Back in 2020 as I began truly chasing after this “full time author” schtick I did a lot of research. In that research I came across two consistent “musts” that every author is supposed to do in order to become successful. Number one, grow some sort of a following – engaging with your audience beyond just producing stories so that they’ll be more connected in what you create. And two, create an author website. Neither of these things have been easy nor come naturally to me. I’m a pretty introverted person and love just existing in the background sometimes. Buuut persistent dreams aren’t too concerned about one’s comfort.
So eventually (a couple years later) I was able to get this website pieced together. It was a slow process because the extent of my technological knowledge does not touch into the coding side of things. And yet, here she is! With the grand promise of being a space of sharing all my other social media content ports so that people wouldn’t have to bounce between said platforms if they wanted to avoid them. There was also the promise of this being a place where I could give extra blog post-esque content. For a while there I was able to keep up with it. Then months crept by before I could post again, until now that is.
The thing is, I’ve noticed a pattern with myself in this crazy creative experiment that is my life now. I feel like I keep over promising and then failing to return on those promises. It’s not intentional. I don’t mean to make grandiose statements just to have to come band a renege on them later. Part of it is a case of my “[creative] eyes being bigger than my [skillset] stomach.” Where I just really want to do all the things! Explore as much as I can, grow in all the ways, challenge myself, and just keep making stuff that is fun, inspiring, and more! And then realizing that I really have no clue what I’m doing and the things I imagined just aren’t possible for me to attain in that moment.
There’s also the side of things where I’ve neglected to include the time quotient of business building. Being an author, a YouTuber, a “content creator” has a vast business undertaking that – with it still being a collectively new frontier – has not much solid step by step guidance at the ready. Just this year I was able to establish a DBA under Choose the Pen LLC! And that goes with the publishing of my content but also for bigger future projects I want to go through. I also had to figure out how to copyright my book, how to distribute, how to advertise, where to look for cover art and formatting, how to go about getting character art, and how to get voice over work for my ads. The comes the researching as to what I’m legally allowed to do with the content I’ve commissioned to make sure I’m honoring agreements but also protecting myself in the process to be sure I’m not accidentally partnering up with bad faith workers. And I haven’t even begun to touch on the whole taxes side of things – which is creeping ever closer!
Then comes the networking and trying to remain present within the spheres of other authors and content creators. Making sure I’m actually supporting and encouraging these groups without just coming to them all the time with my hand out for their support. Hence why I try to do book cover reveals on my social media accounts when I’m able to.
I’ve made a post before on here about “slaying the Hydra” where I stay in a state of constant overwhelm trying to balance all of my “to-do’s”. And to be honest I hate even mentioning that facet because I feel like it seems I’m just trying to give cop-outs for each time I have to drop something. Yet, people don’t know unless they’re in the midst of it what it’s like to try to run five social media accounts, a website, newsletter, and publish books all by yourself. I’ve had a number of people who have tried to step in to help me out from time to time, but for one reason or another they’ve each moved on to other things.
Then there’s also the pointer of how life can just fling things at you that you weren’t prepared for.
And so, I had to pull back from the Facebook livestreams, from the YouTube gaming streams, then the choose your own adventure story streams… I had writing challenges I’ve had to bow out of and the intentions of creating my own little web comic series that had to be halted. I’ve been trying to work on reaction videos for movies and shows which get halted because of scheduling and just the factor of fighting against ridiculous copyright claims. (literally just finished editing the third version of one of my videos and re-uploading it- they finally didn’t claim copyright issues on this version!)
And then came to slow dropping of the blog posts on here, even the lack of re-uploading the few Facebook streams I have been able to do.
While I’ve made good pointers in here as to how things can get delayed or pushed to the background (not even touching on the life struggles outside of all things internet), the crazy truth of it all is that I feel guilty.
I feel like I’m not keeping my word to anyone who’s been following my journey, and I fear I’m accidentally training people to not trust me or believe in me. It makes me sick to my stomach sometimes thinking about it. I don’t want to let you guys down. I don’t want you to come to not have faith in what I’m trying to accomplish. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but it gets hard to know for sure sometimes. I know I don’t really talk about it, but each time I have to let something go to focus on something else it hurts. I hate it, but I don’t know what else to do.
So instead of continuing on with other reasons or excuses, I just want to take a moment and say I’m sorry. I’m sorry if there was something I made that you loved that disappeared. I’m sorry if there was something I’m promised to do that you were looking forward to and then it fell through. I’m sorry for the claims I’ve made that I did not follow through on. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you and made you feel like I’m someone you can’t rely on. And I’m sorry that I can’t in good conscience promise that “things will be different from here on” because I don’t know if they will be.
All I do know is that I’m just going to keep trying my best as well as I know how and pray in the end that it will be enough. 💗