Ever pro-union, my family takes Labor Day very seriously. It is the day for family, for rest, and for doing all the stuff at home that we don't normally make time to finish. We don't go to the mall, or out to dinner, or BBQ, or any of the "traditional" Labor Day stuffs. No, we do absolutely nothing.
Not this time! With my flight out of the country closing in, this day is one of the final moments I'll have in my hometown for a while.. meaning I'd like to see friends and have one last beer at Bottle Logic if I can!
It's not like I was doing much else anyway...
That being said, I'm currently typing away in a very hipster/gamer-friendly bar and thinking about how I'm going to kill time for the next hour and a half before trivia starts. I've decided to work. On what, you ask? On marketing.
If you actually see this post, I will be amazed because as of now, September 2018, I have NO online presence and NO platform. I don't even know where to start! Try as I might, I never feel like I can contribute anything to a community that I don't even know how to interact with. Most other authors (as far as I can tell) have been using blogs, their own websites, and twitter as a means to reach out into the Great Web of Noise and find some people who just might find you interesting. Additionally, I didn't even know how to use twitter until December 2016. Yeah, I haven't been active for a full two years yet. I'm just waiting for that first major NONO of my twitter life.
I think my biggest challenge is trying to be genuine online. For years I've been cutting through my online voice to create something readable and acceptable for a novel. My story-telling sounds nothing like my own speech. It's so hard to reverse years of training, to not go back to that sentence in the paragraph above and fix it so that it doesn't end with the word "with". To me, internet-speech is a kind of code-switch, and I've somehow forgotten the language.
Never in a million years did I ever think it would be difficult for me to be...me.
About 14 years ago, I started on this site that's pretty much dead now. It was a fanfiction site dedicated to one particular anime series, and when I joined it was the golden age of the fandom. Everyone was excited, everyone had ideas, even the shitty ideas were inspired and we all helped out one another. Recently, I went back to that almost-dead site and looked through my stories. I had a "story" that was more like updates about my life and when I would be writing next... God, I don't remember being as excited and happy as I came across. I was genuine. I was like 15 years old. I didn't know how to filter myself or be this introspective person I've become. Honestly, I liked 15 year old me. In some ways, I wish I could be more like her. She was kind of awesome.
Until I can fit that person into my life, I'll have to work at being my genuine 28 year old self.