I love how encouraging all the comments and reblogs are but tbh there’s valid reasons why people don’t want to create in these situations and it can feel like those reasons are being dismissed when we try to share them and are repeatedly ignored by people who are trying to be overly positive instead of actually listening.
For years I tried to follow the two cakes things and guess what? Nobody gave two shits about my work even if I was the first one to post the idea people just ignored me because I wasn’t good enough for them to care. Example: I can’t draw they can, people don’t pay that much attention (or any attention) to posts without that so one day I just stopped posting because no matter how hard I worked on my cake it would just get shoved off the potluck table for a more eye catching one.
No matter how many cakes I make or how how hard I work on them even if I was the first or only person to bring that kind of cake it doesn’t matter. Being positive and encouraging is so awesome but please actually acknowledge why some of us don’t want to bake anymore before it becomes inconsiderate and dismissive.
OP here. Thanks for saying this anon. This is pretty much how I feel when it comes to the two cakes metaphor. There was a time in real life where I actually did bring a cake I'd made myself - and baking isn't a hobby of mine but I wanted to bring something different - to school for a class lunch, and of course there were several other desserts and cakes too. Now I'm not judging anyone's choices, I would've gone chosen the clearly better made cakes over mine too and no one was obligated to eat from everything that was brought, but let me tell you I still felt humiliated when at the end of the day we were taking home our leftovers and literally not a single piece had been taken out of the cake I'd brought. And that was just something I'd done because I kind of felt I had to, not wanting to eat from the rest of the class's food without bringing something myself. But I did go out of my way to do something I wouldn't normally and I'd felt proud of my meager achievement of making a cake myself, right up until I got the proof that it wasn't "good enough". So you can imagine how much worse it feels to put actual passion and care and time and effort into something I love doing only to get zero acknowledgement for it, especially to then see someone else with the same idea get all the praise for their creativity when the only thing separating them and me is skill level. Yes I want to do it for myself, but if a better version already exists that was shared with everyone then I could just enjoy that instead.
"Do it shitty" yeah well no one wants shitty, including me. Maybe if I really was the only one to come up with the idea and it wouldn't exist otherwise, yeah I wouldn't mind doing my shitty version, but if a nicer one is already out there, why set myself up for disappointment?
