I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year. I've started strong, and I'm trying to loosen up with my creative shitty-first-draft writing (which I don't do much of anymore these days, so it's a refreshing change).
For several reasons, but that being one of them, I'm feeling somewhat raw, more than usual. Also, probably the amount of caffeine, and worries about schedules and all of that.
I had a thought on crowd-sourcing and asking for financial support from people who read your blog or listen to your podcast (in the wake of our first ever canceled subscription over on FF&C — not a great way to start the morning). Fiscal crowd-sourcing is kind of like crowd-surfing.... You have to make sure that you have a big group of people who are so fucking excited to be there, they don't mind if you accidentally kick them in the face while you're busy failing around. It's not even a matter of supporting your weight. It's about the fact that, these days, you don't get "off" time from the online persona, ever, so you have to trust in people to forgive you for disappointing them or being a pain in their neck (literally). Also, if you're like me, you end up spending so much time trying to make sure you're not wearing steel-toed boots or other clothes that might hurt someone under you, that you never get the chance to crowd-surf anyway. And then you feel stupid and hurt because nobody noticed how gods-damned sensitive you were trying to be.
I am feeling deeply cynical right now, because I do not have very many people in my life that I can trust like that. I do not think that I am a very difficult person to get along with, but so it goes. I am approaching thirty, and sometimes I still feel like the vulnerable angst-ridden teen whose friends are always on the edge of abandoning her for some slight that she didn't even know she made. (True story.) I am unreasonably hurt, for instance, that a person whom I thought was a very good friend of mine simply hasn't answered my emails in several months.... And my reaction is "if you let them, let them go"... but sometimes I feel like I am doing a lot of letting go in my life. The thing about butterflies and flowers is, the flowers have to put so much energy into being attractive.
I do not understand what it is that makes other people successful. I don't even understand what it is that makes my own work successful when it does happen. Things I pour my heart and soul and sweat into get ignored, and things that I scramble through (not because I'm half-assing it, but because there's always something worthy to be doing and I just can't do it all) sometimes get praised like they're the best thing ever. It's so easy to ignore when that happens, especially when it feels like what people want from you is to always be scrambling and half-crazed and a mess. It's hard not to feel deeply hurt when your best stuff, your soul stuff, gets completely overlooked in the mad dash. It can make you feel like your soul is shit, isn't worth people's time.
This is me, making my life more difficult than it has to be. Only a few years ago, I was panicked because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I had nobody to help me. Now, I have a wonderful husband and a wonderful home in a place I love, and I'm doing work that I love to do, more of it than I ever thought I'd have, I get to work full time as a "creative professional" (let's say — is that a term, or did I make it up?).... And I'm still the anxiety-ridden idiot whose worried that nobody loves her and nobody wants to listen. I went from being worried that I had nothing to say, to being worried that nobody could be bothered to hear me out.
How ridiculous. I blame the caffeine. Leftover Halloween candy is the worst.
I just want to make something beautiful with my life. When I feel like nobody supports me in that, I get resentful and stamp off to my own little corner to build my own sand castles. And they will be so damn beautiful. But I see the tide coming in, and I know it won't last forever. So how do you deal with that?
Even Emily Dickinson had fans.
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