Self Examination — Thoughts on Personal Branding

So…

What traps me?

Am I a creative force? A Renaissance Woman? A.D.D.? A cataclysmic clash of fractillian ideas that seem to be most active when I am sitting quietly with a cat on my lap, unable to access any way to write them down so they may find a way into fruition by at least being captured long enough to remember a tiny hair of the original splendor. 

Ah sigh…

To be afflicted by fear of judgement. 

To have been judged and felt the sting.

To have withdrawn into an interior walled in universe in which my only escape is through the lens of a camera, until it isn’t anymore. Until the shallow depths of unrelenting ideas seethe and brew until they vaporize into steam and fade into the distance. Like a summer rain on the heated asphalt.

To crave to survive and thrive from some kind of order and sense made of steam and smoke rising from smoldering flames of long ago. Trying to derive passion from a sea of varied interests, seemingly conflicting, if I could only tie them all together and float to an island of cohesion.

To remember essences of former me’s. The stage diva, the troublemaker, temptress, inflated ego, victimized drama queen, hopeless romantic, family glue, divider, uniter, driven perfectionist, sniveling in envy and jealous introversion coupled with authoritarian speech that sounds like a leader, and everyone is confused when they don’t get there, no one more than me…

I don’t want those me’s anymore. They do not amuse…

But somehow I got creative juice from those manifestations. Juice that seemed like a torrent a few years ago, and now feels like trying to drink water from a trickle. I'm not worried about them judging me. It's me who sits in judgement and stops me from tasting the water.

I have been cut off from my source. 

This is what it is like inside my head these days. The nutshell version.

“Have self compassion,” they say.

Does that mean one should not be honest with themselves? Is the self compassion movement simply another example of whitewashing ourselves to refuse, as is the norm in society, to truly examine oneself?

Or is that just an excuse for allowing an inner terrorist to threaten me with the truth that I am not always the angel of light in this world. Putting it mildly. But who, really, is? Aren’t we really a society of narcissists refusing to look at our effect on the world and on others?

And in suppressing that truth with sugar coated numbness, we propel shadow monsters to squeeze forth from the woodwork, wielding horror and psychopathic ugliness upon society. We sugar coat everyone else too. No, it is not, ‘all good’. There are people out there that are not ‘all good’. Am I one of those people? Eeeeeck!

Rip the shadow from my feet. Don’t look within and notice how much of that is me, hating, feeling envy, jealousy, etc. Just don’t go there. Hide it if I see it in myself. Sugar coat it. Squish it into a black tar ball in my inner right brain, where it might provide food for my creative expression. Or it might kill my creative supply off completely. Or erupt publicly somehow. 

Just pretend. Just keep always pretending.

No. That is not the answer. Sew the shadow back on and take a good look at it. Examine. Examine. Sew the parts together. I am not a single thing, I am a patchwork quilt made with blood and guts, fear and terror, talent and luck, wrinkles, age spots, menopause… I have a point of view that is only mine. I do not. fit. in. And neither does anyone else.

So what is my personal brand? The one I want the world to see, the creative force that isn't a puff of steam?

To be continued…