How Blogging Has Impacted My Mental Health
Actually, it's not just blogging, but my entire social media presence. I started getting attention for some of my photography and artwork, which I totally loved. People were interested in my work, two of my passions. Then the likes stopped. I started losing followers. The views declined. I couldn't post as much because my mind was cluttered, I was dealing with personal things. I wasn't in a place where I could really create. Seeing the numbers decreased only increased my feelings of self-hatred. I equated my self-esteem and self-worth with the attention and I still do. It comes from a place of experience, loneliness and mental illness. I see the decline and I realise that I am nothing more than just entertainment, that I'm not a real person to these people. Then I think, "Dan, you're not even a real person to yourself."
I've shared so much of my life the past few years online, travel blogs and photos, the mental health series and therapy sessions and various incidents in my life. I've met some great people through these blogs and had a lot of great conversations too, but when I think about it and when it really comes down to it, these people have no concern or feelings for me. I felt pressured to create for these people. I felt like I had to do a blog every day or I was worthless and lazy. I struggle with that still. Sometimes it feels like I have to make a choice between the audience and my mental health. It's a messy position to be put in and I'm sure many other writers, artists, photographers etc can agree with. It began to hamper my creativity. I wasn't writing. I didn't want to. I felt like my time was just being wasted. No one engaged with my work at all. I had ideas of sharing stories, comparing scars, making new friends and growing a following for my writing. It didn't happen. I've been doing this since 2010 and now I'm really too tired to carry on.
This rejection, lack of engagement and isolation from my artistic and creative peers has warped my worldview. When I was younger, I saw the world as a place of opportunity and as something I could be apart of. Now I see it as a decaying cesspool of ignorance, greed and abuse. It's gotten to the point where I hate trying to do blogs for you guys because I feel like no one cares and it just weighs on my head too much. It increases my feelings of isolation and self-disgust. It feels like its all just a waste of time no matter what I do. As my mental health decays and the lack of engagement only worsens it, I want to pull away.
I don't like putting out things that I'm not happy with; I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my work. Like my job, I don't care as much, it's not really important to me. It's just empty tasks that do nothing for me. My writing, my creativity, that's important to me. It's actually a fundamental block of who I am. I didn't really think about it really until recently but I like writing. I love my stories and poems and all of that. It's been a defining characteristic for so many years and it's more than just an escape for me. I amuse myself for hours writing and putting out stories. I'm really proud of my writing. Well, not all of it, we'll all have things that we don't like as much or think it's awkward or cringe-worthy. I want my things to be amazing, relatable, not a soul-sucking waste of time. I'm sure many other creators feel this way.
I started writing this blog at the start of the year. I just couldn't get the thoughts out right. I needed to say what I had to say, but be less of a dick about things and part of me wanted to wait and see if it was just a low point. It's not. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I'm just going to do the blogs that I want to do for me, like what I started out doing. I've gotta be doing things for me because doing things for an audience, to make people happy is a worthless endeavour that only leads to other sorts of emotional problems. Working on my mental health is more important than views on my blog. Of course, I want to be successful with this, but it's better that I enjoy what I do. It's a nice little oasis from life, you know?
This rejection, lack of engagement and isolation from my artistic and creative peers has warped my worldview. When I was younger, I saw the world as a place of opportunity and as something I could be apart of. Now I see it as a decaying cesspool of ignorance, greed and abuse. It's gotten to the point where I hate trying to do blogs for you guys because I feel like no one cares and it just weighs on my head too much. It increases my feelings of isolation and self-disgust. It feels like its all just a waste of time no matter what I do. As my mental health decays and the lack of engagement only worsens it, I want to pull away.
I don't like putting out things that I'm not happy with; I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my work. Like my job, I don't care as much, it's not really important to me. It's just empty tasks that do nothing for me. My writing, my creativity, that's important to me. It's actually a fundamental block of who I am. I didn't really think about it really until recently but I like writing. I love my stories and poems and all of that. It's been a defining characteristic for so many years and it's more than just an escape for me. I amuse myself for hours writing and putting out stories. I'm really proud of my writing. Well, not all of it, we'll all have things that we don't like as much or think it's awkward or cringe-worthy. I want my things to be amazing, relatable, not a soul-sucking waste of time. I'm sure many other creators feel this way.
I started writing this blog at the start of the year. I just couldn't get the thoughts out right. I needed to say what I had to say, but be less of a dick about things and part of me wanted to wait and see if it was just a low point. It's not. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I'm just going to do the blogs that I want to do for me, like what I started out doing. I've gotta be doing things for me because doing things for an audience, to make people happy is a worthless endeavour that only leads to other sorts of emotional problems. Working on my mental health is more important than views on my blog. Of course, I want to be successful with this, but it's better that I enjoy what I do. It's a nice little oasis from life, you know?
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