Cheri, I've missed your writing so much. I'm glad you're back. We're all better off when we have access to the musings in that beautiful brain of yours. <3
Liked Mike’s thoughts here and made me think of a saying about fear (the difference between listening to it vs. obeying it). There are some very interesting dimensions to sharing and revealing oneself online, and to sort of collaborate with others in the process of figuring it out live, probably not much different than street performers. A real baring of the soul isn’t it? That’s the good kind of fear if you can dance with it! Good-scary, I think...thanks for letting me chime in Cheri. Good to see you’ve got some new energy and friends to trigger you!
I certainly hope not. *Too much* fear, the kind that has been stopping both of us, yes, that is a truly malevolent form of creative resistance (my own words 90% dried up between 2014 and 2019, mainly for fear-based reasons). But fear is a feeling, and we write with feelings: anger, dog-like enthusiasm, regret, love - and fear. It's part of the deck, and has a place in every hand we play.
For me, the comparative, performative aspects of writing online became a huge issue. The more I read other great writers, the worse I felt about my own clumsy tappings - and those times when I forced myself to publish (ugh, "forced" - like yelling "EAT YOUR GREENS" at my terrified inner child) and then watched 90% of what I wrote get no immediate public reaction whatsoever, that was a different kind of crushing fear, that'd I'd lost it - or I never even had it! And so on.
Knowing you've been struggling with the same...it doesn't make me feel better, because I love your writing hard, but it does make me feel like we haven't hung out enough these last few years. I mean all of us, all those overlapping social circles, from those early, heady, semi-chaotic days of DGAF-writing for the hell of it, when we wrote just to see what could happen, without the pressure of having metrics that dictated what *should* happen.
In my case I forgot that it's normal to write something that is met with crickets, it's normal to feel immensely intimidated by other people's outsides when your innards are all knotted up - and it's normal to struggle a bit with everything meaningful. I think that last point is the biggie. When we all wrote a lot more, we knew we were all a bit of a mess and all making it up as we went along without exception. But with peer-silence comes the illusion of supremely cool competence with everyone we are no longer talking to. They feel more and more like they "went pro", whatever the hell that means. In contrast, friends gathered together rib each other mercilessly, in that 'private room away from the party', with the shared understanding that we're all just as human as each other, and the constant reminders that perfection is a trap, not something to attain.
In 2002 I remember discovering Friendster and later migrating to MySpace wherein I sensed the budding hyper-narcissism that has now become normality. The promise of social media, like any promise I suppose, leaves much to be desired. What we face today is a profound lack of real community—of real ties that don’t need to make promises but exist in full, as is.
Cheri, I've missed your writing so much. I'm glad you're back. We're all better off when we have access to the musings in that beautiful brain of yours. <3
Liked Mike’s thoughts here and made me think of a saying about fear (the difference between listening to it vs. obeying it). There are some very interesting dimensions to sharing and revealing oneself online, and to sort of collaborate with others in the process of figuring it out live, probably not much different than street performers. A real baring of the soul isn’t it? That’s the good kind of fear if you can dance with it! Good-scary, I think...thanks for letting me chime in Cheri. Good to see you’ve got some new energy and friends to trigger you!
I am thrilled to read this.
"Is it possible to write again without fear?"
I certainly hope not. *Too much* fear, the kind that has been stopping both of us, yes, that is a truly malevolent form of creative resistance (my own words 90% dried up between 2014 and 2019, mainly for fear-based reasons). But fear is a feeling, and we write with feelings: anger, dog-like enthusiasm, regret, love - and fear. It's part of the deck, and has a place in every hand we play.
For me, the comparative, performative aspects of writing online became a huge issue. The more I read other great writers, the worse I felt about my own clumsy tappings - and those times when I forced myself to publish (ugh, "forced" - like yelling "EAT YOUR GREENS" at my terrified inner child) and then watched 90% of what I wrote get no immediate public reaction whatsoever, that was a different kind of crushing fear, that'd I'd lost it - or I never even had it! And so on.
Knowing you've been struggling with the same...it doesn't make me feel better, because I love your writing hard, but it does make me feel like we haven't hung out enough these last few years. I mean all of us, all those overlapping social circles, from those early, heady, semi-chaotic days of DGAF-writing for the hell of it, when we wrote just to see what could happen, without the pressure of having metrics that dictated what *should* happen.
In my case I forgot that it's normal to write something that is met with crickets, it's normal to feel immensely intimidated by other people's outsides when your innards are all knotted up - and it's normal to struggle a bit with everything meaningful. I think that last point is the biggie. When we all wrote a lot more, we knew we were all a bit of a mess and all making it up as we went along without exception. But with peer-silence comes the illusion of supremely cool competence with everyone we are no longer talking to. They feel more and more like they "went pro", whatever the hell that means. In contrast, friends gathered together rib each other mercilessly, in that 'private room away from the party', with the shared understanding that we're all just as human as each other, and the constant reminders that perfection is a trap, not something to attain.
Thank you. This was a wonderful read.
I really should go write something.
In 2002 I remember discovering Friendster and later migrating to MySpace wherein I sensed the budding hyper-narcissism that has now become normality. The promise of social media, like any promise I suppose, leaves much to be desired. What we face today is a profound lack of real community—of real ties that don’t need to make promises but exist in full, as is.
Love this post. You are definitely not an imposter.