February 7
Writer’s Block And Social Impact
Writer’s block is another name for performance anxiety. Heard this little line today and it hit a chord. I think of writer’s block as being sourced in perfectionism, but I didn’t connect perfectionism to performance anxiety. I should have.
I like to tell myself I’m in this unique circumstance, right? Losing brain cells, dopamine receptors, etc, from low dopamine, and then getting the opportunity to grow them back. The giant amounts of inflammation creating pressure on my brain from mold toxicity and allergies suddenly alleviated. It’s a freaking rebirth in a lot of ways. But did I come out of all that struggle better? What about more secure? I mean, I can actually measure my ability as being improved, my understanding, my cognitive function and skills all improved, but am I acting like someone secure in that knowledge? No.
I’m afraid. It’s such a foreign fear compared to the physiological signs of anxiety I lived with for so long. Allergies, inflammation, even the Parkinson’s all gave my these chemical and physical feelings of anxiety. Lol, not to mention the PTSD (apparently even after 30 years of having it, once cured you can forget it even had a damn impact!) What I feel when it comes to perfectionism doesn’t feel like fear, but depression. Like a dark wall that makes me reluctant, that steals my energy and tries to distract me with anything but the truth of what I want to be focused on. My circumstances might be justified as unique–I can rationalize why I’m in this place–but the reality is far more mundane.
I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I don’t know how my writing will reflect on me as a person: if I’m good at it does that give me value? I mean, seriously, it’s like being back in grade school. Earn a gold star and you’ll be worthy of love and praise, right? I don’t know if I’m good enough to convey what I want to convey as a writer. I don’t know if I’m wasting my life. I don’t know if I’m taking the right path. I don’t know–fuck, I don’t know a lot of shit.
Ultimately, none of these questions really matter. It’s just the brain seeking a point of reference and wanting to compare, to judge, to weigh for the sake of doing it. When you realize you’re on a planet in a universe that is likely infinite in scale and therefore you will never have an actual point of reference because there is no static place, you realize this is just something the brain does to help you feel secure. They’re just concepts in my head trying to define the thing I do every single day to be something else, something heavy and weighted with meaning that only exists in my brain. Insecurity defines life with pointless meaning to help us feel secure. It is shit when you’re unaware and that meaning becomes toxic, such as deciding if you don’t write 8,000 words a day, you’re a horrible writer who doesn’t deserve to succeed. This is the dark side of human evolution. What allows us to conceptualize things such as quantum mechanics and have deep psychological thoughts is also what traps us into pointless, neurotic exercises placed on daily activity. It leads to depression and dissatisfaction when surrounded in perfect beauty.
I think I understand why the people who appear to get past this problem are very focused on a social impact to what they do. When I first observed this, I assumed it was marketing, branding, etc, and it turned me off because of it. I saw creators pushing these ideas of social uplift but I didn’t believe it came from a place of genuineness but just a sale’s pitch. Now–at least, with certain individuals–I see how wrong that is. Social value helps to drown out the inner insecurities that can plague a mind.
When I talk about censorship, it’s not from a place of anger because my livelihood is threatened and it feels like the world is unfair (although those feelings are there and very real) but from this place of compassion for the world and people in it. I understand 100% how damaging shame is, how detrimental to emotional and mental well being, and I see how censorship and banning of erotica leads to shame, to self hate, to very normal, healthy individuals left to feel like outsiders and freaks because of something as basic as their fantasies not being accepted in the consumer market on major book platforms. When books are banned, it’s not just the authors of those books, but the readers being told ‘what you like is not acceptable. Go away. You don’t belong here.’
When I focus on the cruelty and pain such a message sends, do you think the petty, pointless insecurities in my head can stand a fucking chance? No. My waffling, gotta be good at what I do or I haven’t earned my gold star doesn’t fucking matter at all. Does it break through my fears that my readers won’t enjoy what I’m writing if I don’t take the most amount of time to make it as perfect as possible? Eh… I wish. I really do. I’m working on it.
It is a place of insecurity I have found myself in as my health returns, and I’m still running down all the damn paths as to why and how to break through. But I have faith I’m going to get there eventually because if there’s one thing I know about myself, I will face the darkest corners of my psyche until I get all the blocks out. I am committed to growth, to joy, to fun, and to creating as much as I can and helping people feel comfortable in their own brains and bodies no matter how fucking wrong, and cruel, and dickish society and the many systems in there can be. No one should want to kill themselves over a sex fantasy. No one should fear losing their jobs, their houses, their families, their lives over the things they fantasize about. No one should be exiled from the world be it the Internet or their personal little bubble over the shit in their heads.
So, yeah, I gotta get the fuck over my own mental stuff so I can help with that, ya know? Plenty of people think this stuff, they know it’s commonsense to not discriminate against sexual fantasies, etc, but few are in a place to make any kind of a difference. Instead we’re seeing people in places of power who are censoring away any mention of sexual fantasies they don’t feel should be allowed to exist. The wrong voices are being heard even if they’re not the most prevalent. I am an anomaly and for whatever reason, here I am at the age of 36 after years of health problems finding myself with a platform, a reader base, a brain that’s actually working properly, and the compassion and fearlessness to take this shit on. So yeah, I have goals. Goals bigger than me even if right now it feels like I’m battling myself more than anything else.
There’s no point wishing for the world to change. If you want a better world, you gotta put the work in and help to recreate it as an accepting, loving, compassionate place. You can’t change society if you’re not being a voice in society. Society is just every single one of us with only a few speaking their truth. And shit, yeah, I guess at this point in my life, this is the way I’m hoping to change the voice of society: with dirty, naughty, rough, dark and taboo sexual fantasies. I know there will be plenty of people who don’t understand it, who will only see what’s on the surface. But I’m here to save the world with sin. Sexy, freeing, SIN.
Rigid rules and shame have no place in the mind and body. Until we can free ourselves from the mental prisons society and we ourselves have put us in, humanity can’t move forward. There are too many giant problems we’re facing on a global scale to allow ourselves to be frozen any longer over such basic, primitive things such as how we perceive our sexual urges in our minds and bodies and if they’re ‘acceptable.’ It’s actually crazy to think we’re still fighting this when we as human beings have had these fantasies since the dawning of our species. What a waste when we could have been enjoying these aspects of our minds from the very beginning. What a waste to have the modern world embrace it only to have a few repressed, frightened, judgemental voices censoring the very Internet to try and ensure people stay broken and ashamed and unaccepting of their very bodies.
Someone has to say enough. Someone has to be willing to be loud and normalize what is already normal in every psyche out there. So, yeah. Goals, babes. Who I’m going to have to be to reach those goals isn’t fully formed yet, but I’m working on it. I’m pretty sure she’ll be kickass and loud once she gets her shit together. XD
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