Why are you reading this?

Yeah you! Why are you reading this?  What gives me the right to your free time?  Did you arrive here by chance? Are you family? Are you my friend?  Are you my facebook friend?

With the internet, everyone now has a voice.  There is now an over abundance of soapboxes to stand on, but this is causing the real question to now be who should we listen to?  In the old days, all you needed was a Tv or radio show and people had no choice but to listen to you.  There were only a handful of soapboxes.  You had to catch a lucky break with a newspaper job or publishing contract to have any hope of sharing your thoughts with the world.  Now everyone has access to everyone else’s opinions if they want.  Anyone can write a blog or start a Youtube channel.  But now, how does anyone gain a foothold in a writing career?  How does anyone create a voice worth listening to?

Unfortunately, this is the life path I have chosen for myself.  I feel like my calling is in writing and expressing myself.  But a great amount of my anxiety lies in the question of why should anyone listen to me?  Nothing gives me a free pass to everyone’s attention.  I don’t have have many credentials.  At the same time, I don’t want to feel like I’m representing any kind of respectable institution like a newspaper, magazine, school curriculum or a university.  Perhaps I’m too artistically idealistic, but I hate any kind of censorship or compromise to my work.  I wouldn't want to write if I couldn't say “fuck” where its appropriate.          

I’ve got to believe that the only hope for this kind of life-path is the attractiveness of a totally honest and unique personality.  The only way to create an internet voice worth listening to is the total uninhibited expression of my true honest self.  I look at the people I admire.  These are never the smartest people.  They are not usually academically credentialed.  But somehow their honest self is expressed through their creations.  Music, comedy, artwork, books, acting, lectures or however they express themselves.  This is my ideal.  I’m not sure yet what my greatest strength is, but my guiding light is myself.  If I can bring an uncompromised and unique personality to the forefront of what I create, I believe this will be the correct path to take.  

This all sounds like an excersize in ego masturbation, but what other choice do creators have?  A kind of confidence, or maybe arrogance has to exist in order to think that people want to hear what we have to say.  I routinely post some of my artwork on facebook.  I get a kind of satisfaction every time someone “likes” or compliments my drawings.  At the same time I have a pang of narcissistic guilt, every time I post something that I’ve created.  What right do I have clogging up other people’s facebooks with posts that seem to scream:  “look at me!” “look at me!” “read my blog!” “don’t you think I’m smart?”

On the same coin, what right do other people have in clogging my facebook with vacation pictures, dessert recipes, conspiracy theories, drunken photos and articles somebody else wrote. But I digress this is a topic for another time.

Its all very gross. but perhaps all this self promotion is a necessary evil.  If you don’t like it, feel free to block me.  If you can tolerate it, thank you!