Oh no... What have I done?

Waking up and stumbling around, clutching my stomach in pain was quite enough already, before I thought about the night before.  Then I did.  And I remembered.


 

An email sent to a former lover?  No.  A text to a unrequited love from years past?  Thankfully not.  A phone call to a girl I’ve kept on my contact list for no reason other than I never think to clean it?  My recent call list absolves me of such fears.

No, instead I submitted my blog to Reddit. Not so scary?  Imagine if I had included on my list “saying ‘I love you’ to a girl you just started dating”.  No, perhaps that doesn’t fit.  A better analogy might be that it’s like posted something about our very new relationship on facebook.  There, that works better.  Analogies can be confusing in the age of information.

I took my blog, that was in a weird state and was faltering, if I dare admit it to myself, and said: hey look at this guys!

And a lot of people looked.  It almost doubled my page views.  But what did those page viewers see?  A story I wrote for another purpose being reused, and that lost a contest.

The girl texts me and says: WTF did you post that on facebook for?  We need to discuss this asap.

Reddit, however, says nothing.  They needn’t say anything, I know the answer.  They clicked, saw nothing except my awesome header, and left.  Why read my amateur stuff when I make no promises upfront? 

A problem of confidence, and last night I had some temporary confidence that would lead to regret at having shot my wad far too soon.

But I can’t save things now.   The only recourse is to post consistently and keep my chin high.  Who cares for the views when the views are looking nowhere and seeing nothing.  Let traffic be directed elsewhere until those in traffic tire of the daily commute and see a small building off the road and decide that today is the day they will go off road, to see something new.

Or maybe I’m going nowhere.  I’m either afraid of my own success, hence the fear of showing my writing to people who also write.  Or I have no potential for success, and secretly I know it. Not secretly, that fear haunts me even if I choose to ignore it.  I stop going to class after my story is work shopped and disemboweled, and after collectively pulling its entrails out decides it’s not worth doing anymore and tosses the whole bloody dissected thing in the garbage.  

And I pretend that it isn’t in the garbage.  I pretend I never even wrote it, and I don’t try to put it back together.

This post won’t help anything though.  On the pile of non-story things, drowning out the actual stories like the Macy’s one or the short fiction pieces, there will be another self reflective short post that won’t mean anything to anyone.

But I have to go to work, and I wanted to do something to show that girl I’m sorry.  Or something along those lines.  Analogies can be…