Give Up or Get Out

DAY FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY: The Pauper Fights Her Demons... Or At Least Acknowledges Them

It's Halloween.  The time of year for spooky specters.  The bewitching hour.  The time where beloved childhood icons can be sexy.

But [whore]ific costumes aside, Halloween is a time to be scared.  So what better day to acknowledge the lurking demon inside me?  Self-doubt.

I've taken a hiatus from writing of late.  Not for lack of thought.  I've started numerous blog posts and have deleted them.  Why?  Because I've gotten lost.  Lost at sea.  Lost in terror.  Lost in a grocery store where my mom has to summon a security guard to blast my name over the same intercom they use to price check grapefruits.

I'm lost in self-doubt.

How do you overcome it?  In an Internet Age where literally every thing gets over-analyzed and criticized, creatives are becoming a target on the same page as Hitler or John Mulaney's disappointing new show.

When information is at our every fingertip, earbud, and sightline, every single person with some kind of gadget has free reign over their opinions echoing over space and time.  And it instills doubt.  Copious amounts of it.

How do you overcome it?

Every choice I seem to make in my writing endeavors comes fully equipped with an endless amount of uncertainty.  Sure, validation comes, but it never dulls the hot pain of that screaming incubus of self-doubt.

I don't know how to overcome it.

There are people who are talented and succeed tremendously.  And then there are talented people who languish.  There are untalented people who succeed.  And then there are untalented people who succumb to the drudgery of life.  Of course they do.  How else does the circle of life foster?

As time goes on, I find myself pulling away from society.  Pulling away from professing my feelings because they seem trite.  Pulling away from people I care about because disappointment lurks in every corridor.

I'm not sure this can be overcome easily.

So when you go to your parties and haunted houses this Hallow's Eve, maybe you shouldn't be so scared of goblins and vampires and visions of childhood innocence being grotesquely violated.  Because there's nothing scarier than the voice inside your head that tells you to stop.