(part 5) the princess and the perturbances

so I've set down, in quick succession, some of the biggest insecurities I could think of
and for some reason I haven't caught fire yet
so that's nice

I can't say I'm Fixed :tm: but it feels like the internal pressure is much reduced.
like... everyone (You !!) has been generally supportive. because, duh.

some of these things, like the posting cringe aspect, still need to be lived up to before I can release that aspect of it internally, I think
But where I'd been waffling on the resolution to do so for a while, at least that part is set.
I waffled on saying so much of this for so long you'd think I'd be competing with IHOP.

and then when I do it's like, literally not a big deal.
well, then again it's the smaller deals I've been afraid of-- the little disappointments, moments where people decide that maybe being here is not worth it. death by one thousand cuts and all that, and I'm trying -so- hard to be gentle with the knife I'm holding
Now that I say that, that -does- sound like an insecurity I've had in my relationships

As I say this, I am thinking a lot about Amanda Palmer. she has been an active crowdfunding proponent, and wrote a book about it being okay to accept support this way which I found helpful
It's possible (though not certain) that this patreon doesn't exist without her
In general, she was a human who I in some ways generally admired
And her songs keep coming up in my list as I'm laying in bed writing this, and I keep having to decide whether or not to skip them
Because in addition to all of those things she was also Neil Gaiman's wife, and if this is how you find out that he had been doing some awful things to a lot of women, I'm sorry. She's, like, a very humanistic feminist who would never support the things her now ex husband did, and yet perhaps through incompetence more than malice, she sure did end up actively pushing some of those women onto him.

Um I intended this one to be the more positive closer, haha
But I guess intentions remain at odds with being.

I'm not really about that cancel culture. The issue is not that she's Problematic. The issue is that I'm personally uncomfortable with it. I struggle to reconcile her actions with her ideals and earnestly emotional posts and lyrics.
So every song of hers that comes up on my playlist is a reminder of that conflict.
And so, in a way, is my approach to this Patreon, in the way of said earnest, emotional posts.

And on the other side of the spectrum, when I say death by a thousand cuts, I am thinking of perhaps the more archetypical creator, with monthly or weekly updates like

Hey!! We've been cooking up some really exciting stuff for you guys, such as this great new merch!! Don't miss your chance to be the first to pick this up, for a limited time only! We've got new content coming out for you soon so stick around and don't forget to follow us on insta too!!

Fine. Have merch, have marketing, have socials, have an implicitly mandated level of enthusiasm that you'd have to be borderline psychotic to honestly maintain at all times.
But at least give me something real alongside all that.
I've been guilty of it in the past. Though I'd like to think even when pressuring myself, I was at least a bit more candid.

Anyway tl;dr a person I took after in terms of posting openly about things turned out to be complicit in various sexual assaults, and meanwhile I'm here trying to write and iron out some of my feelings about past sexual traumas,
And that just isn't helping.

It's not like I'm repeating her posting formula. The benefit of having one's own emotional honesty is that I don't have to go have a crisis over this or anything
But it is one of those little bumps in the road. A pea under the princess' mattress, as it were.

... There was a point I wanted to get to among all of this.
It's all comfort and discomfort.
In the end, my goal is to do what I've never been able to before: be comfortable in my circumstances.
Life is far from perfect. But this is still my dream.
All I gotta do is keep fishing peas out from under the mattress.