06/19/2024: FOMO

After receiving some more info, I’ve found another hurdle between me and my writing ventures. Now I have to put my head down and start looking for where to publish before I can share my stories with the world. I’m glad I waited to do all that. Something told me not to give all my stories away right out of the gate, and here we are. 

Now I also have to decide if I’m going to take the self-promotion route or the traditional route, or a hybrid of both. I was told that you usually choose one or the other, but do I have to? Is it possible to pursue a hybrid route? All I know for certain is I have to get my site up and out there soon still, so I can have something as I build some sort of base.

In the modern world of ownership, everything about this process scares me a little. If I do something wrong, I could get in trouble. Or someone could try to steal my stuff. Or even worse, if I said the wrong thing to the wrong person it could destroy everything I worked so hard for. The last scenario seems less likely, but it still happens to people.

There’s a lot of pressure to be my best self and the most successful from the get go. There doesn’t seem to be room for any margin of error, in other words. And deep down the idea of relying on my popularity - my likes and shares - is a little unsettling. 

I left the world of social media to escape a toxic mindset and unproductive behaviors I was exhibiting every day that I spent hours scrolling. Will I fall back into that routine when I promote my professional accounts? Or is there a sweet spot somewhere in the midst of all the chaos? 

When social media gets its hands on me, I can feel the instant return to that same old dopamine-driven mindset, to that insatiable state of being that makes me numb to the fact that I’m endlessly searching for the next shred of useless information, the next laugh. 

In addition to those things, it never helps my well being in any way to find out important things through social media, some post to the masses about something major that I don’t even see for three weeks. The thing that I don’t understand, that stings, is that these people can pick up their phone to get hearts and comments from everyone on the planet but they can’t send me a text update. 

I literally worry all the time that when something really does happen to someone I know, I’m going to miss it, and that’s the only FOMO that lives in the back of my mind every day.