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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2bfjkDA:
s-leary reblogged your post and added:
As someone who makes said rec lists, let me assure you, @star-aniseand @bomberqueen17, that I have read and love you both.
oh, this wasn’t meant to be any kind of, like, grasping for reassurance or whatever! I just was so glad to see a post go by that encapsulated so well how I feel.
I hate being jealous about stuff. I hate it, it’s counterproductive. Every time a rec list goes by and I’m not on it, even if it’s using criteria I don’t quite fill (I still remember being so bummed when the list in question was explicitly for completed works and like, all of my shit is WIPs), I still twist myself all up inside.
It’s so counterproductive. It sucks away any sense of perspective. The more hits you get, the more kudos you get, the worse it seems to get, paradoxically enough. Back when literally nobody read my shit, I didn’t care. Now that some people do, I want it all. I get so green that I can’t enjoy certain authors (many of whom are not, in fact, more popular than me, but I perceive them as being so). And i get so that I don’t notice the rec lists I am on. I get so that I can’t appreciate the comments I do get and all I can do is be bitter there aren’t more. It’s nonsensical and it’s stupid.
But. Just knowing that I’m not the only person who has this kind of problem makes me at least feel like I’m not a freak. It’s still a thing to work on. It’s still really important for me to settle down and notice that people do care. But at least I’m not some kind of lunatic monster for having this problem in the first place. It’s just human nature.
I have a terrible dearth of self-esteem; it’s not unusual. I’ve got a bunch of things I’m middling-good-at and a lot of experience at being shot down for not being phenomenally good at them. A lot of the shit I’m good at is subjective and not to everyone’s taste. There’s no way to ever be able to without any doubt establish in my own mind that I’m Good At A Thing. There’s just no way to do it. It’s always possible to convince yourself that people who say you are, are either lying or don’t really know the truth or somehow just have missed something fundamental and think you’re better than you are, or maybe you’ve just coincidentally found something they’re disproportionately fond of so their judgement is skewed– just, somehow, their regard of you doesn’t count, in some important way. It’s just– it’s always possible for your jerkbrain to do this. And the most powerful tool in that arsenal is, maybe a couple people like you but this other person is better than you and literally everyone likes them, and if you were really any good people would like you as much as they like them, and they don’t, you’re just not that good.
It’s really pernicious. But I’ve seen a few people lately post things where it’s clear they feel the same way. Authors I’m sick and jealous of for how many fics they write, for their seeming popularity, for how I always see people talk about their stuff– just yesterday I saw somebody post something about being jealous and I was like what no you are one of the ones i am jealous of.
Clearly, this is a common thing.
How to fix it, I don’t know. How to feel better and not be a jerk, I don’t know. But at least to see the problem and know that it has to be a matter of perspective– well, as with all jerkbrain things, it certainly helps.
And sometimes, you see those extremely popular authors kind of burn out a little, and back away, and get tired, and exhaustedly answer repetitive and mean-spirited asks, and delete their blogs and move on, and you realize that it must not be all that great to be That Popular.
This reminds me, too, that for a long time I nurtured this bitter little flame in my heart, that everyone who was cool got fan art of their stories, and nobody had ever drawn me any fan art ever, and that right there was good solid concrete proof that I was Just Not That Big A Deal. But then an artist approached me to work on Home Out In The Wind, and more recently, another artist commented with a link to a sketch they’d drawn of the scene where Poe and Rey are in the bar and Poe’s pretending to be a drunk bum, and that reminds me, I was in a yurt at the time so I never did post it here! so! like! well then! I have a post to make now! Oh my gosh, I have to go back and find that. (See, silver lining in the whining.) (Also, see: Jerkbrain.)
I have so much trouble accepting compliments in general in my life, not just in writing, but also definitely when it comes to my writing, and it’s certainly not meant to be disrespectful of the people who offer them. That’s probably the worst part of it. So many really intelligent and really articulate and really enthusiastic people have said such sweet things, and my jerkbrain doesn’t care, I am not universally adored so everything else is meaningless. No question, that’s the worst part of it– there’s the little twingey bit of your brain that says you are disrespecting this sweet person cut it out immediately and the rest of your brain keeps hammering on pans and yelling anything less than universal adulation is meaningless la la la i can’t hear you.
But at least it’s not just me. There’s more going on here than just my individual brain-shittiness. Other people feel this. That’s an easier perspective to advance from. I don’t know how to fix it, but at least it’s a scrap of consolation when I’m mired really deep in that sick-gross jealous feeling where I’m all twisted up and feeling like all my shit is meaningless and someone else has already done all of my ideas better than I ever could and simultaneously I am The Worst for not finishing every damn scrap of idea I ever get, etcetera blargh ugh agh etcetera. Just identifying Jerkbrain helps a lot in scraping oneself out of the blanket fort and keeping on moving.
s-leary reblogged your post and added:
As someone who makes said rec lists, let me assure you, @star-aniseand @bomberqueen17, that I have read and love you both.
oh, this wasn’t meant to be any kind of, like, grasping for reassurance or whatever! I just was so glad to see a post go by that encapsulated so well how I feel.
I hate being jealous about stuff. I hate it, it’s counterproductive. Every time a rec list goes by and I’m not on it, even if it’s using criteria I don’t quite fill (I still remember being so bummed when the list in question was explicitly for completed works and like, all of my shit is WIPs), I still twist myself all up inside.
It’s so counterproductive. It sucks away any sense of perspective. The more hits you get, the more kudos you get, the worse it seems to get, paradoxically enough. Back when literally nobody read my shit, I didn’t care. Now that some people do, I want it all. I get so green that I can’t enjoy certain authors (many of whom are not, in fact, more popular than me, but I perceive them as being so). And i get so that I don’t notice the rec lists I am on. I get so that I can’t appreciate the comments I do get and all I can do is be bitter there aren’t more. It’s nonsensical and it’s stupid.
But. Just knowing that I’m not the only person who has this kind of problem makes me at least feel like I’m not a freak. It’s still a thing to work on. It’s still really important for me to settle down and notice that people do care. But at least I’m not some kind of lunatic monster for having this problem in the first place. It’s just human nature.
I have a terrible dearth of self-esteem; it’s not unusual. I’ve got a bunch of things I’m middling-good-at and a lot of experience at being shot down for not being phenomenally good at them. A lot of the shit I’m good at is subjective and not to everyone’s taste. There’s no way to ever be able to without any doubt establish in my own mind that I’m Good At A Thing. There’s just no way to do it. It’s always possible to convince yourself that people who say you are, are either lying or don’t really know the truth or somehow just have missed something fundamental and think you’re better than you are, or maybe you’ve just coincidentally found something they’re disproportionately fond of so their judgement is skewed– just, somehow, their regard of you doesn’t count, in some important way. It’s just– it’s always possible for your jerkbrain to do this. And the most powerful tool in that arsenal is, maybe a couple people like you but this other person is better than you and literally everyone likes them, and if you were really any good people would like you as much as they like them, and they don’t, you’re just not that good.
It’s really pernicious. But I’ve seen a few people lately post things where it’s clear they feel the same way. Authors I’m sick and jealous of for how many fics they write, for their seeming popularity, for how I always see people talk about their stuff– just yesterday I saw somebody post something about being jealous and I was like what no you are one of the ones i am jealous of.
Clearly, this is a common thing.
How to fix it, I don’t know. How to feel better and not be a jerk, I don’t know. But at least to see the problem and know that it has to be a matter of perspective– well, as with all jerkbrain things, it certainly helps.
And sometimes, you see those extremely popular authors kind of burn out a little, and back away, and get tired, and exhaustedly answer repetitive and mean-spirited asks, and delete their blogs and move on, and you realize that it must not be all that great to be That Popular.
This reminds me, too, that for a long time I nurtured this bitter little flame in my heart, that everyone who was cool got fan art of their stories, and nobody had ever drawn me any fan art ever, and that right there was good solid concrete proof that I was Just Not That Big A Deal. But then an artist approached me to work on Home Out In The Wind, and more recently, another artist commented with a link to a sketch they’d drawn of the scene where Poe and Rey are in the bar and Poe’s pretending to be a drunk bum, and that reminds me, I was in a yurt at the time so I never did post it here! so! like! well then! I have a post to make now! Oh my gosh, I have to go back and find that. (See, silver lining in the whining.) (Also, see: Jerkbrain.)
I have so much trouble accepting compliments in general in my life, not just in writing, but also definitely when it comes to my writing, and it’s certainly not meant to be disrespectful of the people who offer them. That’s probably the worst part of it. So many really intelligent and really articulate and really enthusiastic people have said such sweet things, and my jerkbrain doesn’t care, I am not universally adored so everything else is meaningless. No question, that’s the worst part of it– there’s the little twingey bit of your brain that says you are disrespecting this sweet person cut it out immediately and the rest of your brain keeps hammering on pans and yelling anything less than universal adulation is meaningless la la la i can’t hear you.
But at least it’s not just me. There’s more going on here than just my individual brain-shittiness. Other people feel this. That’s an easier perspective to advance from. I don’t know how to fix it, but at least it’s a scrap of consolation when I’m mired really deep in that sick-gross jealous feeling where I’m all twisted up and feeling like all my shit is meaningless and someone else has already done all of my ideas better than I ever could and simultaneously I am The Worst for not finishing every damn scrap of idea I ever get, etcetera blargh ugh agh etcetera. Just identifying Jerkbrain helps a lot in scraping oneself out of the blanket fort and keeping on moving.
