Anonym
Hello, I'm... Well. I have a problem.
There's something about this that feels it's been a long time coming. I have lots of problems, like everyone else, little tiny problems that happen every day. But I have much bigger problems as well, including some that potentially could ruin kind of everything (how dramatic, I know) that I've worked at and worked on for so long, shutting potential down and pushing further into a self-made yet ever-fresh hell. Even typing now feels almost redundant, that I should in fact just shut up and get on with things, this slowly deteriorating status quo and be happy things aren't worse. I have traded lunatic highs and lows for the miasma of mediocrity.
Huh. Where shall we actually begin though? Years ago,when I started self-publishing on the internet while at University, it was for personal benefit/pleasure/survival. To say I was living in a situation that didn't agree with me would be to dredge undersea ravines for understatement, added to the fact I came terrifyingly close to killing myself more than once that year. Blogging became an enjoyable way of channeling negative energy away. Initially, about 20 people read each post, a few of whom I knew and knew me, and that was that. It felt mostly anonymous, and I used nicknames for the people around me to further the anonymity: The Chief, Sensei, The Philanderer... These names would be perpetuated by my weekly sessions of CoffeeGossip on the campus coffee shop, a Soviet-friendly code to allow relatively safe discussion in public. Over the years, and thanks to an increase in Facebook friends (the primary social network share of choice), it became more and more popular, with the posts about grappling with my decisions to not kill myself (or grappling with wanting to) being breakout hits. I also wrote "Vignettes", narrative free sections of faux-esoterica, which I wouldn't post links to, but people would inevitably find and sometimes try to question me about (which I would stoically refuse to answer).
I eventually shuttered that project, after about three years and a few design changes. The Songman's Rest was over, because I had succeeded in gaining full-time employment on the back row of a Cathedral choir. The more I think about it, the more I think about Tom Hardy's portrayal as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, "Victory has defeated you!" - I had set my ambitions almost comically low and have basically sat there ever since. Not so much the death of an artist, but truly, the death of ambition.
The next one, The Asylum, took its title from a joke that a friend I hardly speak to anymore would open his phone conversations with. Maybe I should have credited him. I managed to keep it limping on for a while, but I eventually reached a massive tonal impasse trying to marry up the posts of woe with Cathedral concert programmes and recipes and film reviews. Add to this a laptop that took more than ten minutes just to get from the power button being pressed to a log on screen, let alone actual function or internet access and I found myself floundering. I have, I suppose, been floundering ever since, working and writing less and less, and not really looking after myself. I let the Asylum ghost out, and have since stopped posting on it entirely, save to publish an unshared post pointing people in this direction, which, looking at it, appears to be proceeding to oblivion itself. I also tried to promote it as some kind of awkward branding umbrella, tying in a failed business card and Instagram self-promotion alongside a dedicated twitter account which I would also try to use for "writerly" things (for saying I've had twitter accounts for a long time, I basically fell out with it a few years ago [which I'll get on to] and have struggled to get into a regular use pattern ever since). As I said, it was this tonal impasse that sunk the whole venture, along with the growing feeling that I was just moaning for the sake of it and that everyone has similar problems and my growing paranoia that every word was being watched and every word would be tallied up and every word was waiting to be used against me. I have nothing conclusive, of course, but I have my suspicions. It was something I was never afraid of, but I guess with the increase in exposure I have become more self conscious and allowed it to take over. What happened? Did my balls drop off, or something?
So this has begun. You know, this. In some sort of effort to hone a literary craft that goes beyond churning out cheery concert notes about cheesy Christmas carols, to try and mount some kind of existential defence. You can see the seeds of such an effort in the Sequenza posts of the Asylum, better than the Vignettes (including the thirtieth Vignette, which had such a massive spike in views it skewed everything else - I couldn't work out whether it was because I used the Roman Numeral for 30 [as I used for all the Vignettes {think about it}], or whether people had gone back to read it again and again after I had broken up with my then girlfriend, a particularly upsetting episode that arguably I have yet to make peace with, due to seeing it as an emotional betrayal of myself... by myself), but that was hamstrung by trying to make that blog an all-things-to-everyone endeavour.
I've gone back to basics, in a way. Although I have a new twitter account, I only share these posts there for now and just leave it like that. Who knows, I might retweet them through my personal account, but that would defeat the point of anonymity, but then again, who is truly anonymous? This blog is still linked to all my old profiles and my email address is easy to find and I know that people have already been sharp enough to notice I've changed my blog URL on Instagram and Twitter too so I suppose there's little point in keeping up the pretense. You can't turn back the clock.
What I need to do though, is try and bring myself back. I feel like I'm on the brink, almost at rock bottom now. Almost. Above, I touched on "falling out" with Twitter; this all stems from another particularly terrible year I had here where I once again considered the awful task of suicide, but came to a slightly different and equally self-destructive conclusion: I would destroy everything I loved to preserve my life. Ridiculed and basically bullied for all manner of things, including but not limited to wearing a hat and keeping a (moderately) clean kitchen, I gave up on almost everything that mattered to me in an effort of pure survival ("You can't take what I don't have."), which is kind of fine... As long as you remember to pick it up again. So far, results have been mixed, and if anything, deteriorating slightly further. For instance, rather than try and up my singing game when not considered for solo work, I'm much more likely to throw it in and give up and retreat to the pub. What is even the point in trying to succeed if it seems that success is always just out of reach? My confidence has been eroded over the years by all sorts of nonsense - a good wheeze is finding out what sort of warning has been put out about me by, well, anyone! Incumbent scholars, previous scholars, wives of colleagues, teachers, would-be lovers... The list is endless. I'm sure obsessing over it isn't healthy, but you know, if I don't get these things out of my head there'll be stuck there forever, continually poisoning me until I destroy everything good I have, with no chance for recovery.
I'm obviously on the precipice of something quite drastic. There's a nonsense that I'm completely done with, and once I find it, I will remove it, uproot it in the most violent and effective fashion and never be caught out by it ever again. Maybe it's the drink? Strong contender. Maybe it's working in an office? Or maybe it's even the singing. Could it be? Or is it where I am? Tough questions. I'm often heard to say that "Punk never dies", but at the moment it seems like Punk got complacent and took a boring job and is scared of what people might say behind its back. That's not terribly punk, after all. One thing that is making me unhappy is all this weight I've put on recently, so a quick and ugly fix would be to shift that and then everything will be alright again right? Even then this needs a bit more of a shift than that. Worry not though, as I'm sure there'll be a post of similar size deconstructing why I drink just so much - it's not so much a binge but a slow burn, I guess.
Anyway. This was good. I don't know what it does for you, but it's a big help for me. Things get stuck in my head, I get trapped, anxious, panic, and then do something self-destructive; it's good I get them out and also have a reference point like this. I'm sure one day it'll bite me in the ass when somebody can quote a passage they don't like and say that's the reason they didn't invite me to their wedding or something (and that's a great measure to find out who is your friend and who is happy to pretend they are)... But I'm tired of being afraid for the sake of it. I'm tired of feeling that having an idea out of the accepted norm is 'above my station'. And I'm tired of not taking myself seriously.
There's something about this that feels it's been a long time coming. I have lots of problems, like everyone else, little tiny problems that happen every day. But I have much bigger problems as well, including some that potentially could ruin kind of everything (how dramatic, I know) that I've worked at and worked on for so long, shutting potential down and pushing further into a self-made yet ever-fresh hell. Even typing now feels almost redundant, that I should in fact just shut up and get on with things, this slowly deteriorating status quo and be happy things aren't worse. I have traded lunatic highs and lows for the miasma of mediocrity.
Huh. Where shall we actually begin though? Years ago,when I started self-publishing on the internet while at University, it was for personal benefit/pleasure/survival. To say I was living in a situation that didn't agree with me would be to dredge undersea ravines for understatement, added to the fact I came terrifyingly close to killing myself more than once that year. Blogging became an enjoyable way of channeling negative energy away. Initially, about 20 people read each post, a few of whom I knew and knew me, and that was that. It felt mostly anonymous, and I used nicknames for the people around me to further the anonymity: The Chief, Sensei, The Philanderer... These names would be perpetuated by my weekly sessions of CoffeeGossip on the campus coffee shop, a Soviet-friendly code to allow relatively safe discussion in public. Over the years, and thanks to an increase in Facebook friends (the primary social network share of choice), it became more and more popular, with the posts about grappling with my decisions to not kill myself (or grappling with wanting to) being breakout hits. I also wrote "Vignettes", narrative free sections of faux-esoterica, which I wouldn't post links to, but people would inevitably find and sometimes try to question me about (which I would stoically refuse to answer).
I eventually shuttered that project, after about three years and a few design changes. The Songman's Rest was over, because I had succeeded in gaining full-time employment on the back row of a Cathedral choir. The more I think about it, the more I think about Tom Hardy's portrayal as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, "Victory has defeated you!" - I had set my ambitions almost comically low and have basically sat there ever since. Not so much the death of an artist, but truly, the death of ambition.
The next one, The Asylum, took its title from a joke that a friend I hardly speak to anymore would open his phone conversations with. Maybe I should have credited him. I managed to keep it limping on for a while, but I eventually reached a massive tonal impasse trying to marry up the posts of woe with Cathedral concert programmes and recipes and film reviews. Add to this a laptop that took more than ten minutes just to get from the power button being pressed to a log on screen, let alone actual function or internet access and I found myself floundering. I have, I suppose, been floundering ever since, working and writing less and less, and not really looking after myself. I let the Asylum ghost out, and have since stopped posting on it entirely, save to publish an unshared post pointing people in this direction, which, looking at it, appears to be proceeding to oblivion itself. I also tried to promote it as some kind of awkward branding umbrella, tying in a failed business card and Instagram self-promotion alongside a dedicated twitter account which I would also try to use for "writerly" things (for saying I've had twitter accounts for a long time, I basically fell out with it a few years ago [which I'll get on to] and have struggled to get into a regular use pattern ever since). As I said, it was this tonal impasse that sunk the whole venture, along with the growing feeling that I was just moaning for the sake of it and that everyone has similar problems and my growing paranoia that every word was being watched and every word would be tallied up and every word was waiting to be used against me. I have nothing conclusive, of course, but I have my suspicions. It was something I was never afraid of, but I guess with the increase in exposure I have become more self conscious and allowed it to take over. What happened? Did my balls drop off, or something?
So this has begun. You know, this. In some sort of effort to hone a literary craft that goes beyond churning out cheery concert notes about cheesy Christmas carols, to try and mount some kind of existential defence. You can see the seeds of such an effort in the Sequenza posts of the Asylum, better than the Vignettes (including the thirtieth Vignette, which had such a massive spike in views it skewed everything else - I couldn't work out whether it was because I used the Roman Numeral for 30 [as I used for all the Vignettes {think about it}], or whether people had gone back to read it again and again after I had broken up with my then girlfriend, a particularly upsetting episode that arguably I have yet to make peace with, due to seeing it as an emotional betrayal of myself... by myself), but that was hamstrung by trying to make that blog an all-things-to-everyone endeavour.
I've gone back to basics, in a way. Although I have a new twitter account, I only share these posts there for now and just leave it like that. Who knows, I might retweet them through my personal account, but that would defeat the point of anonymity, but then again, who is truly anonymous? This blog is still linked to all my old profiles and my email address is easy to find and I know that people have already been sharp enough to notice I've changed my blog URL on Instagram and Twitter too so I suppose there's little point in keeping up the pretense. You can't turn back the clock.
What I need to do though, is try and bring myself back. I feel like I'm on the brink, almost at rock bottom now. Almost. Above, I touched on "falling out" with Twitter; this all stems from another particularly terrible year I had here where I once again considered the awful task of suicide, but came to a slightly different and equally self-destructive conclusion: I would destroy everything I loved to preserve my life. Ridiculed and basically bullied for all manner of things, including but not limited to wearing a hat and keeping a (moderately) clean kitchen, I gave up on almost everything that mattered to me in an effort of pure survival ("You can't take what I don't have."), which is kind of fine... As long as you remember to pick it up again. So far, results have been mixed, and if anything, deteriorating slightly further. For instance, rather than try and up my singing game when not considered for solo work, I'm much more likely to throw it in and give up and retreat to the pub. What is even the point in trying to succeed if it seems that success is always just out of reach? My confidence has been eroded over the years by all sorts of nonsense - a good wheeze is finding out what sort of warning has been put out about me by, well, anyone! Incumbent scholars, previous scholars, wives of colleagues, teachers, would-be lovers... The list is endless. I'm sure obsessing over it isn't healthy, but you know, if I don't get these things out of my head there'll be stuck there forever, continually poisoning me until I destroy everything good I have, with no chance for recovery.
I'm obviously on the precipice of something quite drastic. There's a nonsense that I'm completely done with, and once I find it, I will remove it, uproot it in the most violent and effective fashion and never be caught out by it ever again. Maybe it's the drink? Strong contender. Maybe it's working in an office? Or maybe it's even the singing. Could it be? Or is it where I am? Tough questions. I'm often heard to say that "Punk never dies", but at the moment it seems like Punk got complacent and took a boring job and is scared of what people might say behind its back. That's not terribly punk, after all. One thing that is making me unhappy is all this weight I've put on recently, so a quick and ugly fix would be to shift that and then everything will be alright again right? Even then this needs a bit more of a shift than that. Worry not though, as I'm sure there'll be a post of similar size deconstructing why I drink just so much - it's not so much a binge but a slow burn, I guess.
Anyway. This was good. I don't know what it does for you, but it's a big help for me. Things get stuck in my head, I get trapped, anxious, panic, and then do something self-destructive; it's good I get them out and also have a reference point like this. I'm sure one day it'll bite me in the ass when somebody can quote a passage they don't like and say that's the reason they didn't invite me to their wedding or something (and that's a great measure to find out who is your friend and who is happy to pretend they are)... But I'm tired of being afraid for the sake of it. I'm tired of feeling that having an idea out of the accepted norm is 'above my station'. And I'm tired of not taking myself seriously.
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