resetposting (No. 16)

or: an exercise in countering your overthinking.

Who I’m tryna be frfr.

Lol. Well. Hello!

You probably weren’t expecting this to pop up in your feed today. And for quite some time, a part of me wasn’t expecting to do so either.

Where have I been?! Was I on some secret project I couldn’t tell anyone about (kinda, but for this case no)? Or did I finally meet the woman of my dreams and start a family (hysterically no, I’m not insane enough to have kids yet)? What legitimate excuse could I have for keeping y’all hanging for over a year?

The answer to that question is much more boring, and something I’ve been struggling with for quite some time.

Over the past year and some change I started to suffer through a bad episode of anxious overthinking. With the case of this newsletter/blog/vanity project, I was worried that the final result would be something I’d be unhappy with before I could even attempt to write a draft, and it killed me inside when I felt like there was no solution for that.

When I write, it feels like my brain is losing oxygen. I instantly think the base of my head is being chocked into mental submission, tightening the more I attempt to get a thought out from my frenetic stream of consciousness.

It’s a feeling that’s emotionally difficult for me to get through, but I don’t want to live the rest of my life thinking that I can’t.

I have to be at peace with trusting myself that I can do well in whatever it is I do, whether it be something general or extremely specific, so long as I actually give it a shot. Over the past year, that shot became too scary for me to take, which resulted in the hiatus you (or the one person insane enough to still give money to this)¹ have currently been on until now.

The ability to continue to work on a skill without letting the fear of failure eat you up inside is a skill within itself. People do it all the time. Shit, dude, even *I* can do it with other aspects of my life. But when it comes to writing, I freeze up, and find some excuse to give myself a reason to not do it. I *do* have enough time in my day outside of work and other responsibilities to do just about anything, but for some strange reason chose not to.

Is it caffeine that’s fucking me up? Am I stretching myself too thin in other things in life? Or, perhaps, am I just afraid that I’ll suck at this and will continue to suck at this?

Ding ding ding. I answered my own question. An unlimited lifetime supply of turtle wax for me!

I find myself terrified at the thought of being a bad writer. I love to write. To tell someone a story is something I’ve been doing my entire life. And I don’t want to suck, so I took the easy way out of this and decided that the best cure for not sucking was to not try at all. But I also hated that. Nobody should be living their lives afraid to try something. In the midst of my writing sabbatical, at the very least focused on other aspects in my life (a great job, dating, being with family, etc.) it finally hit me:

Everyone sucks at this shit at first! And everyone starting out always starts out at the bottom.

I write my own fucking Substack (this is in equal measure a dig and a compliment), a platform that few people in my social circles use or are even aware of anyway. When I started this, I was getting up to 40-50 views if I was lucky, with no guarantee that the people who even viewed even read it². I was afraid of how small I am on here, when that should’ve been a driving force for me to continue doing this in the first place.

You have to Just Do shit(TM), and eventually find your way the more you Do Shit(TM).

If I continue to be consistent in this, I might get to a point where I’ll enjoy what I’ve written, and maybe more people will too. But I’m not there yet. I technically haven’t started if you consider it took me more than a year to get back on more than six months of previous work. I’m at the bottom, and that’s okay, because that gives me a place to look up to.

You might’ve realized by now that I am my own worst critic. I can think of too many words when I type and immediately seek to re-do a sentence I haven’t finished writing. I think it’s okay to be a little harsh on yourself to make room for improvement, but I can’t be afraid of myself. I know I can do this. I’ve got a voice that needs using, especially at a time when other voices I’ve trusted are starting to fade away in favor of safe softball journalism. I know I can use my voice well, so all the more reason to believe in it again. The concern for correct syntax and structure can come after I get my thoughts on paper. The mistakes will come, but I have to welcome them before they can get fixed.

I’ve missed doing this, and it’s fucking time to hone in on my love for it.

So, with all my emotional baggage out of the way, here’s what you can expect from me if you stick around:

The goal here is at least one post a week. Could be something personal (though I’ve probably vented too much already), could be my reaction to something going on in YouTube/Comics/the hellscape of our world, but there will BE SOMETHING.³

Maybe not for you right now, but definitely for me.

Like the beautiful view that is the main image for this entry, my personal goal now is to relax and don’t take things too seriously. To just be and have fun with this. it doesn’t matter if this takes me anywhere or nowhere, so long as I’m still myself at the end of the day, one with trust and love for the bright spots I see around me. Hopefully this rant helps you out with whatever struggles you might be going through.

We’re back now. Hope you fuckers enjoy the ride.

Welcome back to Rent’s Due.

1. Thank you, btw <3

2. Or if they were just duplicates of me looking for any typos after posting.

3. For those of you who were curious about my scrapped X-Men movie endings retrospective, Days of Future Past, Logan, and (unironically) Dark Phoenix still hold up. As an ending to decades of FoX-Men goodness, Deadpool & Wolverine unfortunately had a lot to be desired.