Why do I even bother doing these things?
If I didn’t think I was a pathetic individual for most of my life, I would be doing so much better with everything I try.
My creativity is overrated at best and whatever I create is just going to be bashed and mocked.
Why bother working as hard as you can when it doesn’t play out well?
Maybe I should just shut up more often even though I’m quiet in my offline life most of the time. Why not? It seems like everyone is allowed to speak up about different topics and concerns except me! HAHAHAHAHA! Wow, it seems like I’m always wrong no matter how hard I research things or doing my best to provide some semblance of logic.
It would be cool if I had better interests that I don’t feel so obligated to defend like obscure films, geography, or something random like indie BritWres or Caribbean cricket. I don’t know that many people that were bullied that much for what they liked.
Me mentioning important news? HA! I do care about these stories, so don’t get it twisted, but I wonder how many others care like I do. Maybe I just care too much for my own good. God forbid I want to see people treated like humans for once or for there to be equality.
I guess I’m just more frustrated than I thought. I could still be posting whenever I can, but it’s tough to increase my own self-esteem lest I be accused of being *GASP!* arrogant. Then again, it seems OTHER people can straight-up brag about themselves, but they get the benefit of “backing it up” or “they’re egotistical, but they have a point”!
People have no standards and force their lies onto me. Shame on me for believing in their psychological abuse especially with the gaslighting and downplaying of various facts.
Tag Archives: Self-Esteem
I’m doing everything I can not to think I’m an artistic failure.
Yippee skippy! Another Ospreyshire post that’s about my self-loathing issues! Hooray!
Please tell me that my morbid sarcasm came through in that first line because I’m rarely ever sarcastic in both my online and offline life.
This has been a marathon in reassessing my mental health and self-esteem. While it was fun working on another video project even if it was on the shorter side, I still hit some roadblocks in my creative life. I just realized how much some of my older material sucks whether it’s my poetry, fiction, some videos, or even the actual Ospreyshire material. Maybe this is me being older, but I felt like I haven’t fine-tuned what limited talents I had. What really doesn’t help is that people told me I was untalented years ago or whenever I do something great, they don’t see it or they try to downplay it if they do.
Yes, I still struggle with people pleasing.
I had a disturbing realization when I heard this one quote from a video I saw recently was where someone said (this is a paraphrase, by the way) “You somehow think that the enemy is perfect.” That quote really hit me hard because I secretly had that thought in the back of my head like how I was “trying” to be like the people who abused me even though I didn’t realize it back then. Maybe I believed in my mind years ago that if I got their validation, then I would be respected. Boy, was I totally wrong. Sure there were open bullies that I never wanted to be like, but it was the subtle ones that I low-key wanted to emulate even though I wouldn’t admit it. I was trying to fit in some circles where I wanted to belong, but never could. Whether it was me practicing my instrumental prowess or namedropping different bands, I thought it was somehow good enough. That affected me since it was a way of being someone else to avoid being my (worthless) self then. I guess blogging forced me not to do that as much in unexpected ways.
Anyways, I feel like I need to work harder with all of my talents so I can be seen as talented. Maybe not in the same way of how horrible people are still praised because of let’s say their musical talent, sporting abilities, or how well they can direct a movie, but I want to be seen as an innovator in whatever I attempt to create something. The odds have ALWAYS been stacked against me since I was born, so I had to work harder than all my peers whether it was in school, work, or any creative project I invested myself in. Shame that I wanted to get really good fast and quit certain activities or fell out of certain scenes out there.
I’m trying to find any worth in what I do.
I didn’t know I was hurt THAT much in hindsight
This past week allowed me to be unexpectedly self-reflective all of a sudden. In between my blogging life, work, adulting, and everything, I was really thinking about how my life was affected negatively in ways I didn’t even think about.
It’s one thing being physically attacked which I won’t downplay if that’s happened, but bruises and cuts can heal as well as being seen. The mind is far tougher to heal.
I don’t want to be to explicit or wax some grand life story, but I started to understand the causes and effects with how I view things. There are struggles with my mental health as well as my shattered self-esteem that I’ve mentioned before, but I’ve been realizing more and more how I was damaged psychologically. It wasn’t just about explicit insults, but there was a lot of low-key things.
Some examples:
-Being told that I can’t do something or join a certain group because it is “too difficult”. (Geez, dog whistle, much?)
-Being told to just take insults and potshots with a grain of salt while others getting what they want as well as making me the bad guy if I fired back with hurtful words.
-One time a former female co-worker complained about my “male voice” despite never raising my voice at her, around her, or trying to divert attention somewhere else. If the situation was reversed and I complained about her or any woman about her voice, I’d be called a sexist. Back then, I had NEVER heard that as a negative thing before years ago.
-People making fun of my interests, but if I make fun of them in return, they suddenly freak out if I knew about their weaknesses.
-My masculinity was questioned just because I was more into artsy things instead of sports by a couple of people. Dead serious.
-My peers doing some egregious things with impunity, but I do something far less severe and I’m punished for it.
-There were times where I apologized for things I didn’t do even though no one believed me that I didn’t do something when I was a kid.
-I was told by a now-ex-friend that I was being “unchristlike” when I vented out some frustration online even though I wasn’t attacking anyone. I wished I never sought this person’s validation when it came to friendship or even music. They even insulted me and humiliated me while pretending to console me after the fact and I should’ve called out this person more often. Maybe this person wanted a medal for mistreating me while trying to seem righteous while using me or others to get some indie rep or possibly moving to Portland…
That’s just some of the things among worse examples that are far more profane. Some of these emotions welled up and I held a lot of it inside.
There were some very negative side effects because I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone since no one would believe me or they say I’m making this a bigger deal than it should be. Not only that, but I wouldn’t talk to people for hours on end and I even had periods of self-harm years ago which really didn’t help. I just kept smiling despite being full of agony as I was going along to get along. As I get older, I realized how much others have used me as some kind of object or stepping stone without me knowing about it, how I’m not allowed to speak my mind, or how I’m supposed to just be oppressed with these microaggressions. It’s no wonder I’ve been so messed up in different ways, and I feel like I have to be an autodidact with my recovery. This isn’t going to be instantaneous.
I’m not sorry for this being a more depressing post. I wished I never had any pain in my life as well as immediately identifying all attempts of abuse at me even during my childhood. Shame how so many people never took my issues seriously.
I Wish I Could Smile Without Using It a Defense Mechanism
It’s scientifically proven that smiling is easier since there’s less muscles to use.
If it was physically easier, then why does it still hurt after the fact? I can’t lie to you, I have struggled in the past as being a people pleaser of sorts. Blogging has helped diminish that somewhat, but it still lingers. I tried telling people I wasn’t alright, but they tell me I should keep smiling more or they wouldn’t care about how bad I would feel then. Whether it was me being depressed or angry, it was somehow a nuisance to them. This was just bad advice in hindsight and probably affected my mental health in low key ways.
Are people that inconvenienced at best or scared at worst when I’m in a negative mood? Then again, I’ve seen my fair share of other people acting up way worse than I even could on my worst days and no one seems to call them out, but it’s whatever…
On here or my other blogs, I’d feel like I’d be lying if I said everything was pure sunshine even if I was genuinely happy when I typed something out.
I just wished others including my own friends and family would listen to me and care about my emotional well-being. It’s a shame how some people told me I’m being selfish for asking such a thing, but others aren’t. Thanks for feeding my solipsism, jerks.
Sorry for not having any poetry or any creative posts today. Smiling can be such a chore for me even before these pandemic-filled times. Shame on everyone who subtly violated my mental health in such stealthy ways years ago. This isn’t some kind of sympathy post. I had to get this off my chest as I’m self-analyzing my life.
Delayed Confidence (As Much As It Can Be) Haiku
Images built up
A tremendous sense of worth
As knowledge increased
10 Lies I Sadly Believed At One Point In My Life (In No Particular Order)
10. People like me couldn’t make it to a university much less graduate on time.
9. If you work hard, you’ll automatically be successful.
8. The independent music scene doesn’t have any cliques, drama or backstabbers like in the mainstream.
7. The Lion King is a fully original movie that would never plagiarize something like anime or music choices.
6. People who are huge bullies and jerks can always be redeemed.
5. Anger is a sin.
4. Christopher Columbus discovered America and he was very respectful to the Indigenous population then.
3. Going to a Christian school would make me less of a bullying target.
2. People who do heroic things will be praised at all times and evil will always lose.
1. Saying affirming things is somehow bragging when I do it even if I don’t say I’m better than anyone, but when others legitimately boast about themselves, they somehow have “earned it”.
I Wish I Was Never A Defeatist (At Least I’m Honest About That Flaw)
There are times where I wish I took a psychology course
To realize how much my psyche has been abused in ways I never knew how or why from subtle forms
The hobbies I like(d) became objects of ridicule
Social awkwardness manifested in itself
My heritage also made me something to hate regardless of my character
Apologies were spoken ad nauseum for who I was
As if my mind wasn’t flawed enough
So many things forced me to be an autodidact
“Why even bother?” I would say or think
“I know I’m going to lose anyway.”
Stop it, brain.
“It’s always the biggest jerks who get what they want. You need to be cruel to be on top even though you’ll never get away with it.”
That didn’t come from my mind this time. It was bad advice. Get thee behind me…
“Try reprogramming yourself. They think you’re a stupid robot anyway. You’re just a useless piece of –“
SHUT UP!
The violation of my self-esteem affected me way more than I thought. Shame how any affirmative thing I say about myself can be construed as an ego.
All I do was lose, lose, lose, no matter what as I try to squeak out a semblance of a victory.
10K+ Views Pt. II: Q&A Answers
Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. I get to answer the questions I got last week for my 10K+ view milestone!
“What was going through your mind when you wrote all those 455 posts? I mean did you ever run out of ideas or did you always had a topic in your mind(if yes you did run out of ideas, what did you do to bring yourself back up)?”
from Eggsandwich04
Well, I certainly have more than 455 posts at this point in time now. Haha! Okay, in all seriousness, my mind has been at different points when I made certain posts. I mainly focused on the Ospreyshire project for my spoken word stuff with the poems, recordings, and videos. I expanded to talking about news events and my opinions about different things. I ranged from sad, angry, serious, and occasionally comedic if the time calls for it. However, I think most of my poetry tends to lead towards sad or angry in hindsight.
I can’t say I’ve ran out of ideas since new ones pop up. Some of them will affect this blog since I still have more things to do with what Ospreyshire was made for.
“Who would say is or makes your blog audience?”
from Khaya Ronkainen
That’s a question that I legitimately thought about. I guess the people who I know mostly view and comment on my posts are usually other poets, some bloggers that cover serious issues, and anibloggers given my prowess in multiple blogs. Funny how I have that kind of crossover appeal with different types of bloggers.
“Do you have any favorite poets or collections of poetry?”
from Eggheadluna
Some of my favorite poets include Langston Hughes, Buddy Wakefield, The Last Poets, and so much more.
“Do you think you’ll still be blogging in five years and if so, care to guess how many views you’ll reach by then?”
from Lynn Sheridan
I believe I’ll still be blogging in the next 5 years. I don’t know if I’d be working on multiple blogs at once, but I could see myself managing at least one of them that far in the future. If I were to gauge how many views I could get then, I’d say 20-30K by then. It took 4 years to get 10K here, so I don’t know.
“What do you think is the best story you’ve written?”
from Scott of Mechanical Anime Reviews
Hooray! I’m glad there are people who know about my fiction/author exploits! That is a really tough question. Hollandus Landing was a very important book for me since it was the first time I showed off my cell phone novel projects let alone a full story to everyone as I serialized it live back in 2017. Another important story I wrote would have to be in the Revezia series like Praxis of the Disenchanted or the Electrum Trilogy. By the way, you can get Hollandus Landing for free or donation!
“It seems that you still have some hangups about yourself as it pertains to anger about self-worth based on what others have done to your self-esteem, so having said that, has this blog done more to aid you in self reflection and instilled in you a true sense of self worth or are you letting others get into your head and instill their thoughts, their prejudices, their biases as it pertains to you being bi-racial?”
from Shelby Courtland
Yeah, I still struggle with these issues, but I do appreciate you checking up on me. It definitely shows with some of my poems and some of the news stories that touched a nerve with me whether it’s racial issues or when I did that infamous rant against a certain movie last year. One of my weaknesses is that I can care too much about what others think of me. It’s NOWHERE near as bad as when I was younger, but it still slips in from time to time.
This blog has certainly helped with self-reflection and catharsis. I am slowly rebuilding that self-worth that was diminished after dealing with bullies and people getting away with their abusive behaviors even when I would call them out. There are times where I wished I was more aware about subtle forms of derogation like projection, dog whistles, or low-key insults when I was much younger (I guess taking a psych class might have helped for some of that in hindsight). Speaking as someone who is biracial, I did get my wake-up call years ago about how those who are mixed tend to be treated whether they have a white parent or not. Knowing about that reality certainly allowed me to do my own research about things I wasn’t taught (various historical events mainly like Black Wall Street being a major one for me then). At the same time, I’ve had a bad habit of having to prove my humanity, competency, and authenticity to anyone regardless of my ethnic background whether online or offline. I’m not singling anyone out because I’ve sadly had that mindset with anyone I communicate with. Getting rid of these prejudices, biases, or even assumptions out of my head has been quite the task. Hopefully, this answers your question.
“If you could witness the writing of a poetry collection (or novel), whose would it be, and why?”
from Ashley Capes
If I had to witness the creation of such books, I would’ve liked to have been there to have seen the process of the Circle trilogy from Ted Dekker (I read all the books years ago) or if I were to cheat with manga, I’d say Hikaru no Go. Wow, I sound like such a stan with the second example.
Thank you so much for your questions. I still have something else planned for this milestone!
Wordsmith Graps #1
This is my time for a title shot
For unorthodox references involving my talent for words
I had to book myself for the challenge since no one would hand me an opportunity on a silver platter
This isn’t some kind of backyard attempt for a lyrical scrap
I did everything I could not to tap out in my training
My wordsmith tekkers will allow me to progress as I enter any ring with honor
Making an impact whenever I have a pen or a keyboard, but I’m not a keyboard warrior in that sense (Salutations, Mad Kurt…)
Whoever thought an avant-garde artist would try such a challenge let alone channeling such references in a “gimmick” if you will.
I will create a resurgence or possibly an empire with my skills in this field
Call me wavy, gnarly or the pride of Wordsmith Graps
I will make sure whatever my constant opponent of self-doubt gets down for the three count
Esteem and Dignity Shouldn’t Be This Rare For Me
I longed for whatever heroes I could find
Who could relate to me and vice versa
Shame how I ignored that desire
As I was programmed to be like those who were placed above me
My forced autodidact tendencies had to fight back
While I become enlightened
I look back in regret
No knowing what needed to know back then
Ospreyshire's Realm 