Reality and Disillusionment
Bridging the divide
I have been feeling a little disillusioned with writing and publishing recently. Some days it feels really hard, seems to offer little reward, and leaves me questioning whether it’s the best use of my time.
I’ve written pieces here on Medium that have gotten zero views. My Substack stuff gets more eyeballs, but that’s because I started out there with a list. I can’t send every newsletter to my same small list and not exhaust my list. My list is my friends. I don’t want to exhaust my friends. If I haven’t already.
My Facebook and Instagram audiences are so tired of hearing from me they rarely even let me know they read. I’m not at all sure who I’m writing for. Maybe I am simply writing to hear myself think.
I write in all these different places to try not to overwhelm any individual audience. But it leaves me feeling spread really thin and not understanding the individual audiences well enough to know exactly who I’m writing to. Which affects the writing.
My voice on Facebook and Instagram and also Substack is a reflection of the audiences I write to there. As in, a composite of hundreds of individuals I know and write to in my head when I write on those platforms.
But I don’t know my audiences here. I haven’t leaned in enough yet to the Medium community to know how to write to the Medium community.
My writing is always best when it is directed toward a specific community — the community I am writing to.
Time to get to know the Medium community.
The cool thing is I know the right voice will emerge as I immerse myself in the community.
The more challenging bit is changing voices as I shift from one audience to another.
Of course, it’s all one me.
My arbitrary division of where and what days I write about which things is simply that. Arbitrary. I play by few rules and my voice is increasingly my own regardless of who I am writing to or where.
Part of what this whole experiment of mine has been about.
How do I learn how to write for a universal audience with the engagement of a local audience? Write for a lot of local audiences simultaneously and watch how my voice changes.
I find I end up writing in a lot of the same ways whether I’m writing on Medium about memoir writing and self-compassion, on Substack about grief and gratitude, on Buy Me a Coffee about culinary therapy, or on Patreon about brain food.
I divided myself up on purpose. To learn things about each platform, including getting to know their audiences. I also lived in a different place every week for multiple years until this month.
I have been fragmented and it absolutely slows my progress in terms of community building. It takes longer to build community when you are constantly leaving and heading to another community.
I’d love to see others achieving as much as I have with as much brain damage as I have suffered.
Which is part of why I am showing up trying to talk about everything that has helped me repair my damaged brain.
Even in the midst of it not working optimally. While I make multiple things harder for myself by writing in multiple different directions on several platforms every week. And criticizing myself for not growing a following in any of the places.
Really, I write to victims of trauma in every place I write anything. I write to victims of trauma sharing the trauma recovery practices that have helped me heal my brain, body, and mind.
I give the vast majority of my writing away for free.
Because I want everyone to heal from trauma.
Because I am ultimately self-serving, and a world with more people healing from trauma is a world I want to live in.
I know how to help people recover from trauma, and I want to help as many people as I can learn to help themselves recover, too.
Because doing so helps me continue to recover from trauma. And helps make the world a safer place for my babies.
I tell myself Tuesdays are for self-compassion and try to show up here on Medium writing about self-compassion on Tuesdays. One of six categories of trauma recovery I expound on throughout the week.
Some weeks I fall short and other weeks I write about all the things, only in the wrong places.
I have not yet mastered my content publication schedule. It is a work in progress. I am a one-woman show with multiple other demands on my time.
My writing in all these places has yet to make me much money, so earning money is something I have to figure out how to do beyond writing in all these places. Leading me to consider no longer writing in all these places.
I want to give it at least a year.
A year of writing weekly about six different subjects for six different audiences is going to give me six bodies of work. Grouped thematically. How cool is that? Just because I told myself Tuesdays are for self-compassion. By the end of a year, I’ll have a book of essays on self-compassion. And several other books, too.
This is why I write. Not to publish. But to think and compile my thoughts.
I have known I needed and wanted to be thinking about these six things — memoir writing, self-compassion, grief, gratitude, culinary therapy, and brain food — every week in order to live my best life.
And so I assigned myself to write about them each once a week.
And then I beat myself up for the weeks when I failed to do what I assigned myself to do.
While continuing to write about self-compassion most weeks, reminding myself not to beat myself up so much. Meditating every day, reminding myself to simply begin again.
While I was busy giving myself grief for falling short of my audacious goals, I was creating and compiling bodies of work. On subjects of vital interest to me. My inner critics are quick to point out I have not managed all six content categories sufficiently.
I have not put the machine in place quite yet to churn out six essays every week, and many weeks it is only four. Culinary therapy and brain food have often gotten shafted.
Surely because they feel most like work. Food, cooking, and books were all part of my prior careers, making me feel less driven to write about them now.
That is not true. I feel very driven to write about food and books, I just hold myself to much higher standards on those subjects. I‘m afraid to write for my inner critics about culinary therapy and brain food. Because my inner critics are a composite of many outer critics from my past.
So, I will not worry about critics and write in the final two places for the rest of the year and then compile what I’ve learned and start looking for ways to simplify. And then amplify.
I like placing many small bets because I fear commitment and love data. Also, I grow bored quickly and love change. Multitasking/binging teaches me things I am always grateful to learn.
It takes a lot of work, research, and audience time to have the small bets I place pay off, and when I can’t put in the work I can’t perform as well.
But it doesn’t mean I’m not learning in all the places.
Especially when I keep showing up.
In reality, I have built small audiences on at least eight platforms and have thousands of people reading my words every week. In dozens of countries around the world.
I write consistently several dozen times a week across all the places. Never before in my life have I written as much as the past few years. And I have made my living writing since my first job out of college. I made money with my words in college. Words have been how I make money.
These past several years, I have made very little money. Even though I have written more than ever before in my life.
Soon it will be time again to make money from my words.
In the meantime, I have honed my craft through consistent daily practice while familiarizing myself with multiple content platforms and building audiences in lots of places.
I have met amazing strangers who I feel like I’ve known my entire life.
I’ve gotten work.
I’ve hired coaches.
I’ve referred work to others.
I’ve LEARNED so much.
I’ve gotten coaching clients.
I’ve gotten paying subscribers.
I’ve gotten more offers to collaborate than I’ve been able to accept or even read.
I’ve gotten a little practice dealing with trolls, but overall very little
I’ve gotten invitations to write for publications and appear on podcasts.
I’ve gotten invitations to so many things?!? Classes, shows, places to stay, meals, parties, events, gatherings, focus groups, conferences, research studies, retreats.
It is overwhelming me now to think about just how much people have given to me over the past five years.
Overwhelming in a good way.
LOTS of people give me things all the time.
The more I show up, the more people give me things. Which is why I sometimes hide. Because it is really overwhelming when lots of people give me things.
Because inside I feel like I can’t possibly deserve so much love from so many different directions. And they must just all be wrong. Except can this many really amazing humans all be wrong?
Which is why I will try to remind myself to extend self-compassion for all the things.
For giving myself a hard time for not having tons of followers anywhere while overlooking that I have grown small followings in tons of places. While mostly wanting to hide. Because when I show up, lots of people give me things and it makes me feel entirely overwhelmed and undeserving.
Even though I truly love that people give me so many things.
Really, I would like to be able to pay everyone top dollar and not need to receive things for free. But until I am again at that place, I am profoundly grateful to the many, many people who have generously shared their time, homes, funds, food, expertise, encouragement, STORIES, love, experience, strength, and hope with me as a result of my showing up here and showing myself.
I have not grown more because my nervous system has not been ready. Each time I take another step toward visibility, my audiences multiply and new people see me. Which is exhilarating and terrifying simultaneously. Nerv-citing, as Kid 2 would say.
It’s the goal, and it’s also the thing I spent much of my life avoiding. Being seen.
My progress will always be nonlinear. Because each time I grow, my nervous system has to acclimate to more attention. And my nervous system is not fond of huge changes or increasing visibility.
I can’t control what huge changes the universe sends my way, but I can control how much I grow. By how much I show up and call attention to myself.
I extend self-compassion for the frustratingly jagged path of trauma recovery. It isn’t a smooth ascent to a place where things are lovely all the time and stress is not a thing.
I extend self-compassion for the me who had to put off my own trauma recovery at points in the past because the trauma of the world around me was too great.
The personal is political and what we feel in our personal lives reflects the trauma of the world around us. There is no turning away. Even and especially for those who try.
I encourage self-compassion for us all. We can’t control how much others extend compassion toward us. Making it imperative to extend compassion toward ourselves. This is how the community as a whole heals. All the communities.
Tuesdays are for self-compassion. Join me here every Tuesday for reminders to apply kindness toward self, not condemnation. If you like what you find here, won’t you please clap, follow, share, and subscribe?
I also write about memoir writing every Monday here on Medium. On Substack, I write about grief and gratitude. On Buy Me a Coffee I write about culinary therapy. And on Patreon I write about brain food. You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Linktr.ee, and my own website, Don’t Sum Me Up.
Please join me anywhere you’d like to read what I have to share. Delighted to have you. Every like, share, and subscription helps keep me writing. Thank you.
