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The Future
a year ago
We'll be right back after these messages, brought to you by N's Telegram Channel
So those following my Twitter may already know this, but for those that haven't: I have not been mentally well for a while. Like, at all. The fact is I've been facing a lot of external and internal pressures with absolutely no mental energy available to combat them, so things have been breaking through. This has left me, let's just say, "fragile" and introspective. But it's been pushing me to think more about my future here in the Fuurry Community as one of its writers.
The truth is I'm tired as fuck. Incredibly drained and at 0% battery. But this isn't the sort of thing not writing can just fix. The purpose, and the point, of my writing is largely to engage with others. Yes there's also the validation cause I'm really fucking vain, but I do it mostly to entertain and engage with others. It lets me communicate that I can be useful and worth being around. But that's the rub: Online society, as a whole, has been in a prolonged state of anti-engagement, mostly due to social media and the rising pressures of real life leaving everyone else similarly drained. Nobody wants to or has the energy to engage with anyone else, making it easier to drop a like/favourite and just move on, usually because they can't do much else. This runs completely counterintuitive to my need for engagement. Engagement is what I need to recharge my batteries and keep going, as no or little engagement means I can't get back what I put into preparing and writing my stories. Some of my recent stories? I did many of them in a single night, usually in about 3-4 hours. When I put my nose to the grindstone I don't stop until I reach the skull. This is pretty self-destructive but it's how I ensure I get the pieces done and not left half-finished cause I may not feel like working on the story tomorrow.
As some may notice I stopped writing, or at least wrote incredible sparsely in the past few years, with a sudden jump in activity last year. Last year was when I attempted a new resolution for building my profile, so to speak. I took out what were effectively loans on emotional energy to try and engage with others, trying to boost it as much as possible. I was able to take the licks better as I had convinced myself it would get better if I just kept trying. I did commissionss to earn funds to get commissions of my own; I was commenting more on people's stuff, usually on twitter. I was working to produce more and more stories to present to everyone. But the thing is, the watches went up, the faves went up, but the engagement stayed the same. I kept making myself try harder, in order to finally break down the barriers in front of me to reach the other side.
I failed....
The emotional toll has since swung the other way, and everything I spent has come back on me with interest. I took an immense risk trying this, and it failed utterly. I spent all that energy for basically nothing to change. The final straw really was likes becoming hidden on Twitter, which is my biggest soruce of potential engagement. My sparse engagement plummeted after the change as people's habits simply don't change easily, and all the likes did nothing to spread my word anymore, with my getting excessively little retweets. I'm not going to blame anyone but myself for this, as I played fast and loose with an unliberated sense of optimism. The fact is I am too emotionally and mentally dead to create now, and this time, I fear it's permanent. The truth is the risk wasn't just trying to raise engagement but as a means to think I could actually hope for better. Guess that's what misguided hope gets ya eh? Long and short what I'm feeling may not be fixable, not with time or with enough hugs and kisses. Once hope dies it's pretty hard to get it back.
Again, I only blame myself for this. I'm just one man; one man stupid enough to think he could change the status quo. The Furry Community, as a whole, seems content with this endless cycle of no-engagement, so really I'm the anathema here. What I want, and what the Furry Community can offer me, feel largely incompatible now. This isn't a pity party however, which is why I want to cut to the chase. I am not quitting. Yet. To put it simply, I'm deciding on what to do next. It's a hard and difficult decision, and I need to put as much time and thought as I can into this before I decide whether to risk a lot by staying, or to take my leave. This decision is going to be permanant, at least the leave part it is. That may sound extreme, but if I choose to walk away from this, I NEED it to be permanant. I can't go through what I have again, because the next time I suffer this failure I think it is genuinely going to break me. However, depending on how angry I may get at the time, I could very well take my entire gallery with me when I go. Extreme and not desirable, but my anger has been growing intense and it's starting to sound like a very good idea. I's kinda a coin flip thing.
What does this mean for you, assuming you read this far? Not a lot. I'm going to be quiet for a while as I decide what will be best for my mental and emotional health, as I feel what I'm feeling has started to seep into the physical as well. If I do decide to leave, it won't be anybody's fault except, again, my own. I need everyone to understand that I don't want pity. I don't want engagement. I don't want sympathy. What I want right now is to be left the hell alone as I think things over. This is something I need to do on my own without outside interference, as it's between myself and the writer I am. I just hope everyone understands and respects this wish. This isn't goodbye forever, but just for now.
-N
The truth is I'm tired as fuck. Incredibly drained and at 0% battery. But this isn't the sort of thing not writing can just fix. The purpose, and the point, of my writing is largely to engage with others. Yes there's also the validation cause I'm really fucking vain, but I do it mostly to entertain and engage with others. It lets me communicate that I can be useful and worth being around. But that's the rub: Online society, as a whole, has been in a prolonged state of anti-engagement, mostly due to social media and the rising pressures of real life leaving everyone else similarly drained. Nobody wants to or has the energy to engage with anyone else, making it easier to drop a like/favourite and just move on, usually because they can't do much else. This runs completely counterintuitive to my need for engagement. Engagement is what I need to recharge my batteries and keep going, as no or little engagement means I can't get back what I put into preparing and writing my stories. Some of my recent stories? I did many of them in a single night, usually in about 3-4 hours. When I put my nose to the grindstone I don't stop until I reach the skull. This is pretty self-destructive but it's how I ensure I get the pieces done and not left half-finished cause I may not feel like working on the story tomorrow.
As some may notice I stopped writing, or at least wrote incredible sparsely in the past few years, with a sudden jump in activity last year. Last year was when I attempted a new resolution for building my profile, so to speak. I took out what were effectively loans on emotional energy to try and engage with others, trying to boost it as much as possible. I was able to take the licks better as I had convinced myself it would get better if I just kept trying. I did commissionss to earn funds to get commissions of my own; I was commenting more on people's stuff, usually on twitter. I was working to produce more and more stories to present to everyone. But the thing is, the watches went up, the faves went up, but the engagement stayed the same. I kept making myself try harder, in order to finally break down the barriers in front of me to reach the other side.
I failed....
The emotional toll has since swung the other way, and everything I spent has come back on me with interest. I took an immense risk trying this, and it failed utterly. I spent all that energy for basically nothing to change. The final straw really was likes becoming hidden on Twitter, which is my biggest soruce of potential engagement. My sparse engagement plummeted after the change as people's habits simply don't change easily, and all the likes did nothing to spread my word anymore, with my getting excessively little retweets. I'm not going to blame anyone but myself for this, as I played fast and loose with an unliberated sense of optimism. The fact is I am too emotionally and mentally dead to create now, and this time, I fear it's permanent. The truth is the risk wasn't just trying to raise engagement but as a means to think I could actually hope for better. Guess that's what misguided hope gets ya eh? Long and short what I'm feeling may not be fixable, not with time or with enough hugs and kisses. Once hope dies it's pretty hard to get it back.
Again, I only blame myself for this. I'm just one man; one man stupid enough to think he could change the status quo. The Furry Community, as a whole, seems content with this endless cycle of no-engagement, so really I'm the anathema here. What I want, and what the Furry Community can offer me, feel largely incompatible now. This isn't a pity party however, which is why I want to cut to the chase. I am not quitting. Yet. To put it simply, I'm deciding on what to do next. It's a hard and difficult decision, and I need to put as much time and thought as I can into this before I decide whether to risk a lot by staying, or to take my leave. This decision is going to be permanant, at least the leave part it is. That may sound extreme, but if I choose to walk away from this, I NEED it to be permanant. I can't go through what I have again, because the next time I suffer this failure I think it is genuinely going to break me. However, depending on how angry I may get at the time, I could very well take my entire gallery with me when I go. Extreme and not desirable, but my anger has been growing intense and it's starting to sound like a very good idea. I's kinda a coin flip thing.
What does this mean for you, assuming you read this far? Not a lot. I'm going to be quiet for a while as I decide what will be best for my mental and emotional health, as I feel what I'm feeling has started to seep into the physical as well. If I do decide to leave, it won't be anybody's fault except, again, my own. I need everyone to understand that I don't want pity. I don't want engagement. I don't want sympathy. What I want right now is to be left the hell alone as I think things over. This is something I need to do on my own without outside interference, as it's between myself and the writer I am. I just hope everyone understands and respects this wish. This isn't goodbye forever, but just for now.
-N
Best of luck -- may you arrive at whatever decision is best for your own well-being.
The discussion you've written up about anti-engagement in the furry fandom has led to some introspection on my part. I've considered recent changes to the ways I engage with content creators in the furry fandom over the past few years. Nowadays, rather than Twitter, I tend to engage most in the comments sections of the Telegram channels hosted by furry creators I follow (note, I write channels, not groups/chatrooms; Telegram distinguishes between the two). I engage second-most on FA, though I find that I engage more frequently with stories whose thumbnails have clear tags that would tell me whether I'd be interested. Then I engage least of all on Twitter/BSky/other timeline sites, because I don't like to consume content on sites that serve me algorithmic content suggestions.
All of this is not a suggestion for whether/how you should change your posting strategies if you do stay with the fandom. But rather, I'm just sharing the ways I engage, these days. I don't think my overall engagement has gone down, but it's just focused on different platforms.
Personally wish their was a part two & three to this story. I kinda have an idea of an interesting subvert the subversion kinda direction the story should go.
I will hope that you will stay, and understand and miss you if you leave
Maybe you're not the only one who needs have a reevaluation? It really shouldn't be that hard. Add a comment or something about what I liked about the thing.
If nothing else, you've given someone a lot to think about.
I'm kind of hoping this is just a phase for people.