myself which should have mattered, could have mattered, if only they’d seen the surface for just a little longer?  What will become of them?  Will they matter then?  Do they matter now?

I don’t know.

The Disconnect

“Seventeen seconds and I’m over it
Ready for the disconnect.
Putting on a brave face
Trying not to listen
To the voices in the back of my head”

– Gotye, Easy Way Out

I don’t do well around people.  Relationships make me self-conscious, mostly because I care a lot about what other people think of me.  I get attached very easily, and then I start to worry that they don’t like me as much as I like them, and it makes me feel insignificant.  I care what they think, and it makes me feel needy.  I don’t want to offend them, and it makes me feel weak.

The problem isn’t as bad from behind the safety of my screen, but I can still feel it worming its way to the surface, even now.  It’s part of why I’ve stayed away for so long, why I’ve been hesitant to jump back into writing.

I’m thinking about leaving the blog.

Well, no.  That’s a little misleading.  It implies I’m actually contemplating the possibility- which I’m not.  Just so we’re clear, I have no plans whatsoever to stop blogging.

But I hear the whispers, feel the tug of that all-too familiar escape, urging me to sever the line.  Urging me to take the easy way out.  You’re the modern leper, aren’t you?  When things get too complicated, you cut them loose.  That’s just what you do.  And aren’t you due for another amputation?

Connections get messy- that’s no secret.  Relationships are tricky, even without the added burden of social anxiety and misanthropy.  But I’m starting to learn that you can’t just run away whenever things get tough.  Sometimes you need to pull up your gloves and fight for what’s worth fighting for.  And this blog -my writing– is definitely worth fighting for.

The people I’ve met here, the connections I’ve made, are worth fighting for.

It Follows

Alright so I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but isn’t that what blogging is all about?  Sharing your unpopular opinions and cramming them down other people’s throats?  Yes.  Yes it is.  So that being said, let’s get on with it.

I’ve been blogging for, like… a while now, and I’ve picked up on a few things in that time.  One of those things is this little trick people use to get more followers.  The trick is called “follow other people’s blogs in the hope that they will follow yours back”.  Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “TML, that’s literally just how the blogging community works.”  And you’d be right, if you weren’t wrong.  Let me learn you the difference:

When you follow someone’s blog because you enjoy reading what they have written, that’s called a connection.  Connections are good!  It means you’ve found someone with likeminded ideas whom you can relate to and have deep meaningful conversations with.  It comes from a place of sincere admiration and appreciation for what they have to say.  That’s the GOOD kind of following.  And hey, if they decide to check out your blog too and find something they like, then bonus.  But by no means are they required to.

When you follow someone’s blog because you want them to follow you back, that’s the BAD kind of following.  It means you are being shallow and simply want the numbers, not the people.  And when you follow someone’s blog and then never look at it again, that’s a little bit suspicious.  Sure, we all have busy lives, and sometimes it can be hard to keep up with everyone you’ve ever followed.  But if you don’t even have time to read their content at a later date after it’s been posted then maybe you’re following too many people and should cut some loose.

You see, people nowadays care WAY too much about the numbers.  They think that if they get *this* many followers or *this* many likes then they will find the happiness that has eluded them for so long.  In the mad scramble for the numbers we tend to forget about the people behind those numbers.  And that’s when things get messy.

Look, at the end of the day I couldn’t care less how many followers I have or how many likes I get.  I don’t want followers, I want readers.  I want questions and opinions and thoughts and feedback and people.  Fuck the numbers.  I want people.

So if you find yourself following people simply in the hopes of getting them to follow you back, then shame on you.  But that doesn’t have to be the end of it.  Take the time to check out some of the people you’ve so carelessly followed.  Read what they have to offer, then decide if you still want to follow them.  If not, don’t sweat it.  Everyone has their own style, and if you don’t particularly like someone else’s that’s perfectly acceptable.  What’s not acceptable is pretending you do just so they follow you back.

We reap what we sow, and if all you sow are fake follows, then that’s what you’re going to get in return: fake followers.

BLURRYFΔCE

“I’m a goner
Somebody catch my breath
I wanna be known by you”

– TWENTY ØNE PILØTS, Goner

It’s a peculiar thing to have some strangers on the internet know you better than anyone else in your life.  To have someone you don’t even know read your most intimate thoughts, your deepest and darkest fears, is just bizarre.  The strangest thing about the whole arrangement is that it isn’t strange, and it feels like it should be.  I mean, that’s got to say something about my intimacy issues, for one thing.  If I can’t trust the people I know, the people I care about with this information, then why am I so eagerly tossing these very personal facts like scraps of meat to an online audience?

There’s definitely the factor of anonymity, of course.  Under my pseudonym, The Modern Leper can rant on about his life without ever being discovered by someone he knows in the so-called “real world” (knock on wood).  I mean, there’s also the fact that I’m not really being discovered by much of anyone, but that’s besides the point.  So long as I’m careful, no one reading this blog will ever be able to connect these ugly words to this ugly face.

But this raises the question: what is it to know someone?  Who really knows me better, if at all?  Is it my readers, who know my most intimate and personal thoughts but wouldn’t be able to pick my face out of a crowd?  Or is it my family, who think they know me, who know me on the surface, but will never read these words?  Do any of them really know me at all?  Can anyone ever truly know anyone as a whole, or do relationships only ever deal in fragments of familiarity, pieces of personality, and incoherent identities?

I don’t really have the answers to any of these questions, but I suspect no one does.  Maybe you just let people in as best you can, and let them do the rest.  There’s only so much you can tell someone before you hit a wall, and it’s up to them to break down that wall and show you that they care enough to go further.  But even then some things never feel quite right leaving your lips, and some secrets stay hidden forever.

But maybe that’s okay.  Maybe the only person that should ever really know you is you.  Your secrets are part of who you are, and to expose yourself fully and completely to anyone and everyone would be to give up your identity and originality.  Life would be no fun if there were no surprises.  People wouldn’t be interesting if you could predict their every move and thought.  And maybe that’s why we give ourselves up in doses, reveal our secrets in portions.  We don’t want to give up that sense of self.  And in some cases, mine included, we fear how they will look at us if we do.

I’m still figuring out who I am, and I’m not sure I want to take anyone else along for that ride.  At least, not completely.  We can make a few pit stops together, and my family will always be there when I need them, but at the end of the day this is a road for one.

Update #8 – Technical Difficulties and Difficult Technicalities

It feels like half of these updates are just me apologizing for lulls in blog activity.  To be fair, this time I actually have a valid excuse for the radio silence.  My laptop, an Acer Aspire from all of 5 years ago may have finally met its end.  Ol’ faithful crashed just over a week ago, and as such I’ve been hard-pressed to get back online.  The worst part is that I was in the middle of backing up my many, many files when the damn thing broke down on me, so here’s to hoping I’ll be able to salvage it.

You’re probably freaking out right now because I just told you my laptop is out of commission yet I’m still somehow on the web.  IS HE UPLOADING THIS POST WITH HIS MIND??!?!?  Well of course I’m not uploading this post with my mind; don’t be ridiculous.  I’m just using my brother’s iPad, which I’ll have you know is a pain in the ass.  Just as a general rule I hate Apple with a passion (that’s Apple the company, and not the fruit.  The fruit’s okay in my books), mostly because the software is annoyingly simplified and incredibly hard to personalize.  And no, I’m not talking about wallpapers.  There’s also my whole beef with capitalism and consumerism, but we’ll leave that for another day.

Also have you ever tried typing on one of these things?  Ugh, I hate it.  Incredibly annoying.  Disclaimer: if there’s any spelling mistakes or just really weird words in places they shouldn’t be that’s all the iPad’s dong and not mine.

All that being said, you probably won’t be hearing from me much in the next few days (probably weeks).  Of course you’ll be the first to know when (if) my laptop’s up and running again, and I might try to squeeze one or two posts out in the meantime (although preferably not on this infernal device), but don’t expect too much.  Like I always say, keep your expectations low and your head held high.  Just kidding, I’ve never said that before in my life.

But in all seriousness, I’ll be sure to make up for the lull once I’m back in business.  In the meantime, feel free to read through my archives, something I know for a fact no one has ever done before.  Those old posts aren’t going anywhere, and why wait for “new” material to be posted when there’s probably like a hundred or so posts that are still technically new to your virgin eyes?  I mean it’s not like you have anything better to do with your lives.

Until next time, thanks for (not) reading, and good luck out there.

– TML

Insecurity and Introspection

People often ask me, “Hey TML, how do you cope with the crippling anxiety and self-doubt that comes with no one reading your work?”  Well, the answer is simple:

Not very well.

Well… alright.  I guess I’m being melodramatic again.  To be honest, it doesn’t actually bother me THAT MUCH.  Sure, it can be disappointing to have something you put your blood, sweat, tears, and other such bodily fluids into be completely ignored, but really, it’s not THAT big of a deal.  I mean, does it fill me with feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing?  Sure, you could say that.  Does it remind me time and time again that I will never be as good as any of the other writers and authors out there?  Yeah, a little bit.  But generally speaking, is it that bad?

Yeah, pretty much.

Or at least it used to be.  Back when I still had Facebook and was a normal, socially connected individual, I used to suffer from a lot of self-doubt.  There was a lot of pressure to get likes, to be funny and witty and meet a certain social quota.  Most of this was my whole issue with needing people to validate my value, to reassure me that I wasn’t the sack of shit I was so sure I was.  I mean, let’s face it: insecure people thirst for security.  And there’s nothing wrong with receiving validation from other people.  What’s wrong is when this validation is false; when it’s hollow and short-lived.  Sure, it feels good for a moment.  But deep down inside we know that it’s fake and meaningless, and it only deepens our appetite.

And when social media came along and concentrated security into a fast and easily deployed set of pixels, it became that much easier to feed the beast.  It’s crazy how something as simple as seeing a thumbs-up icon appear on the bottom of one of your posts can become so addicting.  That rush you get when someone legitimizes your thoughts, your feelings, is a dangerous thing.

Relying on other people to satiate your self-value is not okay.  To depend on other people, strangers even, to validate your work and your effort is to resign yourself to a life of permanent vulnerability at best and crippling insecurity at worst.  Happiness needs to come from inside, not outside.  Because you can never rely on the outside to deliver.

Needless to say I was never a particularly popular person.  But my unpopularity taught me something incredibly important, something I would keep close to me for the rest of my life: people are idiots.  People will step all over you and kick you while your down.  They will spit on you and they will mock you, and worse, they’ll turn their backs to you.  You cannot change that.  All you can do is enjoy what you do.  Do it for you.  Fuck the critics and the disinterested masses, and fuck the feeling that their opinions should ever matter to you.  Do what you love because you love it, not because anyone else should.

Like your own work, even if no one else does.

When you post that post you worked so hard on, you should immediately feel a sense of relief and pride.  Hold onto that feeling.  Take it and run.  Close the window, shut your laptop, and leave.  Read a book, or go for a walk, or watch television.  Do not harp over the likes and comments that may or may not be coming in.  Do not stress over whether or not people like it.  If you liked it, that’s enough.

So does it bother me, when people don’t like a post?  Sure, a little bit.  But then I ask myself: did I like it?  And if the answer is yes, I’m happy.

And that’s all I need.