Thoughts on self publishing and all this stuff

I'm two days into August and my poetry challenge on Ko-Fi. My goal is to get a cuppa donated once a day but we'll see how reasonable that is. 

I have NO idea how to increase my audience, or garner an engaged audience, so I've just started posting to twitter and fb and hoping something comes out of it. It's difficult, because I've kept this blog since 2011 and I still don't have regular readers or commenters. I feel like I'm just writing into the void. Of course I've internalized it and told myself it's because I'm a crap person, writer, poet, and people just intrinsically pick up on that. 

"Why even post, it's already failed."

"Nobody engages with these posts, let alone goes to the text. I should give up now."

"Give upon this project. Nobody cares."

"Nobody cares because you don't have anything new to say, and you don't say it in a new way."

"People don't care about poetry or reading, let alone reading some no-name."

"You haven't don't this a traditional way, so folks will just assume it's vanity without substance."

Woo, it feels real vulnerable to actually type all of that out. These stories feel true to me and I'm not sure how to re-frame them, but I'm working on it because I do give up and quit because of these stories. At least once a year, I completely give up because what's the point. And then I read professional writer's blogs to hype myself up, about how I should be writing to be a writer (typically very prescriptive) and that reinforces my internal narrative that I'm a fake, that I don't know what I'm doing, and that I will never be even moderately successful. 

To counter this internal narrative, I know intellectually I'm dealing with a lot of impostor syndrome. Don't know what that is? It sucks and many folks who have been raised outside of white, heteronormative, dude privilege know about this and experience it on a very deeply ingrained level.

I also think there's some other stuff going into these internal narratives... like how the idea that if I work hard, I'll be successful is so deeply ingrained in Americans. Even though it's just capitalist propaganda that bears no relevance to most of us, I've definitely internalized that, as well as many, many other Americans.  So if I'm not successful, it's my fault for not working hard enough, not producing a good product, or generally doing something wrong. 

If you're reading this, thank you. I want to be clear that I'm not trying to guilt or shame anybody into supporting me- and that concern is a large reason why I haven't been open with this struggle. I want folks to read my writing because it's good and they get something from it, not because they feel bad for me. Oh my dog, please don't ever do that. 

I don't know how to end this. I guess, that's just what's going on with me, y'all. Thanks for bearing with me for this post <3 I'll keep writing, keep posting, keep going regardless.