At the end of 2019, I wrote a post about how I had not been posting… one of the main reasons was fear of family repercussion. I do not have a good relationship with my bio fam, and there have been many times when they’ve felt the need to reach out and tell me (and whoever is nearby) everything that is wrong with me. I vowed to start writing again regularly, and yet, I did not. Not publicly at least. I started writing a ton of family stories privately, as a way of processing, but then these too petered out.
The year started off strong, and then took a turn with COVID and then job loss, and then I did a bunch of really intense EFT therapy, and the answer to why I stopped writing became a lot more complicated.
Fear of failure + Fear of success
If I don’t take writing seriously, then I can’t really fail. I can continue to imagine that I’d do well if I just stuck with it. But also, as it turns out, I worry that if I succeed I will collapse in on myself. Every time I have started a project and it’s gone well, I have usually stopped after my first positive affirmation. Sell out a workshop - don’t run it again. Sell a short story - stop writing short stories. Exhibit photos in a group art show - give up photography altogether. It turns out that I’d like to be recognized as successful, but the idea of drawing TOO MUCH attention to myself is scary. It’s scary to dream of BIG success, so it’s easier in a way to avoid it altogether; to instead walk this fine line where I pursue a dream, but just not the main dream.
Parenting my family. Again.
Turns out that I want to hide from my fam so that they leave me alone, but also I want to hide from success so that they don’t feel badly about themselves. As far as I can tell, the narrative is currently, “Altaira is severely mentally ill, and that’s why we don’t have relationships with her. She’s delusional, and we feel sorry for her.” But if I am publicly and unabashedly myself, and then that becomes a wild success, it might be a little harder for them to imagine that narrative. I realized this year that one of the reasons that I shy away from creative success is the desire to protect my bio fam’s feelings, and that’s just not my job anymore.
Fear of judgment from employers and clients and other people
When I was freelancing, I was worried about talking about money issues, because I thought it would have clients low balling me. When I was working in the US, I was worried about my conservative work environment being at odds with my non-conservative lifestyle. Now that I’m searching for work again, I worry about potential employers reading about my anxiety disorder and thinking NO THANKYOU. And let’s be real, I’ve also had friends shush me in conversations because me talking about tricky personal topics makes them uncomfortable. So I’ve been waiting for this perfect moment to write about the things that I want to write about or to be more candid. That perfect moment is never going to happen though, so the time is probably now, right?
Being fed up with myself
How many times have I had this conversation? And then started again. A new blog, a new creative project, a new thing to get me going, that I later abandon. It feels like an old conversation, and I’m bored of it. It’s embarrassing. This fine line that I walk where I’m too ashamed to promote myself, but want to do well, but get shy when I get attention… I’m OVER IT. Or at least I’m trying to be.
Obsessing about perfection
Perfection is the enemy of good. Or done. Or starting. Over the past few years I get sign after sign after sign saying JUST START. GO. I tell other people JUST START. GO. But I do not just start, and I do not go. I think about branding. I think about whether I can write about serious health issues without collaborating with an actual health care professional. I ask myself if I can write on academic topics and personal topics in the same blog, or if I need to make different accounts to write about different things. I debate which platform is best. I currently have a Wordpress, a Patreon, and Medium, and this. I’ve also thought about just making a newsletter. I’ve thought about this for months, and all this time later, I’m no closer to deciding on the perfect platform, or the perfect way to deliver content. Should I actually be doing videos on Insta or TikTok? Maybe. But should I have let these internal debates keep me from just going ahead and writing things? 100% no.
Imposter syndrome
This is very closely linked to a few of the points above, but at the end of the day, I just believe deep down in my heart somewhere that I don’t deserve success. Success is for OTHER PEOPLE. Especially creative success. I find myself feeling jealous of folks who are doing similar work to the work that I want to be doing, and instead of that motivating me, it eats me up inside. I’ve always taken a safer route. Even when I wrote consistently before, it was usually about a specific narrative or experience. Like moving to the Coast, or taking a trip to New York. It was a way of writing about personal things without getting TOO personal. But really that’s what I’ve always wanted in my writing. Let’s get too personal. Let’s talk about things that make us feel a little uncomfortable. Because otherwise what’s the fucking point?
So here we go. Starting again. Together we will take a journey through topics like financial shame, exercise addiction, internalized classism, anxiety disorders, and medical racism. I’ll do my best to be consistent and to be real. To be brave and to be imperfect. Mostly, I’ll do my best to just keep writing.