How am I? How am I? I know, I just repeated myself. Today the real job left me sobbing after a performance review. Maybe that is a little too real, but there we go. My “real job” is customer service. I work remotely. At home. And while people wax poetic on the joys of it, for me it’s been hard.
Like on and off anti-depressants, sobbing to my therapist hard.
I do it because I have a heart condition and with COVID, it isn’t safe for me to work in an environment with a bunch of people. I’ve been stressed about it for almost a year and a half, because I live alone, and my community consists of my Mom and Step-Dad. Who I go out and see on my days off, but that is it.
My friends were work friends. People I talked with casually in the breakroom. No one has my number. No one calls me. And it’s all very sad. How do you make friends in your thirties? In school it was easy. You show up to class, you’ve got things in common because of your environment. It is easy.
But as an adult? How do you politely tell people that you spend all of your free time making up fictional characters and you enjoy it without sounding insane? How do you socialize when you aren’t social? It’s all very hard and it sucks. Also, all my hobbies are things I do ALONE. I can’t think of one thing I like doing with people. Which, I realize, makes me sound like an asshole but you know.
And the hard thing is sometimes I really wonder if it is going to pay off, you know? I’m working through the UX class. I’m trying to learn a new skill that will lead to a better job. And yet I need the job I have to do that and its just all….hard.
Plus, writing itself isn’t social. But the actual word of mouth part? That is social. How do I convince a bunch of strangers that the fantasy novel I’ve written is worth their time when we live in the “golden age of content” or whatever?
You’ll have to forgive me. I’m having a human moment here. The numbers for Kindle Vella are up, but again. Not stellar. Not cool-enough-to-be-interviewed-on-Hot-Ones numbers which is what we’re all aiming for, right? Although I doubt authors are really their thing, except for, apparently Malcolm Gladwell.
I do not foresee myself ever being cool enough to be on that show but….
Okay. I guess we need to get to the nitty gritty. The numbers for the week 10 wrap up.
5 Episodes read, 15 thumbs-up, and five follows.
