WHY I OBLITERATED MY WEBSITE - Again.

Okay, I lied. I told you we'd get back to Villains and we will. But I finally got around to updating my Ko-fi Page about all the latest artistic shenanigans that have been going on around here over the past few months, and the final one turned into a post. Then it turned into a regurgitation. Then I figured I should probably come back over here and explain why I just made myself useful the other night while suffering from insomnia until 6:30 a.m. after dental surgery messed up my sleep schedule.

Hey, I watched the sun come up. I fixed a problem. And I did THIS.

So here's the update I made on Ko-Fi:

I got really hacked off the other week. In truth, I've been hacked off here and there and occasionally everywhere since fall 2019 when my Voc Rehab adventures all went to crap, followed by the two-punch combo a couple months later at that writer's conference I'd won a scholarship to: I learned that I also needed to let go of my Grand Publishing Adventures after I had so many brain issues within moments of entering the convention center. That turned into the triple-whammy when Covid struck as I was flying back from the conference.

So I've been a little...pissy.

Lost.

Aggravated.

Feeling like I'm sitting around with my thumb up my ass or running on a hamster wheel of Phenomenal Cosmic Powahhhh with all these arts that I do nonstop...but iiiiiiitty-bitty living space when it comes being able to do anything with them.

Correction: to SUSTAIN doing anything with them out in the world in exchange for little pieces of green paper. On this brain injury, with my natural rhythms of Surge Creation across five different multipotentialite mediums? Hahahah. Good one. Algorithms hate me. My stuff doesn't exist in its handy, familiar, preset labels, and when it does, I don't stick with any one thing long enough for it to catch my rhythm. I puke out a bunch of stuff and then crash & burn. Or I erupt with a shitstorm of brilliance and then--

Ooooh, shiny! I'm off on something else.

Until I'm not.

And then I'm back. For...like...a day. And then I'm burning down another layer on a project I started last year.

We do not demand that the Muse works differently from how She works. Otherwise she gives us middle fingers and refuses to play. Then when I do puke something out, it's shoddy work because it's uninspired and forced. That's why I rarely do commissions, and why those usually come at random moments wayyyy in the future when you've forgotten what you requested. Or you've gotten frustrated with me and leave when I switch gears. Or you've forgotten about me because I haven't put out anything in forever.

🤪🙃💩

So I bought this online course awhile back. It's about using the medium of storytelling for advertising. Perfect for me, right? Something reminded me of its existence the other day, so I started it. I've only done the first module, therefore I'm not ready to say what I think of it yet, but it started out great. Using Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as the main path to follow? Awesome! I'm an old school devotee.

But then we got to the part in the advertising journey that showed me exactly where my monkey wrench is. I've always had trouble coming up with my Ideal Client. I thought I had it awhile back when I was glub-glubbing in a gazillion marketing courses, but then I learned that I was actually VERY wrong. My ideal clients turned out not to like anything I've been doing for the past decade since my Dain Bramage shifted from Mild to Moderate after that punch to the face in 2012.

Huh.

Okay...

So I've been floundering and banging my head against brick walls ever since.

This course showed me exactly why I can't come up with my Ideal Client: because I lack that almighty clincher to the advertising puzzle: "Here's my grand solution to your problem AND HERE'S THE PROOF OF WHY IT WORKS."

You know what I have?

A THOUSAND AND ONE EXAMPLES OF WHY IT DOESN'T WORK.

I have a career of failure. I have a life trajectory of failure. I have an interpersonal and romantic history of failure. I would not inflict my life's path on my worst enemy, much less somebody I want to help or teach or be connected to.

Wanna lose your career and all your income? Do what I do!

Wanna lose your entire social network? Follow my example!

Wanna be twice divorced and undateable? Be like me!

Wanna make your TBI and cPTSD worse and get put on disability by falling into an ever-deepening cycle of sexual assault and domestic violence while following all those awesome Learn To Love Yourself tips? Hop aboard! Let's do this thing!!!!

...

...

Yeah.

That's why my advertising is shite. That's why it doesn't work. That's why I can't ever come up with an ideal client or any sort of funnel. Because I have no answers. I have no solutions. I have no miracle products. I have no remedies to your pain points that are proven to work, and I wouldn't ever want anybody to be like me.

Don't get me wrong. I love being me. It's gobs of fun and it's liberating. With every Not Me layer I shed, I can breathe more and more and more. Ahhhhh...

Simultaneously, with every layer of Not Me I shed, the more people abandon ship and give me The Big Eyes of, "Whoooah. Chick. You are literally insane. RUN AWAAAAY!"

Okay.

See ya.

Now then, what was I doing before I was so rudely interrupted? Groovy. So much easier without your static and flack.

So now I no longer have a website that attempts to follow AllTheRules of Advertising. 🖕😈🖕Those are not made for the neurodivergent, disabled, socially isolated, multipotentialite surge-creator innovation artists with Negative $2000 monthly incomes.

Instead, what I now have is the only stage available to me, since the environment of live performing, touring, and intensive teaching does not work with my brain injury. (Or microscopic badasses.)

What I have is the only way I'm ever gonna get my writing published, because that same brain injury doesn't work with traditional houses, and neither does my personality.

What I have is the only way I have of self-publishing, because being an independent author is the exact same job as being a touring dancer/instructor, just in a much bigger fishbowl than the little niche of dance fusion. It's the precise job I've been trying to replace for over a decade BUT ON STEROIDS.

So now I'm much happier with my website. It's not an advertisement. It IS the art. I mean, if you like what I do, obviously you can come over here and charitably toss some money into my open guitar case, for which I will thank and praise you. Those of you who do...BLESS THEE. You save my ass and keep me in chiropractic appointments so I'm still able to dance some and I don't have seizures.

Otherwise, my website is the answer to all the Death Dreams that have been plaguing me night after week after month for the past year. "You don't have much time," they whisper and hiss and occasionally shout. "You need to write the stories that only you can tell because they're yours. You need to film the dances that would break your heart if you never did. You need to slap your novels out there even if they're unedited, overlong, tangenty, disorganized gems smothered in shite, because otherwise you're gonna die with it all hidden inside you, and THAT would be the tragedy."

It tells me: "Currently, you ARE the tragedy. A waste of talent. A waste of knowledge and skills and passion and creativity and kindness and an inextinguishable raging fire that still hasn't been snuffed."

But it will be.

Someday.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe in 38 more years.

Someday, this vessel of experience that is me will be no more, so fuck it.

Yeah, sure, there's that one course for sale. You know--the Five Elements course I tried to desperately puke out before I was ready. It was a makeup for my Level 2 students when Covid hit. It's completely filmed now. I'm currently plunking away here and there at editing the final module, Alchemy where we put it all together. It's gorgeous. It's fun. Meh.

Know why I'm not going gangbusters on finishing except whenever I'm inspired?

Because nobody's even gotten through the third element.

Huh.

Okay.

Note to self.

Well, we've always known my magic is in person. Alas, that's not an option anymore. Travel--even post-pandemic travel--can rarely happen on this brain, and the place where I live cannot support a dance form nobody can label because it doesn't exist except, "MINE." I am a faulty, glitchy, unstable, unproven, failure-after-failure product, so I'm not currently worth much in the way of people's hard earned money.

I mean, I can teach you how to obliterate your life. I've proven that am masterful at that.

But who the fuck wants to learn that?

Shrug.

So now my website is just my random jack-off channel in classic Gen X style. I mean, I was a devotee of Happy Harry Hardon, man, and - spoiler alert - when I was barely out of my teenage diapers he raised his fist and yelled at me to, "Keep the air alive!" as they hauled him and the Eat-Me-Beat-Me Lady away in the back of the FCC van.

So here's my Air. And my Earth, Fire, Water, Metal, and my Elemental Alchemy.

--It's the dancing I do.

--The mixtapes and magical tools that keep me breathing.

--The passion of my heart while it still beats in a body.

--The stories of my experience on this planet and of my imagination.

--The things I've learned about self-protection, which actually begins with self-love.

--And the ways in which all of these things interweave to create a life in ashes that I FUCKING LOVE ANYWAY.

I eat it, beat it, jam it, jack it, push it, pull it, and occasionally I do talk hard to my three listeners. 'Scuse me, y'all are up to six now. 💚💜🧡💙🖤💛 I also sometimes talk soft. And that's it. That's the entire point of my website now, and today that has to be enough.

I am your Canary in the Mineshaft on the road trip to Hades, reminding you stab your cereal with a bident and feed your homework to the three-headed dog.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

--UP NEXT: I AM ANTI-NEO - A Poem About Falling

--OR if you missed all that stuff about Voc Rehab and the conference, I covered that in MY RAWRING 2020 IN REVIEW.

--THE NAVIGATION TABLE OF CONTENTS