What am I doing, really?

🗓️ Journey In Unemployment Land | One year and five months

What have I been up to?

🍾 Took a bartending course that was very fun and rewarding. I still have to complete my course on beer and wine but it’s so boring that my brain wants to cry. I forgot how horrible self paced study is for me.

📄 I haven’t secured a bartending gig yet. I thought it would be easier but sadly, Atlanta is a funny place. Opportunities abound, yet the people seeking them outnumber what’s available. I’ll keep trying however. My family needs me, no matter how tired I am of looking.

🏡 My spouse and I are solid. He feels like one of the few things keeping me from tearing asunder. He’s a constant tether to the ground, whether I realize that I’m floating away or not.

🐾 My dog Gabby is officially an adult. She’s much calmer and adjusted compared to when we first adopted her last March. Sometimes I’m amazed at her progress. We spent so much time training and raising her. I’m proud of myself and my little family.

💵 I’m still freelancing. I’m still applying. But none of that can be top of mind right now. I talked about this in my previous post, but fighting to find a “real job” seems counterintuitive to being an artistic person. It also diminishes the work I do to care for my family and how much energy is expended on artistic pursuits. I still worry about my finances. I worry about a lot of things.

🗂️ A bulk of my worry stems from the fact that I’m dealing with some legal challenges. Nothing criminal; it’s a civil case and I’ll not at liberty to discuss it. However, it’s a significant source of stress and it took a ton of time away from writing or seeking gainful employment.

👩🏿‍🎨 That isn’t to say I haven’t been writing at all. The majority of my work has been for fan projects. I ended up collaborating with three visual artists, a goal I’ve had since I was a young kid. It’s empowering and a bit addictive working with talented people who are just as passionate as you are. Considering how few people actually engage with craft nowadays—often treating creation as a pathway to revenue rather than a form of expression—I am in awe at how well everything came together.

🔞 Sadly, I’m not at liberty to share the majority of what I wrote cause it’s NSFW. I don’t mind private messaging readers about it, but I’d like to not be kicked off of Substack. I just got here!

What are you going to create here then?

Essays. That’s the short answer.

Stepping away from writing post weekly provided perspective. I’m not a content mill. I’m not a content creator. That title and its connotations may tell you what type of behavior I’m avoiding: endless production cycles; weird and aggressive content calendars (not that I won’t create one); setting very high expectations and benchmarks that ruin momentum; and creating a persona for myself that enables distance from the people who graciously read my words.

I refuse to participate in the circus. After a handful of years in marketing, I’m certain that performative creation on any platform will not lead to success nor self satisfaction. Rather, it will create burnout and place an unprecedented amount of stress on myself.

Ultimately, I don’t operate well with tight boundaries. I need to freedom to simply create. Now, I need to trust that people who care about what I say will find me and choose to support me. I don’t want to cultivate a “brand” or whatever nomenclature is out there. Every time I sit down to do so (and there are drafts upon drafts of branding strategies for myself) I feel nauseous. It’s a physical reaction that probably stems from anxiety.

Mind you, I’m not anxious about creation. I like posting things and sharing my words. A year of consistently doing so has taken the fear of being perceived away from me. What the anxiety is about how creating a brand feels is inauthentic it: mechanical and antithetical to what being a creator should be. What I thought it was about.

I’m turning 32 this month. I remember how groundbreaking AOL and MSN chatrooms felt. I had a Highfive and MySpace page. YouTube used to limit videos to 10 minutes. DeviantArt was the height of nerd congregation. It all felt innovative and, for a long time, I figured it would only be a matter of time before I found the platform that I’d thrive on.

That hasn’t happened. Instead, the niche corners of the internet for writers—like LiveJournal and Tumblr—have become a cesspool, inundated with ads, a suffocating echo chamber that leaves very little room for error. I began to fear the entire process of publishing online because someone, somewhere, was chomping at the bit to tear you down.

This could be irrational to feel this way. It may have nothing to do with anything. Frankly, branding was created to separate oneself from the personal attacks that come from existing in digital ecosystems. Still, I hate how necessary that separation has become.

Nevertheless, I can’t fall into that dichotomous trap. Nuance exists here. The fact remains that what I choose to share only is only a peek into who I am. Any one claiming to know who I am by what they read online is being purposely obtuse. That sort of person isn’t my intended audience.

All I can do is write. Continue to pray whoever finds me finds me in good faith. And so I will continue. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.