Do Things and Tell People
Or, five rules on how not to be an irritating self-promoter
Lieutenant George: “I don’t like blowing my own trumpet.”
Captain Blackadder: “You might at least told us you had a trumpet.”
Self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to me.
I’ve never been one to willingly put the spotlight on myself — not in real life and not online. That craving just isn’t in me. Meanwhile, I feel inherently uncomfortable with many aspects of the modern “creator economy” and the attention-grabbing that fuels it.
Frankly, I don’t want to be another begging voice with a hot take and a loud personality. I don’t want to bother people with pop-ups and sponsorships. I feel too old and too tired for that.
The punk-rock kid in me imagines myself diligently working away at my craft in my little corner of the web or on the pages of homemade zines. “Your money and literary magazines have no power here,” I’d tell anyone who stumbled upon my work as if I were some crazed artist out in the woods, “I have transcended all need for external validation.”
“Now get lost, posers.”
But that’s not what I want either.
The thing is, I do want to share the things I make. I want to put my thoughts into the…
