My Future on Various Platforms & Other Shit

...kinda just over everything but the writing, so I rant here to no one

I’m tired. Not tired of writing, but tired of all the other shit that comes with it.

When I set out to write the Barbarians of the Storm books, I set out to write something I wanted to read. I wanted to craft a universe and a larger IP as a whole that I would really dig because there wasn’t much coming out that I gravitated towards anymore. Frankly, an era of entertainment that I loved, the one that influenced me the most, was pretty much dead. I also knew this was probably a pretty niche thing that probably only appealed to dudes who grew up around the same time I did and also shared these influences. I did not care, at the time, because I wrote Dan the Destructor for myself. Yes, ME.

That being said, I am glad that this universe I created has its fans out there. I really enjoy interacting with these people and those interactions give me a lot of motivation to keep going. However, beyond those few interactions, I’ve grown to truly loathe social media, as well as blogging (which I have done as far back as 1999 because I MUST write). Almost everything that I’ve done in the blogging and social media sphere has found its audience to some degree. But lately, on that front, shit sucks.

I’m not the type to follow people back just because they followed me. While I share follower count milestones, I couldn’t give less of a fuck about it when the number means jack shit due to quality interactions being miniscule. Sure, I am on Twitter to promote my books, but I am also there to have enjoyable interactions with followers and mutuals. If I am not being engaged, I lose interest and then grow to hate the time I feel like I am wasting without a meaningful return. “But you gotta keep up the hustle, bro!” I have motherfucker, for decades now.

Additionally, these days I like to encourage talented people that I see. I use Twitter for that because I know what it is like to struggle to get your creative endeavors seen by other people. There have been many times that I have slaved away on some piece of art that I wanted to share with others, only for it to go completely unnoticed. In a world where most people spend their time on social media tearing others down, I’d rather acknowledge and build those up who I see trying to create something meaningful, no matter how small it might be in the grander scheme of things. Sometimes the tiniest things mean the world to someone. And maybe more of you should be cognizant of that.

This is why I became so active at promoting others for a long stretch of time. I saw a new energy crawling out of the darkness and wanted to help pull it out of the murky depths buried below the cesspool of the awful agenda-driven mainstream. But during this time, I saw two types of mutuals: those (the good ones) who saw what I was doing and did the same for others, and then those (the bad ones) who reaped some of the benefits but didn’t return the favor to anyone and in some cases, started to have demands on how I promoted them, as if they had ownership over my time and my platform. In the long-term, these creators have since disappeared or still have no real traction. Maybe I wasn’t the only one that they rubbed the wrong way.

Getting back to my earlier points, maybe being more positive is why my overall engagement with others is shit now. But honestly, if that’s the case, fuck those people. I’m not here on these platforms to shit all over everything like a San Fran hobo. If that’s all you do and we are mutuals, I’ve probably muted you already (or if you just obsessively rant about politics 24/7). It’s just all so fucking exhausting.

What’s also become exhausting is that there are many within “the movement” that have their opinions of me or my work. Often times I see things that are off base and tell me that they either haven’t read beyond my first book or that they haven’t even read that and are just repeating things others have said. Frankly, it’s kind of fucking weird. If I am being honest about my own work, my first book, the most popular one by far, is the worst of the lot. It also doesn’t represent what the series is as a whole. If I am being honest, it is kind of irksome when your large ass body of work feels misrepresented. But we live in a time where everyone has an opinion and they need the world to hear it, even if it isn’t really their own. But one can’t control that stuff. They can try to correct perception, but those with a skewed sense of perception rarely care about accuracy anyway. It all just is what it is.

This is why I have pulled back a lot on promoting others and engaging with this now two-year old movement as a whole. I know who my friends are that I have met on this interesting and elucidating journey. They’re still in my corner, as I am in theirs and will continue to be. But as far as the bigger picture, movements and trends change. Big things splinter into many pieces and like every movement I’ve been involved in over the course of my life, the excitement dies down, people find their smaller cliques, and with that, drama typically ensues. Drama is a distraction, destructive, and ultimately, pointless.

Just stay true to yourself, stay the course, and don’t get dragged into the infantile retardation. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do. I’ve just been holding onto a lot of this shit for months now and wasn’t sure how to express it or if I could even properly articulate it or whether or not that even mattered. It probably doesn’t, honestly.

So am I leaving Twitter or Substack? No, not until the Barbarians of the Storm series is done at least. But I just want to focus on getting the books done and only give time on these platforms to quality engagement and interaction.

But I am also getting older and I am very aware that I am becoming much more sentimental over small things and especially genuine human interaction. I’ve learned more about myself in the small span of time that I have been writing this series of books than I have in all the eras of my life prior to this one. In my older age, I am also getting grumpier and a lot more blunt than I ever have been. Time moves fast, and I’d rather spend mine being productive and building things up instead of being a human wrecking ball. I’d also rather spend that time with genuine MFers, even though they seem to be scarce these days.