Hamsterwheel broke while internet was out: 'why I find writing hard.'

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You would think given I am a man of little means and a lot of imagination I could just ban out story after story after story til I have this massive backlog of material I can fish through at any moment at the whims of boredom and or vodka.

I have written several dozen short stories, a novel, parts of three other novels, the outline of an entire setting, and I just can’t do anything with any of it.

I’ve not bothered because why bother? It won’t make anything here suck less, I can’t sell because I make /any/money I lose government benefits-

Time for a mini-rant-within-a-rant: Right you want people to feel like shit for being on disability because not working so therefore must be fucking welfare queens living it large on the gibbyment dime… Nevermind business gets a Gargantuan amount of direct subsidy and tax exemption. Naaaww it’s people like me who can maybe work a shit job at best that won’t really make a liveable wage but at the same time would disqualify me from government assistance that’s leeching off Good Hardworking White Christians that is what’s wrong with the country. Look. I want a job. I want to be able to look my parents in the eye and go Yes Sir I have employment. I am worth something. I contribute. Never mind I do a fair bit at home. I basically feel worthless because that’s All I do and it never feels like enough to make it feel like everything isn’t falling apart at the seams. Logically I know my family has a lot of problems I have no ability to solve and nobody outside of group therapy and a willingness as a family to fix those problems can solve any of it… But to just constantly feel like I’m somehow leeching off of people who hold employment as a sign of self worth and then tell me that they’re totally not when they constantly go on about their own work history or how it was back in the good old days when my grandmother worked a factory job? And here I sit doing piddly nothing housework as they supposedly aren’t being insulting or whatever by saying I am spoiled? Then go on and act offended saying how I talk about them like they’re the devil and look how much worse it could be. Maybe so but when my stability directly is dependant on a bunch of unstable people I am going to be rather concerned when it looks like anything beyond the basics is rather low on the priority list. Fine it can be worse, but leading off with that instead of going ‘hey we know resources are thin so how can all of us make things BETTER’ doesn’t feel productive…

It won’t help here with family, and I keep feeling like it’ll get overlooked in the wider world. I just need to do Something though. Trouble is as much as I tell myself it’s because I cannot find an audience? It’s more because of the ‘not fixing what is wrong in my life’ thing that keeps me from doing. I know my family will never see it as something worthwhile to do. Their support for anything is at best lip service and I shouldn’t put any emotional investment in the fact I have no support, but… Well. When nobody shows any interest past the planning stage and more to the point this is literally the only hobby I’m able to actually work with with what tools I have. It all feels hollow.

Then again I need to do something because everything keeps winding me up. My family? Whatever crisis of the minute just gets under my skin. My stepdad makes it a personal hobby to troll me. Everyone telling me to stop being bothered by a guy who’s been doing shit to piss me off since I was four never relenting ad outright behaving as if he’s disgusted by me? Yep. The fact even my attempts at online communities have blown up in my face to the point what passes for friends with me tell me I should quit, making me feel less like they are trying to help and it instead sounding like ‘this is yet another thing you are unfit for.’

Let’s just set aside the fact I really don’t like this place anymore and feel it’s turned into a tumblrina funkhole where unless you either ignore or bow down to the cockmanglers that shout down people going 'hey toning down on the hatorade would be wonderful, you should kinda not shout at people that they are worthless trash when they are agreeing with you. I personally don’t think any of you care. It’s just 4am, my net just came back on, I can’t sleep, and I’m going to regret this in the morning.

Christ on a crutch. It’s hard to focus on ‘I can do this’ when I get not only all that but a constant montage of all of those little moments I have screwed up constantly on loop. Confidence? What’s that? Oh sure I have written. But I hate all of it. I see every flaw, every editing flub, the fact it took me shoving the book at people to get anyone to read… All of that as a nice wet blanket I can’t pick up.

None of this helped by my own life inexperience leaving me to feel wholly unqualified to give anything like a ‘normal’ set of interactions.

This is why I have trouble writing with any consistency.

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Hitting like only cause I got NFI where to start with this but I can really sympathize with the pain eh.Parts of of that you’ve written there could well be me.

I dunno. I mean, shit might not ever get fixed, but some days can be better than others and 4am is a fucking awful time to think about anything. Hang in there, stay strong. Oh, and I hate to be that dude telling you you’re wrong, but [quote=“singletona082, post:1, topic:93200”]
I personally don’t think any of you care.
[/quote]

You’re wrong on that bit.

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Not sure if this will help or be as bad an influence as it was on me:

http://www.primitivism.com/abolition.htm

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Doctor Steel’s Utopia Playland.

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Belittlement from family is…pernicious. :frowning:

Glad you have your net back and can keep connecting with the outside world. :smiley:

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I really should qualify. I’ve had net the whole time I was ‘away’ from here. It was just down during hours normal people don’t stay awake for some odd reason while I had insomnia.

As for my absence from here? Frankly it’s not something that would get any positive attention here. Just… Go look at my post history. I have strong disagreements with what feels like a bloc of users here that by appearances have admin blessing to act how they do.

I refuse to name names.

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Honestly, this has been me more than once in the past, depending on where I was in my mood cycle. I think one of the main things that’s helped is to try to see things from other people’s perspective; they have often been through particular negative situations and want to avoid this as much as possible. I think at times other people online represent that threat in their minds, and it’s easy to read more active negativity into their words than they intend. If you get two people like that arguing against each other, both think they’re being defensive and the other is attacking them, and sometimes both feel like they’re having to fight their corner with most people against them (because internalised patriarchy!/because tumblerinas!).

Often I can acknowledge this in principle, but I just feel so paranoid and triggered by everything that it becomes a positive reinforcing loop with my own feelings of worthlessness and I have to self ban for a week or more. I honestly end up believing that everyone here can’t stand me (partly because I can’t and I’m projecting), but I don’t want to leave because I care about the people here and I’m choosing to believe against every impulse that my judgement is impaired and a lot of any sentiment I’m reading is in my own head. (Some people may well find me or my opinions irritating, but I can’t please everyone and I don’t have to internalise that other than to try to improve myself as a person. This feeling isn’t personal against BB – I can get the same way with my family even though they often tell me that they love me. It’s like a filter in front of all of my relationships, or an all-pervasive malevolent force that I feel like I have to run away from, or defend myself against. Like this account, but without any intention to harm anyone but myself (if anything, it’s panic at the thought that I could harm someone else):

My brain slows right down. I become stuck, unable to answer a simple question, unable to establish eye contact and unable to comprehend what is being asked of me.

I avoid answering the phone or the door. My voice deepens and slows sometimes to the point of slurring. My skin becomes pale and grey in hue. I feel the cold more readily. I will look in the mirror and fail to recognise the person there.

As I begin to slip into a more psychotic state of mind I become unable to recognise something as familiar as the palm of my hand or my children’s faces. My sense of space alters and rooms that are familiar appear to have changed dimensions. Simple objects in a room can take on sinister meanings for me.

At this point the world begins to take on a malevolent aspect, which is difficult to describe. Those I love around me become part of a conspiracy to harm me. Their faces will alter and their voices develop a mocking ring. I will hate my husband and other loved ones.

Images just out of my field of vision will be waiting to pounce leaving me in a constant state of vigilance. I have been under the impression that I was rotting under my skin, that my bone marrow is being gnawed away by evil spirits.

Soon the voices and images in my head start telling me what to do.

Stop taking my medications, injure or kill those I love. Destruction. No other way out.

Ultimately they tell me that everything would be better if I killed myself.

I am evil, a burden; I deserve only punishment.

Twisted tales and delusions.

I become passionate about one subject only at these times of deep and intense fear, despair and rage: suicide. The suicidal impulses and images can come at any stage of the illness, even in mania, but are at their most intense and irresistible during psychotic phases.

Apart from medication, the biggest thing that’s helped me is to force myself to see other people as humans with their own fears and vulnerabilities. My world becomes overwhelmed with feelings of negativity directed against me that colour every interaction, so it’s easy to start believing that there is a conspiracy against you, and everyone you interact with is in on it. I found that speaking with people in private and listening to their own impression of the world without trying to convince each other of our perspectives was helpful. When they were vulnerable with me and I let go of the feeling that I had to be defensive, it was easier to ignore the paranoid ways of thinking.

Obviously in my case it’s beyond a normal level of anxiety, but I don’t think the principles are that different for other people. I think solidarity with each other is very important; when I know that other people care about me and that I’m not about to be discarded, I know that I can put energy into supporting others. I have the advantage of a very supportive family, and I’m sorry that you don’t feel the same support from your own. However, I think it’s good that you are being open about your struggles here and I think you underestimate the sympathy you have from others. I don’t want to project my experience onto yours, but the impression I get is that you are magnifying your own inadequacies and feeling like people around you are dismissing you as worthless, and that sounds very familiar. If you can, I would do whatever I could to take the pressure off yourself to prove your value to others. You are probably way overstressed and looking after your own needs and being kinder to yourself is a worthwhile aim in its own right. If you write, forget about anyone else’s opinion and try to write something that you enjoy. It doesn’t matter if it’s objectively any good – don’t feel the need to appraise it. It wouldn’t matter how accomplished and popular you were as a writer; dissatisfaction with yourself isn’t that closely related to your achievement or lack of achievement. If people are making you feel that you are worthless, they are wrong and you don’t have to get a well-paid job or write a popular book to prove them wrong.

I’ve also found that staying away from the more contentious topics can help me to avoid triggering myself and to see others as they actually are, rather than as a threat. Sometimes I’m just not in a state of mind where I can think clearly on certain topics. I’m sorry if anything I’ve said seems judgemental; I certainly don’t mean to diagnose you over the internet or claim knowledge about your thoughts, but some of your comments sound like my own thought processes at times.

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