Fear of writing (and one hell of a digression from the topic)

It has, of course, been a while and I think it’d be just as good a time as any to elaborate on the majority of the reason why I don’t write as much as I’d like to, despite the fact that I have no life and have hours and hours to do so.

The plain and simple of it is: I’m scared. I sit here, think about what to write, think “No, no that’s not interesting”, find something else, then think “No, no they’ll think I’m just garnering for traffic, it’s not really what me as a person would write about”, and then I sit here and write this and think “How dare you write this, you’re just garnering sympathy so people will pay attention to you. You little piece of crap.”  It’s so bad that I don’t put “Read More” tags in these posts unless they’re unwieldy because I think “Well that’s just looking like I’m trying to scrape up some click stats.” Heck I even got to thinking that it’s arrogant to have a blog titled after my nickname. I just keep getting stuck, one way or another.

I see people out there writing all the time, showing off their blogs, having FeedBurner counters, Twitter links, and pretty much anything else, and I can’t help but wonder “Why the hell are you promoting yourself? You’re such a selfish little prick.” For me, my credibility toward blogs like that dips instantly. The content may very well be superb, but I always feel like they just write what we want to hear so the dumb little reader will “spread the word” and get them traffic, then money, then motivation for more ads and referrals for more money. I read them, but I become a lot more cautious of their content.

I don’t trust scientific research wholly either. A lot of the time I think people are just making discoveries for the sake of being like one of the “FIRST!” commenters on YouTube or FailBlog. I see it as if you really made the discovery first and had enough of a wit about you, you’d share it with the world, nameless.

Of course, this has repercussions. I mean, you could sell a bootleg drug (like a placebo in an aspirin bottle) and make a killing off it, while the people taking it don’t feel better because they don’t know of any other more reliable way to get the medicine, like a brand name. Or you could claim a finding for your own, and nobody else would get what they deserve.

Huge off-topic aside, I’ve been reading a book on anxiety and phobias and in some respects I’ve become worse than before. I’m ultra-super-paranoid over what people see me as. I had an “About Me” page on this blog and then I thought “Well, that’s selfish to talk about myself so prominently.” I had links to my other blog in the sidebar, then I thought “That’s selfish because I’m showing myself off.” And I whole-heartedly believe that it is.

The problem is, any and every human has these needs, these urges, to be acknowledged. And on some (sub)conscious level, I suppose that’s what this post is doing for me, and I really regret it. I’m aggravated with myself for not being able to break this feeling of “needyness”, and I’m aggravated with many others because they seem like it doesn’t bother them. They just go “Ah let’s post a shameless plug for my new Twitter page then I’ll put up a couple new ad spaces” instead of thinking “I better not do that, it makes me look like a greedy attention-craving fool.”

It really is hard to transcend human nature. I love people, I really do. But most of their selfish, insensitive ways I can’t stand. Which means I also can’t stand myself. Delicious.