Personal #1

It is always depressing when people who looked at your work favourably in the past decide to part company with it in the present. Of course, once upon a time, writers never experienced the decay of interest in real time. It’s only the Internet and website/app metrics which have granted us this tool, and that is what it is. Popularity online has largely been reduced to metrics, numbers and ‘content’.

Yesterday, someone left my site who has a Wikipedia page, who has been published by a major, who was someone who had taught me down the line, in one of what I realise was a set of personal choices made in error. It is important, I think, to be honest with yourself sometimes. This is me being vulnerable, and it’s the realisation that leaving places has consequences beyond the action.

Going forward, we are not prioritising online growth any more.

Right now, I feel very much in an evolutionary state, for lots of reasons. Physically there has been an altering of exercise process, again, pushing back into a period of progressively heavy loading, tied into trying to develop speed and flexibility to help me through the next period of existence. Mentally there have been some MAJOR lightbulb moments. My naivety has, again, become a Thing.

I have had to react quickly in a couple of situations to both my own stupidity and innocence, which then manifested arrogance, and it is important to make sure this part of the process is not allowed any space to get comfortable. There needs to be more of me checking my facts and not panicking as much. I could do with more Plan C’s so if A and B both become infeasible I’m still able to function.

Care is what matters most of all. I need to care, even when others don’t.

It has taken a LONG time to accept that a lack of emotional development as a child has severely hampered my ability to assess and consider the world around me as an adult. That functionality has only really begun to emerge over the last ten years. In many ways, I ‘grew up’ for the first time properly with both my kids, and writing that down gives me a sense of belonging that was not within me before.

It’s also increasingly emerging in my writing, I realise. Being told this week by a total stranger that I am capable of doing this if I can focus beyond a basic need to communicate has been a real game-changing moment. Why does this have more impact than all the people who care about me saying the same thing? This person was kind enough to tell me how to be better in a completely unemotional way.

A stranger handed me the means of moving my own narrative forward.

There is now a long-term project that I won’t give up to keep the online side of things moving forward. It is linked to a real-life project that I hope will start something significant in reality. I have no idea if ANY of these things are sustainable long-term so there are several back-up plans if they aren’t. Ironically, my published work aspirations do not feature in this at all.

The publishing is the random factor that has almost ruined me this year. Something I wrote three years ago will soon be in print, and then all I can literally do is hope other people see something in what I have written since and decide to act on it. That is now all that exists as a truth. We keep writing, and allow the reality of everything else around me to try and find a long-term sustainable future.

All I can ever do as a creative is attempt to stay true to myself.