Turning Up Worms

[feetinthedirt]

Where is the path. What is the road.

This time of year always beats up my heart. I'm working on the next record AND have a booking agent these days which means - less shows. Which means the headbees go to town with the insecurities. Couple it with the end of year postings from my peer musician pals and I'm all comparisons all of the time. Keep my eyes on my own paper? Hell, I'm practically sitting in their laps I'm so focused on other folks' progress / journey. Like my pal CM says - I want to ride your coattails or just nail them to the floor. Sure my plays grew by 25% YoY and my followers grew by 47%. My tunes got added to 401 playlists. And I sit here feeling like a failure. Like who cares. Like why bother. WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY knowing that I'm just making the best art that I can and listening to my heart about it and I would do it regardless. So what do I want? I don't fucking know. I just feel so sad. And failed. And like... I'm doing something wrong. It feels like other folks are able to leverage their experiences into something. I have gotten opportunities that feel so huge and major and it feels like I just experience them, am my actual real human self, and it all just... fizzles. I don't want to 'use' people to get ahead. So - how do you ask for what you need / want in an authentic way without it being slimy? Or am I destined to play as a glorified hobbyist and need to just find my satisfaction in that? I've opened for folks who are known enough that music and playing it out professionally is their day job and have won their crowd over 1000%. So where is the grassroots upswell? The word of mouth? The organic growth that means I have more than 20 people at my shows.

I love the fans who hear me the first time and are so excited and all 'omg i love this - how have I never heard of you before?!?' but then... when does it translate into 'I told all of my friends and now we're all excited' I'm exhausted and broke from all of this. And yet I keep going because I love it. And yet I still feel like I'm doing it all wrong.

It's my own journey. It's my own road. But dammit how do I find the joy in it? Because right now I just feel like I'm doing everything wrong.

[feetinthedirt]

unloveable

there is the very simple truth that I do not actually believe myself to be loveable. to be memorable. to matter. if i hit the road and vanished i think it would take weeks / months or maybe never to hear from people who miss me. i had reconciled / dealt with this in therapy. gotten to a better place. but then I let my family of origin back in my life, re-absorbed a whole passel of disregard and dismissal, and here we are again. where i become the need to please, need to serve, need to prove myself kind of friend to even trust a little that i have value to people. sure it doesn't help that my closest friends are usually manic depressive with their own shit and often unavailable or emotionally unable to attach in a way that is visible. my heart can take only so much 'trust that you matter' and then it just feels like an exercise in lying to myself that anyone cares. and i'm just so tired.

yesterday went to see my tourmates show with their 'real' band. and while yes folks were like 'omg good to see you' it also felt like 'meh nice that you bothered but who actually cares' AND ALSO i know that pals would be SO HURT to know i was thinking that but also - there's my sad heart.

maybe i should just drink and watch cartoons until i waste away in a pool of who cares.

[feetinthedirt]

adulting.

new job starts on halloween. will it trick or treat? it for sure is going to fuck up touring. is this what giving up on your dreams looks like?

[feetinthedirt]

I can’t seem to find my gratitude. Just paranoia, frustration, and fear. I am on day four of not having the medication that makes me ok. Or rather - I starting taking it again today but now that I’ve missed four days it takes time to kick back in. I’ve started stress managing with weed instead of booze. I’m pretty convinced that my friends are over me and that I’m too intense for folks. I don’t see it - but I’ve been told it more than once. I didn’t see it then - so how will I ever see it now? Is it always true? 90% of the time I’m just a text once a week person - maybe 2-3 times a day if it’s a conversation. And so I am just too much. And so I make myself smaller. Less important. It doesn’t matter. Even people I love the most don’t care anymore. I think they just humor me - when they bother at all. No one wants to be mean. I can feel the anxiety panic and tears rising in my chest like floodwaters drowning my heart. It feels like I’ll never swim my way out of this desperate sadness. Like a foot on my chest holding me down. They all think I’m fine but nobody actually wants to know the truth. Meh.

[feetinthedirt]

Pretty sure I’m just a huge asshole

Also?

Pretty sure it’s not about me.

[feetinthedirt]

When you feel so isolated alone and shitty but don’t want to be THAT person who spends their time attention seeking online for their negativity and so you just get more alone and isolated and give up on people caring. Whee.

[feetinthedirt]

Living my life in panic attacks and crying jags, convinced my friends don’t care, working hard on my next ulcer and the constant pain and nausea of survival all while watching my bumper stickers charm the hell out of people.

This life may be too ‘good’ to survive.

[feetinthedirt]

I am so just fucking sad and hopeless all of the time. when did i stop having friends? when did people stop caring? how do all these garbage dumpster fires of humanity have all this love and support and I’m just like drowning over here. fuck it.

[feetinthedirt]

Being an empath fucking sucks.

[thesingingknives]

Everyone you love leaves a hole in you. A blast crater. Soon there aren’t any more flowers or birds and the rivers dry up.

Kim Addonizio, from “Wishing Well” (as appears in Oakland Noir)

[feetinthedirt]

It's amazing how ugly we can be reflected back at ourselves. Maybe I just deserve everything awful. Help me balance out karma so the people who put up with me can get the good stuff.

[feetinthedirt]

Starting to wonder if I've become a bad person and don't even realize it. I spent so much time sacrificing for others, taking care of others, pushing down my own needs to work with kindness and patience above all else even when I was screaming inside. For work, friends, family, I just always offered myself. Now that I'm trying to wrest my life back - I feel like all I ever do is ask for help and it's ignored. But also - have I become the user? I think I'm still the helper - but most of my time is either at practice, shows, or licking my wounds at home. After 15 years of being of service have I become that person always requiring service? Have I lost that which made me the kind of person worthy of help? Am I just an asshole now who thinks the world owes them something? Because I do think the world owes me something after so much sacrifice and generosity. And that's kind of bullshit. I never did a nice thing to get paid in kind - so why am I defaulting to that behavior now? The world doesn't owe me a link share, a video view, a like, a purchase. It doesn't owe me people coming to a show, or someone offering to house sit, or even covering the cost of a baseball game. Fuck man - the universe doesn't even owe me continued breath. This life is about active choices and lately my choice has been to hide in cheesy supernatural pulp fiction novels. And then - do I want to turn it around and not expect things from people so that I become the kind of person that gets offered help again? Or is it because I've had a revelation to be a better person? Or is it because I have some random outmoded system of judgement about how I walk in the world? Or even more - is it because I know that to walk in the world feeling owed something is just to set yourself up for failure? At this point I don't even feel like people would come to my bday party if I had one locally. I do not feel like people care. And that - that isnt accurate either. And again I feel lost in how skewed my vision of my world, my path, all of it looks right now. I've lost one of my anchors. Or rather - I let go of an anchor that was pulling me to drown instead of holding me safe. And it's tilting my world even if the reality of that friendship being safe has been nothing more than a illusion for a long time. I talked to my therapist about it - about who could I turn to - what friend could input that role onto. She said all of them. To stop making it about one symbolic savior friend - but all of the people who show up for me - the people I emotionally trust - let it be all of them. Which feels vulnerable and terrifying. But then again - I already love these people - where is the harm in letting them love me back. Or rather - where is any extra harm? It feels scary but in truth I've already taken on the risk.

[feetinthedirt]

It's not like I'm suicidal - but sometimes I am - though I'm not. I go from everything is fine - maybe even good to just wanting to give up because it's so hard. Sometimes it's the absence of having to take care of other people and the reality of self care or my lack of it swoops in and I just don't have the energy. I'm also now for two months getting my period every two weeks. This I know has my hormones and emotions and feelings really feeling themselves. Which is way less than fun. I'm so in debt. So actively broke. Nothing in the hopper makes it look like I'll be any less actively broke anytime soon unless of course I give up on my dreams and get another corporate job. Why can I see no other path? And that path makes me just want to end it all. That's how bad it is for my heart. And music? I got to have my one person who always had my back insult / deride my songwriting skills (like current and historical) and new album both while kinda sober and super drunk. Did I get the honest no filter opinion or the bitter projection opinion? Does it matter when now I'm working on new songs and the next tour and hearing this voice in my head that I've always implicitly trusted telling me how trite and cliched all of my songs have always been? And that was the nicer feedback that I got. I'm just so tired. Tired of myself. Tired of failing. I've spent about $10k on this album - $5k of it on PR and no one is biting. Shit I've had less response in print than when I did it myself. It just feels like a big joke and I'm fooling myself and dragging my family into the poor house with me. I feel lost. Bereft. Unlovable. A loser who is just always asking for help. Come to shows. Take out my dog. Hang out with me. Blah blah blah. Who the fuck cares? It seems like no one does so why do I? Fuck I hate PMS. I just feel so fuckinn sad. And no one sees it. Because I'm Always the 'happy' one who is 'spreading the light' and 'has it so together.' Even when I try to tell people it's bad they don't listen because they think I'll just be fine. I haven't been fine in so long. Fuck.

[feetinthedirt]

you know - when erik killed himself despite having shows booked and albums coming out and so many good things in the hopper it just didn’t make any sense to me. 

now it does.

[feetinthedirt]

if i could just stop crying and feeling like everything is doomed I’m sure things would start looking up.

[feetinthedirt]

there has already been so much rejection. i just need something unexpected and good to come in terms of the art. nudge me in the right direction. my spinning wheel is digging my grave.

[evilrick-deactivated20181029]

ive got the gay

[fuckboysecurityllc]

The what

[evilrick-deactivated20181029]