Notes on Authenticity

Hey y'all!

There's been a lot going on in my life, and I've been setting up a buncha behind-the-scenes stuff for my business and everything that goes with that. As well, I've been hyping up this first blog post in my brain for months, and it's high time to post. Yet, there seemed to be some form of "writer's block" I experienced over the past while, a sort of invisible barrier to me saying my piece, and an inner invalidation of "who do you think you are, like your opinion matters on the internet?". There's a weird mix of pride, helplessness, vulnerability, and worrying about other's perception of me that makes my socially anxious head hurt. It's hard to think about and communicate. Big ol' brain spiral there. And historially, these kinds of "mental gymnastics" happen to me a lot, and have been happening since I was a kid.

And to top it all off, every time I look at the news there's some dimwitted capitalist bootlicker in power telling us that vaccines cause autism, that my enemy is my neighbor, that it's wrong and too expensive to help people in need, and that people need to starve because that's just the way it works. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, there is no war in Ba Sing Se, these are not the droids you're looking for.

And then it hit me.

Why not post? Why not be seen? Why not write some of my internal psychobabble on the internet for anyone to read? Geez, I'm not gonna be that atrocious. Seriously, I'm a licensed Clinical Social Worker, I know enough to have an informed opinion and post it on my website. IN FACT, I'm an American with a First Amendment right to free speech, and literally no one is stopping me from just putting thoughts online.

But what if it's not perfect and people see it and maybe someone doesn't like it and people will make it my problem and oh my god what if I offend someone and what if someone calls me out for being unprofessional and my reputation and...

I'm literally just here in my place typing out my thoughts. I'm not hurting anyone. It's not like I'm on a list to go to evil rich guy island or anything. My ulterior motive is to try to be authentic. Maybe it's just for me, maybe someone else will be entertained by it, maybe someone will learn something.

"They say just be yourself, but they forget that order's tall" - Olive Klug, 'Self Help'

As I write this, I think about all the outside pressures and barriers against being authentic. Even now, there's a temptation to "check out" and just outsource that kind of vulnerability. This seems like the opposite of what I'm going for, though.

I wanna admit that the first 3 posts on this blog are totally AI-generated, and from me prompting a web tool, it generated those 3 posts. I decided to leave them there as placeholders and reference, but please note that even though my name is on it it was generated by a robot. I scanned over it, and there's not any glaring issues from what I could tell. However, reading it felt like there was no personality to it, like it was just pulled from several other generic blogs with no voice of its own. Hopefully this post feels different to read, as if there were a real person sitting in their living room caring enough to write a post about it.

I don't much like the idea of AI-generated content for the purposes of art, writing, therapy, and other such things. It misses the mark in a big way, because I believe that the point of these things is taking part in the process of creativity. The reason the content itself matters because they are of people. And people matter - our voices, writings, opinions, comfort, connection, and so much more are essential to the human experience. Yes, I understand the hypocrisy of using AI and also expressing disdain for it - I'm comfortable with that amount of hypocrisy to be real.

It's not like I'm on a list to go to evil rich guy island.

I plan on semi-regularly writing more posts, with more authenticity and less obsessive worry about how I'll be perceived - I'll probably write an entire post about how this is therapeutic exposure for me. If you've gotten this far, thank you, and just know that I'ma get more unhinged as I go on. In fact, I'm tempted to write a buncha cuss words both to express my frustration with "the system," and also go ahead and offend anybody who doesn't wanna see bad words (literally no one is forcing you to be here). Anyway, here's the lyrics to Reggie Watts' 2010 hit "Fuck Shit Stack".

You take some shit, put it up on the wall, check it out for a while.

You take that shit up off of the wall, put it down on the floor in a glass bowl.

You take some fuck, put it up on the wall where the shit used to be.

You take that fuck up off of the wall, put it down on the floor

with the shit in a glass bowl

What? Yo, here's another little piece of advice-vice

You take some fuck then some shit

then some fuck then some shit

You've got a fuck-shit stack

A fuck-shit stack

Take some fuck then some shit

then some fuck then some shit

You've got a fuck-shit stack

A fuck-shit stack