(no subject)

[ysobel]

crying again b/c ~I should be writing~

...conversation on twitter has me remembering back when I was teenagerish and reading, like, All The Things (at least in sff and ya), and wanted to grow up to be A Writer. Not just in the sense of person-who-writes, but someone who wrote books that meant as much to Their Readers as, like, Valdemar or Earthsea or w/e meant to me

and, like

between the physical difficulties with typing, and the crushing pressure I put on writing as the Last Decent Legitimate Career Option available to me?

I can't even finish *fanfic* any more, let alone anything publishable

I am never going to be A Writer

and that just

hurts

and it feels like I'm letting down ... everyone, really, but especially younger me

Comments

[arctowardthesun]

I feel you on feeling like you're letting your younger self down. <3 I never made it to graduate school, after all.

[ysobel]

<3

The idea of Being A Grownup that I had when I was, like, 5 -- grow up, get married (to a boy of course because I was a girl), have 2-3 kids and a dog and a job/career (probably as a vet and also an author+illustrator) and a house with a nice garden and picket fence -- hasn't happened at all. Well, technically no, I have a dog... but nothing else. Some/much of that is Because Disability; some of that is societal changes; some of that is that it was a simplified view.

But I still feel like I'm somehow failing. My sister went to grad school (successfully); I went to grad school (unsuccessfully; got through the coursework and kind of ghosted them because I couldn't do the requisite thesis) and that registers as failure, because my brain is very perfection-or-nothing. I don't have a job, and I know damn well it's only failure in a capitalist sense, but it still registers as failure. And in some sense Being A Writer was the last remaining fragment of my childhood expectations.

Meh. Why are brains.

(p.s. you are not a failure! grad school is overrated. And yes I know me saying that is totally hypocritical and doesn't help how you feel.)

[vass]

That sounds really, really hard. I don't think you're letting anyone down, but I can see why it would feel that way, and that feeling that way would hurt a lot.

[ysobel]

<3 <3 <3

[princessofgeeks]

ALL THE HUGS

[ysobel]

YES HUGS, HUGS GOOD

[jesse_the_k]

Why is it that we have to rely on brains that often throw up these all-or-nothing misery musicals?

Sending you strength and a really-distracting phone game.