"No Time To Do ME Differently."
Just a little explanation as to how my health scare has made me step backwards and just be myself, write how and what I want to. Just me being me. 27 October 2024
27 October 2024
Digging a little further into my thoughts about retirement and pivoting the unlikely theme and shape which my newsletters had taken. It was purely relationship/mental health based topics, cathartic in self-exploration, confessional to my readers, overthinking and paranoia, toxic/volatile intimate situations, and dumping all this down in writing my findings from my own inner nature, an amateur engineering the mechanics of her fucked up mind. I thought all this and everything else I was writing about was disgusting and insular, uninteresting and a burden on any reader. I also felt that by discussing my real life experiences in this way a kick in the face for all those people close to me and involved in my ‘tea spilling’ essays. I felt useless and selfish.
Things are changing and I have no idea how many daydreams I have time to gaze at anymore. My idea was to stop being a psycho-mental,schizophrenic, whinger, moaning and complaining about everything with a mouth like a gutter with the ambition of a whore! I wanted to TRY HARDER at honing in on my writing; concentrating on creativity (as opposed to venting or as self-indulgent free therapy for myself) I wanted to see if I could do ‘writing’ as or like a craft. Work on stepping outside of my comfort zone, and/or jumping on the bandwagon of writers who produce newsletters designed to appeal a wide group of readers, I think I was trying to be something I’m clearly not, which is more of a audience-focused publication. I’m not getting paid to do these things, even if I was - I’d have probably given up like this.
I was feeling self-conscious about every single word I was saying and putting in ‘print’ until now, now I couldn’t give a flying fuck about any of this. It’s like reading. Read a book of your own choice for enjoyment, you fly through it, feel good every part of the process. Before you know it you’ve finished a book. Yet, if made to read material that is beyond your own interest or even far too difficult to fathom, that takes a lot more work to read, drags on and becomes a chore, the process is whole different ball game. It feels shit and you hate it.
That’s my take on the idea I had of honing my craft. I did want to step out of my comfort zone and stop writing whatever comes naturally. I wanted to learn harder, think harder and write hard.
Time might no longer be on my side. I haven’t used my time wisely. I haven’t given myself permission to write better, be a better version of ‘ME’ in my newsletters always my only public offerings. I haven’t given myself enough credit for coming as far as I have come from nothing. Kept zoning in on the lack of new readers, the loss of valued subscribers recently and the devil in the detail being ‘Stagnation in the Stats’ tab - I was looking at the gaps.I was the opposite of tone deaf. I was listening to the silence between each note, and forgetting to tune into the whole melody.
So now what?
I want to write naturally. I need ‘easy’ I need to accept the me who I am right now. I might never BE another version of myself. I am grateful for how much I have accomplished in one year here. On the other hand I am wounded that I have accomplished so much of NOTHING in the 42 years I have lived. I feel like living has been pointless. I feel shit that I have existed like this. How do you cram a lifetime of ‘I’ll do it later’’ or ‘‘in the futures’’ or ‘‘one days’’ into an unknown period of time left to live now?
I am getting ahead of myself a little bit. I still have no formal diagnoses let alone a prognoses. According to the research or ME-search I’ve been doing each day, I already died yesterday. My writing for myself has been a slow death the more I fail to see any real tangible ‘success’ - and you know I am not talking financial gain, but readership. My friends, subscribers, followers have been dropping off like flies and it put me off being myself. I was fortunate, in my eyes, to have grown up in times where likes, shares and a following were unheard of. I didn’t care that my friendship group in real life (because real life is all we had) was small or non-existent. I survived by advocating for myself.
“At the end of the day.. ‘all that we have is our soul’. That’s what I bring to the table. I have realised that my ‘success’ cannot be measured by how many people can relate to me, or my writing and if they choose to stick with me for the duration of my journey, coming back and reading what I say again.”
I don’t even want to be happy anymore!
My success is not measured by any level of happiness either. I am successful in my own right by the length of my progression and internal transformation. Just because I might be barking up Death’s tree soon (yes, got to keep it realistic and overthink this shit) doesn’t mean that I am a failure or that I have failed. I have been through so much in my life and my memories does not serve me well; unless it is true what all those ancient philosophers used to convey - life is suffering - if it is I have a vault of memories backed up to prove I have done my time well.