Maybe I’m Awful

Maybe I’m delusional, maybe I suck, maybe I should stop.

These are the thoughts. They’re the worst thoughts. They feel heavy and burdensome and intense. Some days they’re very quiet though, and I like those days. Other days they’re like that gas-powered leaf blower that your neighbor just bought and loves more than his wife and kids because he spends all his free time with it and acts like if he just uses it a little more he’ll find the reverse switch.

I’ve no great derangement that I’m meant for greatness. That anything I do can matter nearly as much as my anxiety ever tries tricking me into believing. That I have an impact that will be remembered after I’m gone, not for long anyway. Human life is just a blip as is, but even as blips go, mine won’t radiate very far. But I want to do good work, and if I’m not, what’s the point?

And where’s the happy medium between good and well-liked?

It’s sort of a joke, and a super cruel one I gotta say, that artsy-fartsy-type people tend to be so sensitive when what we do is criticized so brutally yet so arbitrarily. Did you like a thing? Can you articulate why you like the thing with actual examples from the thing? Do you even know why you like the thing? Well, don’t worry: your opinion is totally valid even if you have no basis for it, but it’s definitely more valid if you’re super harsh, and your opinion must be shared hyperbolically (it’s okay if you don’t know what that means, but make sure you don’t bother looking it up and instead just complain that a word you didn’t know was used).

But maybe us artsy assholes are only so sensitive because we’re exposed to criticism so brutally and frequently. You might separate the art from the artist, but the artist can’t. The artist also can’t bitch about it–or rather, we’re not supposed to because I guess we’re expected to be abused and ignore it–which sort of makes this whole blog in bad taste. Oops.

I guess I’m just jealous of ducks–people who can let it roll off their backs like pond water. Maybe they’re faking it, maybe they don’t care about what they make, maybe they’ve evolved beyond and reached a nirvanic state I could never imagine, or maybe they’re just that self-centered. Whatever it is, I’d like to just know because even though I’ll never be there myself, I am painfully curious.

When I got my top wisdom teeth out, I got that twilight drug that makes some people go loopy and say weird shit. I didn’t say weird shit (I didn’t, I swear!), I just didn’t feel anxious for the first time in my whole life. “Do people actually feel like this?” I asked, happy. “Like, not worried all the fucking time? Lucky bastards!”

Don’t take this too seriously, sometimes people just need to vent. I used to be able to do that here, to use my blog as a nice, little void to scream into and free certain thoughts from my mind. I’m only trying to do that again.