Emo Check-In Blog

It has been a while since I posted here. Much of my work has been done, along with the Superstitious Agnostic Substack newsletter, has been offline. Every year I get my “invoice” to pay my annual fees for keeping the name davideverettfisher.com and the website hosting fees, and I wonder what the fuck am I doing?

A lot of what I have posted here has been almost just a really long Facebook post so that the people in my life know what’s going on with me, but when things get weird, I have found that not everyone in my life likes being mentioned on my public blog, so I have had to shy away from my Livejournal-like posts to not harm other people. 

This doesn’t leave me much to work with. I have found a lot of power in sharing my experience with others. I have found a connection in sharing my journeys through sobriety, cancer, relationships, grief, depression, and other critical impacts on my life. This blog was a way to share that with the world in hopes that someone could find power and inspiration from my words.

How can other writers do what they do without making everyone mad? I looked at writers like David Sedaris, who wrote so in-depth about his family, friends, and lovers and if there were any consequences. His sister, and not any known direct connection to David, took her own life when she was 49. I can’t help but know what it’s like to go through life not wanting to be alive, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to have my childhood trauma be a New York Times best-selling book every year. 

Some have told me of the people in my life that they don’t like when I mention them, especially when it paints a less than favorable light on them, even if I am taking the blame and responsibility for the things happening. It is not my place to harm other people to share my story.

I know I am not as popular or prolific as David Sedaris, but knowing a dozen people read my blogs when I publish them is still other people reading about these other people in my life and interpreting my writing, and maybe not interpreting it as I intended. The written word can be very dangerous, and it is worse than it ever has been with the destruction of reading comprehension and shortened attention spans. 

So, every time I think of putting a blog together, I stare at the blinking cursor and think how what I am about to write will have to include these other people. I have no intention of bringing their pain to the wonderful world of the internet just so I can share my thoughts, opinions, and trauma with the world.

Finding that a diary style will not work anymore and then trying to figure out a new way of expressing my written word creativity has not been easy, nor has it been fun. While the Substack newsletters have grown my audience nominally, I have found that I don’t like what people react to when I publish anything. When I publish a tragic event, I get so much traffic. If I publish something controversial, I get blowback and criticism. Even on my regular Instagram page, I have been told to cool it because my political reblogging is “bumming” people out. 

Then, I write original pieces that take a lot of creative energy to create, and they get no love at all—no responses, a few polite likes, and nothing else. If I write about the destruction of my life, my relationships, society, or some other tragic event, it’s all love and attention, but if I create a piece of art or write something that isn’t tragic but is my heart spilling out – crickets.

I know, I know, I am being cranky and sounding like an ungrateful old man who thinks the kids aren’t alright. And I won’t get what I want, so I have to turn to change me and my perception of the world around me. If I want to create something people will like, I must make things that people will enjoy. This has always been the tragedy of Art: to create what is hard and real or to create what the people want if the artist wants to be successful. One is the happiness and love of creation, and the other is the forced nature of capitalism.

I used to work at a coffee shop, and the sun was on our side of the street in the morning. Across the street and slightly up the road was a Starbucks. We had a delightful small-batch coffee roaster making our coffee, and Starbucks had its stuff. One day, a middle-aged man and woman sat at our tables with their venti cups of Starbucks, and while I didn’t care, I went out and said the tables were for customers only. The man got huffy with me and said, “Maybe if you actually had popular coffee at your cafe, we’d get our coffee here instead of at Starbucks. There’s a reason they are so popular.” I responded, “If your logic holds, are you saying McDonald’s hamburgers are the best because they sell so many?” 

That might be mean and dismissive of popular artists who put out great stuff for the masses, but there is a difference between the mass-produced art and how soulless it usually is and the stuff made from love and passion. Of course, you might look through my past posts and decide that I just suck at it, and I can’t think I am a serious artist. Maybe I am the McDonald’s burger that is at the small burger place that no one likes, but I am putting all my love and creativity into that shitty burger.

So, that brings me to my annual blog identity breakdown. What the fuck am I doing? Why am I doing this? I think about what people would fucking read if they’ll read anything. Is it just me? Is there a point . . . at all? 

When I’m not working on something, I feel empty and depressed, but when I am working on something, I feel so full and full of meaning, but then I put it out into a vacuum. Luckily, I do not need reinforcement, but I would love to know what people think when they read my work. I pay every year for this blog, and it gets hard to do this when I am not able to connect with my audience. 

I guess I am circling back to my more “emo” blogs that I used to do at the beginning of this website. I started this website and blog when a writing teacher suggested it as a way to show and promote our work to the world so that when we finally put something out, we have other works to show. 

I have been rejected by 12 publishers and 7 agents for the Infinite Fool Tarot book and cards. While some of the rejection letters have been form rejection letters, the rest are very positive but just slightly not in their niche. What I have done, while I thought it was pretty straightforward, is between a lot of publishers’ and agents’ niche zones. I will have to look at self-publishing, which is not just hard work but a huge financial undertaking. 

So that is my new blog update: identity crisis meets not getting enough of the right attention. I hope to bring you some great content in the near future, but I will need to find myself again.

I would love it if people signed up for my Substack and this blog, and if they think someone would also love to read my stuff, please share it.