Empress Justine

I’ve written thousands of words, but most of them are scattered across different accounts on different websites. There has been no unified area for everything. No coherent snapshots of me, as a person. I thought about getting a blog several years ago, and the idea kept reoccurring every so often. The closest that I had ever gotten to regular expression was via Fimfiction. Even then, I only made a few blog posts and I only published a single chapter for a story.

https://www.fimfiction.net/user/358704/NoctisMare456123

I mentioned in a previous post that I did want to create and share content, but I had issues with perfectionism, self-doubt, and self-worth. It didn’t seem like I could meet my own personal standards, or that I was worthy of having an audience. I did actively participate in a local Toastmasters club for three years in the early to mid 2010’s, where I served in the vast majority of the club officer roles, including Club President for a single six-month tenure. My usual role was Vice President of Education. I served two full six-month tenures, and at least half of a third six-month tenure. I had to step in after the previous VP of Ed suddenly had to leave the club.

The main point of VP of Ed was to combine technical skill with effective communication. I had to create the weekly schedules for meetings one month at a time, by taking club member availability and role preference into consideration, while also keeping track of club member educational progress. I had to invent my own system which made use of written notes, Word documents, and Excel.

Despite this, I was also stuck working part-time at the worst job of my life, in terms of social treatment. A lot of insults and character defamation, in a way that fits the cliched patterns of social treatment for neurodivergent and twice (or thrice) exceptional individuals.

I wanted to create things, I was able to do so in limited contexts, but I faced internal psychological obstacles for content creation, which got fueled by external circumstances.

There’s also how I was burnt out and somewhat traumatized by my early life experiences on the web. I was active and I was exposed. I was told to perform unspeakable acts to myself multiple times, with people engaging in blind escalation during anonymous exchanges, and I spent too much time on places like Encyclopedia Dramatica. That created a sense of deep paranoia, because it seemed like anyone could be targeted “for great justice,” and that no one did anything worthwhile except for a select few.

The general tone was pure garbage. A lot of bad faith takes that “Accentuate[d] the Negative” as per the trope on TV Tropes. People relying on knee jerk reactions, which seemed like ‘common sense’ reactions (i.e., having an immediate negative reaction to inflation art), and assuming their judgements were fair or reasonable. People making massive assumptions that completely overlooked the mysterious and unknowable moving parts of life that make it all rather unpredictable, like the ‘common sense’ reaction of assuming that Chris-Chan was never going to obtain an unironic audience because their artwork and writing were ‘objectively bad.’

Definitely not compatible with sensitive and self-reflective little old me.

Family dynamics have also been an issue, mostly with regards to my immediate family. It seems like several of them go along with a more conservative approach to life, while also not providing any sort of practical scaffolding with guidance and mentorship. Things like ‘keeping busy’ were emphasized, and so were things like ‘gleefully’ accepting factory work jobs from local factories. Getting casually yelled at was another thing, which included a recent incident that happened after my first HRT injection on June 26. Some cliched ‘paternal ogre routine’ after some private sibling drama.

I need to figure out how to get out and go with whatever resources I can access, despite my self-doubt and self-worth issues that contribute to my sense that I’m not ‘worthy’ of any of it. I have goals that I need to accomplish.

It would’ve been better to have had a unified digital legacy as an objective sign for what I’ve done in life, but I missed my first opportunities at this for a variety of reasons. I’ll try not to miss my current opportunities.