I hate pushy salespeople.
Who knows if the product they’re shoving in your face is any good?
They might be selling thousands of that thing, but is it because the product is actually any good, or is it because that salesperson is just a really good bull-shooter?
None of us with garages full of junk would be surprised to learn how much money was made off of suckers like us who fell for the snake oil pitches.
But despite the bad experiences, we’ve also had those wonderful experiences where we got a fabulous product that was and did everything it promised. We knew it was going to be a good purchase, because we got something much better than a pitch from a pushy salesperson, we got a personal testimony from a satisfied customer who had actually used the product. Even better if it was a person we personally knew and trusted!
Since 2019 I’ve been that pushy salesperson.
I like to draw and write and create, so why not put up a website and do it out loud to the world? I soon discovered that websites are wonderful safe places for loudmouth hermits like me, who don’t want to draw attention to themselves, but still apparently have lots to yammer about.
Soon after launching the site, my web company nudged me toward getting onto social media and starting a blog. I was mortified! Hermits do not grasp the concept of wide-open public platforms … too much exposure and terrifying vulnerability. But if you’re going to hire professionals, how foolish is it to not to heed their advice?
Going into it, I was convinced it would kill me, but it didn’t. And judging from the sheer volume of blogs I turned out through the following years, apparently the loudmouth hermit had a lot of yammering to do.
This is why creative people get reputations for being nuts … we’re conflicted blobs of paradox … Leave me alone! I need solitude! Where are you going? Are you listening to me?!!
Pray for the people who have to live or work with creatives. I make myself tired.
And when I look back at all those blogs and all that yammering, I wonder, Am I a pushy snake oil salesperson, too? And what exactly am I selling?
I like to think I’m helping other creatives understand themselves better …
Creatives work from the inside out. Whether from pain or joy, what’s going on in their minds and hearts gets outward expression and the world is made richer with the results in the form of music, beautiful art, literature … Sometimes all that inner turmoil gets stuck inside and just repeats over and over in an endless loop. There’s no real inspiration to write a song or paint a picture, so it never gets out.
Like leftovers in the fridge too long, your insides can get rotten. Confusion and discouragement settle in. The longer you sit in that, the worse it can get, making it harder and harder to clean out.
So the yammering loudmouth hermit decided to take her own advice, and bring the inside things to the outside, by starting to blog again.
It started off great, and I was frankly excited about getting back into the storytelling, blog-writing game. But I’m still struggling to get it all scheduled correctly. I’m still pushing that rope up that hill, and still not making much progress.
My goal is to take my own timely advice so that one day I can give you my own personal testimony and prove that, yes, indeed, you can follow the dependable advice from this on-line blogger.
If you are reading these blogs on the correct dates, that’s a good sign that my web guy likely hasn’t totally run out of patience with me yet, even though I was terribly late getting everything turned in.
For the record, I still hate social media. But maybe I’m right where I belong … another yammering hermit on the internet, doling out free advice, and hopefully not adding another valid reason for someone else to hate social media!