defeating the, "who cares?"

1. All or Nothing

My first Vocal goal would be to challenge myself by submitting a story to every challenge- no matter how much I have come to loathe poem challenges. I find when it comes to poems I clam up. I try to figure out some abstractly written message full of flowery prose, perhaps something that does makes not a bit of sense, but it ends up being more up-front than I originally thought. I figured it would be good to push myself to write more in order to accomplish my ultimate goal of winning a challenge on Vocal.

But the real problem I face is the lack of confidence when it comes to my writing, which then I become skeptical of myself. I begin out confident when I come up with an idea that is spawned up by challenges and then with the crazy nature of my days with handling a toddler, I write here and there and just ultimately lose interest in the story I was so stoked to write and finish, because...

Who cares?

I don't know why I get those two words stuck in my brain. Perhaps for the fact a lack of reads. Though I must honestly admit, it's the fact that I haven't won a challenge. I've put hours into stories that have gone unread. Stories that I have felt proud of and confident about, only for the results of the winners to shred any hope I had left. I look at many Creators whose names I recognize that publish stories left and right and I honestly wonder how. But I know they put forth the time and passion into their work and also interact with others.

But the who cares also connects to losing steam and passion for a story whose plot I illustrated in my mind while trying to fall asleep at night. Some topics I write about are to connect with others and hope that someone else can relate to what I've gone through. I have an unpublished story about the tsunami of feelings I had with an unexpected loss, and what's preventing me from publishing it is knowing that it will get lost into the abyss of stories on this website that are stuck with no reads. But maybe, just maybe one day someone will come along and read it and feel like they can relate because they've gone through the same thing.

One important thing therapy has taught me is that everything is pretty relative to the individual. While something may not matter to one person, if it matters to you, it matters and we shouldn't put down our own experiences and feelings for what we expect of others. We should be true to ourselves.

So I'm going to submit every story I come up with because you just never know.

2. Interaction is actually kind of...fun

I'm an avid lurker. I enjoy watching and not interacting with others. I read and heart, but I never/rarely comment. I've been a member of two Vocal Facebook groups for years, but have only interacted in one before my son was even born because there was a collaborative series going on which I thought was a great chance to interact with other Creators. Back then I worked full-time and would check Vocal and the Facebook groups regularly, so seeing the possibility of collaborating with other Vocal authors was exciting and I ultimately felt connected with others with my addition of the story: Into the Boundary.

And then Vocal wasn't fun anymore, life happened and I would check every now and then but wasn't feeling anything much. But then the Melodic Milestone Playlist happened and I felt alive again because music is a way I can connect with others online. I felt giddy going through and reading entries that I came out of my shell a bit to comment on other's entries and it was actually...fun.

My husband jokes about me taking an hour to come up with a reply text to people. Thus; I've deemed interacting with people to be exhausting, despite the fact I was pretty extroverted online in my early teens to early 20s. As I've gotten older I'm more filtered and fearful of rebuttable. I have become more careful of stringing together words, and then the "who cares?" also applies to commenting. It may be because I'm older and more mature than compared to my younger self. But I've spent lots of time writing comments and texts only to just erase them. I also tend to get overwhelmed.

But with the Melodic Milestone Playlist Challenge, the brief interaction with two authors despite it being a small step I ended up having fun and I ended up being a runner-up with an older story I had written.

3. Using my own art

Vocal has inspired me to illustrate art for my stories more. I find I try to take more time to draw and submit to challenges. The introduction of AI art was fun, but then I began to have troubled views on it. As an artist myself, using AI art felt disingenuous. I have my own style when it comes to art and in past when Vocal highlighted creators on the platform I was inspired by those who used their own art in their stories. I wanted to be that person whose art was the main image to their work. The only thing is that creating art takes time, and the time I have is limited, so while I could wordsmith up images on Dall-e, I feel like I have no connection to them. With creating my own art there is a personal connection as it is an extension of creating something from my imagination and making it come to life.

Bonus:

Stop being last minute

This one has come up for the fact I tend to be a last-minute challenge submitter. I write and write and then end up putting things off and procrastinating. Then when the hours and minutes are winding down I try to crank through finishing up my story, editing and then finding or drawing out illusrations. Even now as I write this there are 7 hours left to the #200 challenge and I haven't even done the artwork for this submission yet.

So maybe I haven't learned much from my blunder from a past Challenge (Book Club) where I submitted my entry minutes before submissions closed. I read through some other entries revelling on the fact that I was finally finished, to only go back to the main challenge page and see that I forgot to select the challenge to submit it to. I panicked, heart racing and I realized my mistake. I couldn't enter anything and I gave up and had that post deleted.

We live and we learn.

So now I want to get rid of that craving of mad dashing to submit to challenges at very last minute and give myself some calm and time to be able to edit my submissions without racing against the clock.

As for now there are 87 minutes left, so maybe that's an improvement and a start to accomplishing this goal so far.