I want to give it all up.
All the striving.
All the pushing.
All the trying.
I just want to stop
and forget I ever wanted to.
I won’t.
But that’s what I want right now.
To quit.
Upon reflection, I realize I have motivation cycles. Perhaps more aptly, I have bouts of despair or abandonment compulsion (I WANT TO GIVE IT ALL UP) cycles.
I seem to fall into these sinkholes in the following circumstances:
As a horror author, fall is a significant time of year. Halloween and spooky season are ultimately horror season. This is the time of year when I should feel the most engaged, excited, and inspired. This is the time of year when everything I love should just be in the air around me. Yet, more and more each year, I just feel daunted. The expectations of the season have almost sucked the joy out of experiencing it.
Again, a time when I should be thrilled. I am an author, and I have a book being published. This is what it is about! This is the success! Yet it is simultaneously so draining. It is like the last mile of a marathon or labor at the end of pregnancy. Yes, a wonderful accomplishment and bliss is on the other side, yet as it gets closer, it feels farther away. As I slog through promotional preparations and launch requirements and steel myself for the incoming negative reviews, it feels like I will never cross the line, my baby will never see the world.
Trying to get a novel published may be a torment only surpassed by editing the damn thing. After pruning, packaging, fluffing, and presenting the manuscript with more diligence than when job hunting, my tender heart is only met with a barrage of rejection or silence. Insecurity, doubt, and self-loathing are all that swell to fill that void.
Any numbers. All of the numbers. Sales. Downloads. Reviews. Followers. Works in my library. No matter how I grow them, they seem insufficient. No matter how I scrape, they never seem to match the effort. Comparison is the thief of joy, as I tell my children, but these numbers are all based in comparison to other numbers I never meet.
Any of these things, all of these things weaken my resolve, cue my insecurities. Each beckons sweetly to just set down the heavy burden of the dream and let it simply float away forgotten.
This round, it is more than a beckon, and it is surely not sweet. I don’t just want to quit writing. Life itself is beating me up, for many reasons, and I want to quit just about everything. Add to this that I am experiencing ALL of these triggers at once. Fall and Halloween are approaching. Crystal Lake Publishing is releasing my novel Followers on September 24th. I am currently querying my novel Green Eyes to absolutely no success. And all my numbers mock me as my socials seem to have died.
It is all the things, all the things that make me want to give up on being an author.
What makes me not want to give up? Writing.
What am I not doing? Writing.
If I remain calm, I know from experience that these things will pass. I will excavate my motivation again. Yet the confluence of all the triggers compounding the angst and depression from the rest of life is challenging.
I feel overwhelmed and burned out. The chorus of the world right now.
I want to quit, but I am not going to. This too shall pass. I will ride this wave back into the writing for which I am here.
I have been a woman online for a long time. Not to date myself, but I was a young girl back on AOL, making IM friends with absolute strangers. The platforms and technology have advanced substantially since that horrendous dial-up tone, yet that cyber reach across the world, that pseudo-anonymous access to strangers remains the same.
In my tenure, I have seem some things. In more recent years, I have had the decided displeasure to experience one laughable phenomena: the unsolicited dick pic.
Now, we could delve into the psychology of photographing one’s genitals then thrusting them upon a stranger via their DMs. I’m sure plenty of smarter people have already analyzed the topic. I definitely included it in my horror novel about online dating, The Rest Will Come. Because, honestly, can you write a book about online dating without including a few dick pics?
Maybe you have never snapped a picture of your engorged member. Maybe an uninvited phallus has never graced your inbox. Maybe they are part of your daily ritual. Maybe you love receiving a foreign eggplant snap and they brighten your day when they pop up on your screen.
Leaving motives and judgements aside, for those of you who send, let’s instead just touch on some basic dick pic etiquette. (Of course, “dick pic” suggests one kind of genitalia; however, I think these guidelines can be neutralized and applied to all gender expressions. Take the “dick” vernacular to mean whatever you like.)
If you feel compelled to document and share your anatomy, consider the following:
1. Consent – No dick pic should ever be unsolicited. There’s a reason exposing yourself without permission or in public in the real world is illegal. No one should open a message and be confronted with a piece of your body they did not agree to see. I suppose with a large enough sample, you might see some success and positive response. However, I have to think a targeted approach where you secure consent before the dick comes out would be more successful in the long term. Like real life, talk before you whip your dick out.
2. Sender Beware – As you are blasting pictures of your anatomy across the internet, consider permanence. Let’s remember that things on the internet are forever. Even with an expiring, view-once message, there are screen captures. Even a deleted thread still exists on a server somewhere. Just because you can no longer see it does not mean it is gone. I would caution not sending anything you do not want popping up in a more public forum. And if you are stepping out of a relationship, recall that your partner may recognize your member out wandering through other people’s inboxes. And if you did not refer to #1, this could become more of an issue.
3. Realism – No one thinks that porn still is you. No one believes you have studio lighting and a professional manscaper. If you have followed #1 and found someone who wants to see it and considered #2 and feel safe sharing, maybe use your actual dick. Otherwise, what are we even doing here? Unless perhaps the purpose of the exchange was phallic catfishing. If your intent is ultimately a physical follow through, they might notice.
4. Composition – If you have made it through #1 and #2 and even committed to #3, let’s talk about picture composition. I understand the convenience of shooting in the bathroom. Your pants are already down. Perhaps you saw your dick and thought it was popping in the lighting. But perhaps you could angle yourself to exclude the toilet. If you cannot crop that out, could you at least flush? You may be undermining your goals by not considering your background.
I appreciate the tempting, seeming anonymity of the internet. It can appear like a dark corner where no one will notice. In reality, it is more tracked and surveilled than the real world. When in doubt, follow the same rules that apply in the real world. Get permission. Don’t do something you’ll regret. If you’re going to do it, make it real and look good.
Ultimately, this is the internet. This is THE place to find the person who is into whatever you are into. So if you are into sending off pictures of your genitals, I wish you the best in finding a willing and happy recipient. A little cyber etiquette could not hurt in that endeavor.
Fiery Pen 