104 - On my guts

Well, it's been a very long day, but I have nobody to blame but myself, because I chose to wake up at around two in the morning. I could've gone back to sleep, but instead, I decided I would finish off my new blog, get a Twitter account for Do you hate it too?, one for myself, and also create a fan page on Facebook. I also did some reading on conducting ethnographic research in past civilizations - it proved to be difficult to stay awake, but it's now more than eighteen hours later, and I'm still here.

For most of the day, I was feeling scared inside.

I am scared about how I will feel after I announce the launch of all those things, I don't know what I expect - if I want a lot of the attention, or if I might get freaked out by it. I was certainly freaked out when I found out that people were writing reviews about me without telling me. (I hate it when people read my blog but don't tell me.)

I often ask myself if I want to be recognized. I ponder it all the time, because it takes a lot of guts to be a person with a widely known name and personality. It takes guts to devote so much time to something like blogging, instead of doing something else that might be practical and productive. It takes guts to self-publish a book. And it takes guts to pour your thoughts, your memories and your feelings out on a public forum where just about anybody can (and actually is everybody that) reads it.

I'm not always sure I have the guts. Most of the time, I like to give off the impression that I do, but those who truly know me, know that I have a lot of fat question marks, sitting on broomsticks, flying around inside my head. I know I doubt my own ability. Worse yet, I doubt my own potential. All I can feel comfortable with admitting are my mistakes, my downsides, the reasons why not.

I wonder why that is. Maybe it's just the way I was brought up. My mother and father, if my memory serves me right, never really gave me impressionable advice on how to live my life. It was always something about what I did wrong, or what they did wrong, or how not to live my life. Don't point at strangers, don't use that bowl to microwave food, and don't ever get married. And maybe that's why that is the way I see things, I am always accustomed to seeing things in contradiction, my moral compass consisting of a giant list of double negatives.

lol. I chuckle at my own words. I admire my own phrasing. One positive thing about myself that I'm quite happy to admit is that I'm funny. Another positive thing is the fact that I'm good at writing - at least for my own entertainment. Sad, I know, but how often have you gone back to read your own written words and found it entertaining, huh?

Oh, Michael. Too often you look at yourself like you're another person, whenever you get depressed or high or tired or drunk. 

Is it a coping strategy? I think so. 

Is it weird? I think so.

Should I stop? I think so.

99 - On a 'Do you hate it too?' book.

If you have read my last entry on Do you hate it too?, you will know that my blog has been well-praised. This got my mother very excited, and she pushed an idea forward for me to consider: publishing a Do you hate it too? book.

When I first began doing this about a year ago, I had already begun to think about compiling them all up one day and putting them in a publication. 'Why I didn't do it earlier' is a question I often answered with weak claims that I'm too lazy, can't be bothered, or haven't got the time for, but to be entirely truthful, it's because I don't think it's good enough. I still feel like it really is just me giving a childish rant everyday, and honestly, what contribution to the world do I give, by exerting negativity within the blogosphere?

I know I make people laugh, but in the end, I cannot collaborate with, let's say, an anger management-orientated business, seeing as I don't offer tips on how to deal with the hates I write about. I don't give advice on how to use the English language, or how to deal with stress, or how to focus on thinking positively - even though that's what you would associate with my blog, if it were just a little bit different.

But it is the way that it is, and being an active consumer of the book-selling market myself, I know that this would merely sell as one of those silly books uncles buy for their nieces, and mothers would refuse to spend money on for their children. 'How about this novel on vampires, sweetie', 'Check out this book about dinosaurs' and 'Trevor, come see if you'd like this one full of brain teasers' they would chime. The blatent truth is, I believe Do you hate it too? is silly.

I need people who can change my mind about this, so if you have any words of encouragement, please share them with me, because I'm in a place with no self-confidence right now. I would love to begin this whole adventure right now, to find a distributor, to format a book, to sell it online, and to watch it sell on shelves in Hong Kong, Canada, the US and the UK. I probably would anyway to my mother's insistence, even if I still don't believe in the book.

But I know that if I don't believe in my own work, it won't be a success.

Sigh. What do you think? Any words of advice?