From a writer's standpoint I feel like I missed the train right now. It left the station in the moment I got there and now I have to wait for God knows how long to get the next opportunity.
In a way this describes the process of being judgemental about one's own work and I wanted to explain how my mind runs in that regard. There have been times where I have been writing on a daily basis, or something close to it, and even though not everything turned into something, the general level of judgement I would bring towards every text was much, much lower than how it would have been, had I not been writing on a frequent basis. The bar gradually moves up higher and higher and eventually, when I do take up a pen and paper or move towards a keyboard, whatever comes out is just garbage in my eyes in most cases. Unless there was something produced by God-given talent, of course.
I struggle with responsibility from time to time. If I take it and attach it to my writing, then there is at least a good chance that I am not happy with the result. If this feels to you like the same paragraph all over again, then I didn't make myself clear enough. What I meant above was that could apply to anything - creative or not. Yesterday I was supposed to collaborate with a friend of mine in a new creative form and I was genuinely nervous and tried to keep my expectations toward it very low. Expectations are a very tricky thing in that regard, since it seemed to me that he was much more energetic before compared to me when we made arrangements and I was concerned my product couldn't live up to it because most of the time my writing just sits there without a comment. I know real feedback is different from feedback on instagram. It is perfectly okay if my writing remains uncommented because it is for myself. It really doesn't matter at the end of my day whether it gains much attention or not because it is supposed to be a mental exercise that I should enjoy doing rather than granting me fame and popularity or money and that sort of thing. Sometimes it is nice to think that could be the case, but it will certainly make it more difficult for me to write in the future because then there would be more people watching (and not commenting). Within this shroud of ambivalence my writing sits and I am either confident about it or I crumble. For me it feels like there is little in between.
I know my bad isn't everyone else's bad, but over the last week or two my mind has mostly been preoccupied thinking about integrity or volatile things.
When I created the platforms I use to write I didn't tell anyone and eventually only a handful and that was not because I didn't care what my inner-most circle of friends or family feels about me, I just didn't want my platforms to be judged because of my person, but because of my writing. My person has been judged because of many things in the past and writing is a way of coping for me, most of all. But from what I understand about my writing, there needs to be, to an extent at least, a lived experience that I can reflect upon, so my person and my writing somehow still belong together and therein really is the crux for me. I never want people to look at the bad things, I just want them to see the good. If the good thing is the writing, then please don't look at the person behind it. But people don't really relate to a writer, they relate to a person and now I am in between lifting the veil of my persona for people to really identify with my writing (because there needs to be a person behind it) and hiding my shameful face because of some of the things I write about.
It all started with collaboration that I got noticed by some people I know from the inside world. I may have been hiding for close to a year now and have gotten away with it so far, but when I decided to collaborate and the product eventually made it to the surface world, then people found me and that was something I allowed to happen, even though I was dreading this moment for a long time. At this point I feel like there is a responsibility that I took up willingly and attached to my writing. I have gotten to know a community I made myself a spokesperson of and I don't regret doing it - as a matter of fact that is something I enjoy. There are more important things in the world than pleasing my ego. It makes little sense to shout-out any specific person or to make more fuss about my insecurities, they just are what they are. For my integrity as a writer I need to keep going like nothing happened because if you think about it, nothing happened. I wrote something and it stayed uncommented.
In a way this describes the process of being judgemental about one's own work and I wanted to explain how my mind runs in that regard. There have been times where I have been writing on a daily basis, or something close to it, and even though not everything turned into something, the general level of judgement I would bring towards every text was much, much lower than how it would have been, had I not been writing on a frequent basis. The bar gradually moves up higher and higher and eventually, when I do take up a pen and paper or move towards a keyboard, whatever comes out is just garbage in my eyes in most cases. Unless there was something produced by God-given talent, of course.
I struggle with responsibility from time to time. If I take it and attach it to my writing, then there is at least a good chance that I am not happy with the result. If this feels to you like the same paragraph all over again, then I didn't make myself clear enough. What I meant above was that could apply to anything - creative or not. Yesterday I was supposed to collaborate with a friend of mine in a new creative form and I was genuinely nervous and tried to keep my expectations toward it very low. Expectations are a very tricky thing in that regard, since it seemed to me that he was much more energetic before compared to me when we made arrangements and I was concerned my product couldn't live up to it because most of the time my writing just sits there without a comment. I know real feedback is different from feedback on instagram. It is perfectly okay if my writing remains uncommented because it is for myself. It really doesn't matter at the end of my day whether it gains much attention or not because it is supposed to be a mental exercise that I should enjoy doing rather than granting me fame and popularity or money and that sort of thing. Sometimes it is nice to think that could be the case, but it will certainly make it more difficult for me to write in the future because then there would be more people watching (and not commenting). Within this shroud of ambivalence my writing sits and I am either confident about it or I crumble. For me it feels like there is little in between.
I know my bad isn't everyone else's bad, but over the last week or two my mind has mostly been preoccupied thinking about integrity or volatile things.
When I created the platforms I use to write I didn't tell anyone and eventually only a handful and that was not because I didn't care what my inner-most circle of friends or family feels about me, I just didn't want my platforms to be judged because of my person, but because of my writing. My person has been judged because of many things in the past and writing is a way of coping for me, most of all. But from what I understand about my writing, there needs to be, to an extent at least, a lived experience that I can reflect upon, so my person and my writing somehow still belong together and therein really is the crux for me. I never want people to look at the bad things, I just want them to see the good. If the good thing is the writing, then please don't look at the person behind it. But people don't really relate to a writer, they relate to a person and now I am in between lifting the veil of my persona for people to really identify with my writing (because there needs to be a person behind it) and hiding my shameful face because of some of the things I write about.
It all started with collaboration that I got noticed by some people I know from the inside world. I may have been hiding for close to a year now and have gotten away with it so far, but when I decided to collaborate and the product eventually made it to the surface world, then people found me and that was something I allowed to happen, even though I was dreading this moment for a long time. At this point I feel like there is a responsibility that I took up willingly and attached to my writing. I have gotten to know a community I made myself a spokesperson of and I don't regret doing it - as a matter of fact that is something I enjoy. There are more important things in the world than pleasing my ego. It makes little sense to shout-out any specific person or to make more fuss about my insecurities, they just are what they are. For my integrity as a writer I need to keep going like nothing happened because if you think about it, nothing happened. I wrote something and it stayed uncommented.
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