In The Thick of It

Ok. I’m going to get to the heart of the matter.

Life is weird. Life is hard. I don’t know why, but I’m going through a blue period.

It isn’t as though there’s any reason that I can discern for it. Life may be hard, but I am living my dreams. I am writing for the masses. I hope to make some money at it someday. My work is being read by more and more people. I am having fun losing myself in the universes that I create.

I also feel alone even when I am surrounded by others.

I somehow don’t know how to react to the taste of success. It could be seconds away from my fingertips, and I would have an attack of nerves. I’d get cold feet  if I had to give a speech in public. Maybe I should just read it in someone else’s voice!

I’ve gotten colder. I’m not going to lie. My inner warrior took over. My mind has been on nothing but self defense and survival for so long now, that I can’t seem to shut it off and just breathe. I can’t put down the sword.

How often does one receive an anonymous gift of flowers?

And how did I forget to breathe when I got that gift? It doesn’t seem right to me.

Plainly, I’ve more work to do in learning to accept friendship, gratitude, love, admiration, and respect. I somehow got the impression that I didn’t deserve any of those things. I’m not going to delve into my past. I’ve already been there and done that. It’s time to move on.

I made a video tonight with new free editing software. In truth, I’m not at all sure how I did it. I didn’t add any effects. I didn’t speed anything up or slow anything down. It just sort of came together and turned out pretty well. My writing is the same way.  I don’t know where the fuck the next sentence is going to come from, but I plunk down one and than another. Before I even realize what I’ve done, I’ve amassed more than a thousand words inside of an hour.

I feel like my life has been that way. I don’t have a plan. I just get up, suit up, show up and hope to goodness that something good comes from my efforts.

Life often fucks with me when I make too many plans. So I have to tread with some care, it seems.

I’m awfully tired lately. I have a short fuse. People who waste my time become nothing but irritants.

And I’m worrying everyone around me. Co workers shake their heads and wonder why I go silent. Friends ask me what the matter is. My parents cock their heads and furrow their brows.

I feel like telling them all to back off.

But I won’t. It isn’t anyone’s intention to get under my skin or to try to make me admit to things that I don’t want to talk about. But the only answer I have for such a question is “don’t give up on me.” I can’t speed this along. I’m obviously in it. I’ll figure my way out of it. I always do.

Though I wonder if I’ve spent my entire life living with such a pattern. Perhaps these mood swings are seasonal in nature. It might explain why I brood so much during the fall.

Then again, maybe I brood because I haven’t yet learned to recognize my own progress.

It’s a lesson we might all need to be reminded of. It pays to take stock, but to focus too narrowly on one single detail can be toxic.

I’ll hold onto my flowers. I’ll keep writing my stories. I’ll keep blogging, recording my voice and making my vids.

I’ll keep trucking. With some better rest along the way, even I might learn to see the bright side of life.

Until then, maybe it’s best if I just get through the obstacles in my way and move along until I give a damn again.

Anyways, enjoy the vid. I made this bad boy myself

 

 

 

 

What is Real? – Thoughts on Authenticity..

There is a word that people have been throwing around for the last decade as part of what might be seen by some as a movement, of sorts.  This word is “authentic.”  There are those of us who seek to reclaim our own authenticity in a society that is replete with the means to defeat that purpose.  The irony that social media is touted as a means to “represent your individuality” as you flit around more or less anonymously from twitter to facebook to your own blogs and then to “klout” is not lost on me.

 

And I haven’t yet become so immersed in all this that I’ve forgotten what I am doing even as I post this comment.  It’s like railing against the “capitalist machine”and then going out and buying a white chocolate mocha at Starbucks.  I’ve seen pretentious beret-wearing motherfuckers do this in New York City, and I do nothing but shake my head and laugh.  I haven’t really got the motivation to point out the hilarity of what they’ve just done.

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  My hypocrisy will only extend so far.

 

But what are we trying to do in the modern world when we define our authentic selves?  Is it right to say that the people who read my blog and who share my facebook posts and wall pictures really know who the hell I am?  Is it healthy to feel a sort of rejection at not being “retweeted” or “given klout points” at least once a week?

 

I’m not going to lie to any of you.  I ventured into twitter and the social networking scene with serious trepidation.  I didn’t want some image or caricature of myself to be the only thing that people really understood about me.  I don’t want the darkness of the fiction I write to be the only thing that registers with people every single time they view my profile picture, and I don’t particularly care to see others as one dimensional visages of the night, sparkly vampires, dark lords, or anything of the sort.  The novelty of that wears off pretty quickly for someone like me because I’m the type of person that is interested in the layers underneath the facade.  Maybe it’s because I studied psychology in college and worked in mental health for almost 7 years, but the fact remains that it isn’t easy to sort through all the bullshit to get to what’s real for each of us anymore.  We can pretend all we want to that modern technology has created easier means through which to communicate, but that’s only a part of the process.  I would argue that modern technology has simply afforded more of us a global reach with our words, images, and quirky surface level personalities.

 

But if I was to pick ONE Of my blog or twitter followers right now and attempt to have a real “conversation” with him or her, I would have to start from the beginning with the word “hello.”  I would seek to find out how they’re feeling in that very moment, how their days have gone, and what’s so special about their lives that they feel the need to share it with the world.  And it would not be meant as a means to denigrate or to spew invective about how “eccentric” or pretentious people can be.  We all have those tendencies. It’s almost imperative that we do in order to stand out nowadays in social media…

 

Where do the false expectations from our World Wide Web followers and public supporters come from?  Do we pigeon hole ourselves with the images that we create; the avatars with which we “dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”

 

Writers seem to have a particularly nuanced way of doing this through their use of social media.  Simply put, social media has become a means through which writers can “show their wares.”  I can think of a few people who simply want their writing to speak for itself, and yet I can think of quite a few others who are so desperate to sell their writing that they would sooner have me follow them on twitter just so that some bot that they took the time to set up months ago will automatically bombard me with their inflated egos.  That bothers me, but not because I am not curious about their writing.  Goodness knows that someday I hope to be shilling my own wares on unsuspecting victims..I mean a captive audience.  But I have to wonder if the author behind the bot really intended for people like me to be turned off or simply bemused by their stunning lack of personal connection with one of their potential readers.

 

And then I realize as I have this thought, my mind circles back to the word “authentic.”  What is the authentic essence of the person behind the bot?  Who the fuck are they, really?  Do they want me to know, or are they trying to evoke an image in order to strike a chord and sell me something?  And how does MY authentic self fit into this equation?

 

Am I buying what they’re selling?

 

No lie, sometimes the answer to that last question is a resounding YES!

 

Can we strive to be “authentic” then in a world that practically demands that we put on airs? Let’s face it, even at our regular places of employment, most of us are busy doing and saying things that we don’t want to be doing or saying, especially nowadays when it is so imperative that we keep the jobs that we have.  It can be such a tiresome process.

 

Yet the few people who truly know the “real” me didn’t garner that information purely from social media.  For those who didn’t meet me before my amusing adventures on the internet, something about the image that I evoked sparked enough of an interest from them that they took their curiosity to the next level.  The reverse has happened to me on rare occasions too.  I’ve attempted real communication with a select few of my slowly growing list of followers on websites like twitter.

 

In the end, the people who really begin to get to know the real me are the ones who can close down twitter, facebook, klout, and all the other internet bullshit and just hang.  I can talk to them about things that have nothing to do with my writing, and have just as much fun.  We can chew the fat about our day to day thoughts.  I can congratulate new parents, ask my female friends why the fuck I don’t understand the sizes pertaining to women’s fashion, and I can even sit with the best of them in comfortable silence and just “be me.”  That is a rare thing indeed, and nothing offered by digitalized personae will ever come close to that.

 

 

I know I know.  I’m posing more questions than I’m answering.  But what’s life without these kinds mysteries?  Are you reading this right now and wondering if this is the real me?  Maybe you should wonder.  Better yet, drop me a line and find out for yourself.