#oh god the ego

[goodluckclove]

On Being Seen

I'll warn you in advance, friends and colleagues - I might not have quite an optimistic take on this one. In advance I'll say that I'm totally all right, there's no need to comfort or fawn or worry. It's just been a pretty crazy couple of days and it's sort of left me in a kind of perturbed state of mind.

I feel as if I've developed a reputation on Writeblr as someone strongly supportive of other writers through their struggles and successes, and I figure it might be useful to see that I speak as someone who has their fair share of doubts. Consider it a show of neurosis that supports me as your steadfast advocate in creative growth and potential.

I'll put it under a read more. It's nothing triggering I don't think, I'm just a little embarrassed to have it fully visible under what I still consider to be a relatively professional space. Or at least a space for me as a professional whose brand involves not being very professional.

Nevertheless.

I debated for a long time self-publishing Blind Trust. I went back and forth every so often for weeks, and my poor wife had to deal with the brunt of my strange excuses not to do it. It really came down to one big question, which was...why?

Why am I publishing this? And for money, no less? That's weird. Why would anybody support that? It wouldn't deter me from writing if I never published any of the Songbird Elegies. I'd still write them. I've been writing stories for almost 20 years that no one has ever read and no one will probably ever read.

Sure, I have the fantasies of relative cult notoriety. People making fanart of my characters and sharing weird memes about my plot points. Finding comfort in the words and stories I've created to comfort myself. When I was still considered schizoaffective my dad gave me a copy of Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick and said that he was "like us". If that happened to someone else with one of my books it would mean the world to me.

Then again, would it? Because in my actual, real, physical life I am terrible at taking praise. It's like trying to catch a ball from the other side of a brick wall. If you ever pass me on the street I'm guaranteed to be wearing soundproof headphones and blasting music to keep anyone from talking to me. You might catch my eye and I'll smile and nod, maybe toss a compliment your way, but if you try to have a conversation and I do not know you I will absolutely just keep walking. I can't do it.

I love people and I'm terrified of people. It's always been this way.

It's easier online. I mean it when I say that I'm open to anyone here just starting a conversation with me about anything. There's already the unspoken assumption that we're all already weird, so I don't have to think too hard about your motivations. But still, large amounts of praise and positive reinforcement make me deeply uncomfortable. I've been trying to work on that for years, but I find most advice on building self-worth deeply unhelpful.

It's not like I'd prefer hate. I think I'm just not used to being noticed either way.

This is the first time I've made an honest effort to put my work, and by proxy myself (all writers are brands now, says the publishing industry as a whole) on display online. And for the most part it's been great! I enjoy the connections I've made here. The promise of making more. There are so many skilled storytellers here that it gives me a lot of hope and excitement for the future of literature.

But it's weird. It's really weird.

Most of the time I see it as another social media client. I stand by the posts I make and do them for fun, but I also do them to maintain a presence and draw in more attention. I studied to do things like this for work before. I picked like three social media management tactics that I thought I could remember when I was 18 and just stuck by them. And then occasionally I go oh wait. This isn't some nonprofit. This isn't a start-up for tech assholes. This is me.

And that's weird.

It's not a massive following I have, but it's more than I've ever had before under my own personal and creative writing. I published short stories and articles, but I never heard anything from them. There are short stories I have on online journals that I genuinely do not know if anyone has read. Here, I see people like things and I'm like huh. I feel like a mummy or a ghoul. I do not understand what people are doing.

One part of my brain takes this information and says that it's probably proof that when I publish Blind Trust, some people will buy it. People have expressed interest already. Which means they're probably interested, I think. I post excerpts of my writing and people seem to enjoy it enough to click a button or leave a comment. That's cool. I don't get why it happens, but it's very cool and it makes me happy.

At the same time there's this undercurrent of paranoia. I don't get it. And I don't think I ever will. That's essentially been my only coping mechanism for publishing at this point - I don't know if it'll work, but I might as well try and if I do something will probably happen.

I know I'm a writer. At this point it would be ridiculous to say I wasn't. I'm a professional, working writer, and experienced enough to know that saying all that doesn't say much in terms of quality.

Am I a good writer? I don't really know what that means. I like Blind Trust. I'm reading it for the fourth time as I edit it again and I genuinely enjoy it. So someone who thinks like me and has similar tastes to myself might feel the same way. I don't really know who that person might be. Statistically I imagine they have to exist somewhere. And that there's at least a handful of them.

Imposter Syndrome is real and I don't think it ever goes away. I'd like to think that it's one of those things where you think about it less and less, and this is just the first night in maybe five months that I'm really thinking about it.

I'm not expecting to make a ton of money off my first book. In fact, I probably will be sick from anxiety with any purchase I get for the first year, because it means that someone spent human money on writing I am happy to just give them for free.

But this is going to be my job. I want this to be my job so I can spend more time doing it. Because I've dedicated so much time to doing all of this, it means I get to spend a lot of my day getting other writers to write even a little bit of their own stories. And that's so important to me.

I don't know. I don't really have a neat end to this. I'm forcing myself to actually follow through with posting it, and then to continue keeping it up even though it feels incredibly vulnerable to be, in my opinion, this self-indulgent and whiny. It's insecure. I'm still insecure. I'm in therapy and on medication and there's more shit I got to do in life.

Still, I'm telling myself that my version of being a Professional Writer is to showcase emotional pitfalls like this. Newer writers might know that you can sometimes have a night where you might not be in despair, per say, but certainly deep confusion, and then come back the next day and keep on working. I stand by what I mean when I say that the craft should not be entirely miserable. It is still maybe 25% inconvenient to me, and I am currently in that less-desirable quarter.

So what am I doing? Wife got us Jersey Mike's, so I had a yummy sandwich. Kafka is sitting on my calves, just behind my laptop monitor. I'm listening to my soul/funk playlist while Wife plays Hell Divers for the first time. Later we're going to play a board game.

But for now, I'm going to keep editing my goddamned novel.

Blind Trust out in June. Get ready people, because I'm not.

[egophiliac]

no punchline this time, just wanted to try some new techniques, and I liked this bit of dialogue from the first part of episode 7! what is composition

...okay, look, I warned you I was going to be super annoying about diasomnia--

[kingofmeatballs]

I wanna kiss punch him so bad it makes me look stupid

[the-witchhunter]

DP x DC: Cyber Six AU

So Idea, take some aspects of Cyber Six and make it a Danny Phantom in Gotham situation

For those who don’t know, the basic premise is that Cyber Six is the creation of this mad scientist that escaped. She needs a substance that only the bad guy can produce to live and has to fight the creations of the bad guy in order to stop evil plans as well as get the substance. In the comics it’s more of a vampiric feeding. During the day she poses as a male English teacher while hiding her identity from her love interest. The love interest is in love with her as Cyber six, and friends with her as her teacher identity. The whole thing has a lot of trans themes and is totally worth watching the cartoon, but do you see where I’m going with this?

Danny in Gotham, hiding as a teacher by day, and fighting the artificial ghosts Vlad or the GIW send after him by night as Phantom. Gotham doesn’t really have much Ectoplasm, and Danny needs to feed on it. He’d move to a place with more, but Batman is a major deterrent and hiding in Gotham is keeping the people chasing him from coming themselves and risking getting on the Bat’s radar. Luckily, instead of realizing they could starve him out, they send their creations to drag him back, providing a guilt free source of ectoplasm

Danny get’s work at Gotham Academy as one of Tim’s teachers while hiding out. It would be just fine, he has a degree in chemistry and one in engineering. The issue? They gave him an English class, a subject he struggled with in school. Lucky for him while lamenting this fact to a stranger, one Jason Todd, he finds out the other man is a literature nerd and would be happy to go over his curriculum with him. Jason is just happy he has someone to info dump about Jane Austen to while he waits for Tim to get out.

Meanwhile, Red Hood is dealing with the sighting of odd creatures in his territory when he comes across Phantom. The two strike up a friendship while dealing with the threat to Hood’s territory, Phantom gets to feed from the artificial ghost, and so it goes on. 

Jason gets feeling for the mysterious Phantom, While Danny gets feeling for the charming literature nerd Jason. That’s right baby, the love square. They’re in love with their other identities. Meanwhile Tim is dying inside as his teacher is making goo goo eyes at his brother.

[bearotonin-international]

a bear pic for you, a sacrifice to the bear gods

Thank you friend! Romaine lettuce is Kalluk's favorite snack! A worthy sacrifice

[folklouire]

olivia rodrigo was so right. i'm so sick of 17 22 where's my fucking teenage young adult dream

[stressedanime]

just received +25 psychic damage by relating song lyrics to the treatment of demigods in pjo

[teabree-shark]

figured out why these hit so hard

[kalcifers-blog]

HELLO JSE EGO COMMUNITY HOW ARE WE FUCKING FEELING

I'm legitimately going insane.

[fanaticallyperfect]

guys..........

THE MARVIN CALLBACK

[vialae]

Cannot stop thinking about how much Gortash would probably enjoy theatre/opera since he seems to enjoy all aspects of high society except the other people in high society.

Kaidos hates anything like that. However, he either attends a show either because he cannot resist Gortash’s manipulative puppy eyes or because he said no but Gortash does not accept the word ‘no’ and simply whittled him down.

Naturally, they have a box to themselves. Gortash uses it as ample opportunity to have his hand idly resting on his partner’s thigh the entire time.

Gortash is enthralled with the performance; Kaidos is much more concerned with watching the crowd and scoping out possible targets for later.

If Gortash used those opera glasses, Kaidos is definitely telling him how stupid he looks using them.

Kaidos is doing every petty thing he can to make sure Gortash does not invite him again.

[jestiamy]

qsmp makes me feel like a conspiracy theorist almost constantly. I see someone go "yeah bad almost exclusively chooses tophats in games when given the option" and I immediately run back to my conspiracy board and pin that next to the photo of q!slime and q!mariana saying they'll adopt juanaflippa because she has glasses like q!slime/q!mariana respectively under a sticky note captioned "??? the original spanish-english egg pairs were designed in a way meant to attract certain parents to adopting them???", that's connected by red string to a note pad page stating "how random was the parent pairing REALLY?" with nothing under it - which is then connected to a string that leads to several polaroids containing the ending(s) of the wall and the wreckage of the button, captioned "why build a wall that big only to have it end at a certain point?" followed by a string connected to a notebook page in the middle of the board reading "the illusion of choice?" - connected to several other seemingly dead-end questions and theories, as well as some slight stragglers only connected to eachother and not the middle. and then I look over my board covered in feverish notes and I go. yeah okay so I may just have like a slight problem

[jellyfishdoodler]

My friend @kakesuwolf let me try out void's tablet so have a super simple Jackie! (Also go check out my friend's art its so fucking good!!)

[k-atsukibakugou]

the idea 😔 of having a playful rivalry with sero 😔 while sleeping with him 😔 gonna cry

[cloudofsalt]

SEPTIC EGOS / ALTRVERSE NATION HOW WE DOING

[plsleafmelon]

dude i do not want to do this battle again i am so tired brooooo WHY IS THIS FIGHT TAKING FOREVER WHAT IS THE EX CONDITION????