My sighs are heavy with exasperation as Danny Rand continues to repeat his mistakes in season two of Iron Fist. It is one of my most common gripes with Western television and its undying effort to last forever. Yes, there are plenty of anime that seem incapable of knowing when to stop, but the quantity of entertainment that tells a complete, whole story versus being left to crawl in desperation and futility away from the grave of cancellation is staggering. Once Upon a Time is a television show that was notorious for pushing its antagonists through redemption arcs only to fall right back down the hill at the start of the next season.

I tire of characters that refuse to learn, yet I myself am incapable of the change I desire to see in fiction. For years I’ve repeated the same selfish mistakes with friends and family, driving a willful wedge to create distance. All the while I would deny my part in the division. I pray daily for the strength and willpower to cease the sabotage of myself only to awaken in the morning set on violating my self-imposed guidelines.

I keep insisting I will only write and craft video for myself, only to be obsessed with the thoughts and judgment of others.

It’s one of the many reasons this blog was so silent for a time shortly after its redesign. After all that hard work coding it I felt energized, eager to put some fresh new content on a clean new look. I wasn’t thinking about how people would receive it. I just wanted something to help show it off. Once the positive glow had faded away, I was left with nothing but a seeming vacuum of interest. It seemed to me that few cared about this new look, and fewer still about the words written upon it.

I feel blind-folded and trapped in an empty room, shouting to any present who will hear only for the words to echo back. I do not trust analytics to be anything more than bots crawling through the content for search engines or other databases. Though most readers and members of my audience will do nothing more than scan through my latest and move on, I desire and hope for some acknowledgment. Most of all, I hope to see the positive response of strangers. I want someone out there to care.

Why am I so desperate for the approval of strangers? I can only imagine it is because I still dream of glory. To be celebrated for my words and thoughts. In order to be celebrated, however, I must have essays worth celebrating. If I’m not being celebrated then clearly there’s something wrong with my essays.

Thus comes the pressure. Every time I read a draft I feel unconvinced of the quality of the argument. I chewed on every draft of my thoughts on Deadpool 2 and angrily cleared it off the Google Doc screen as the tide cleanses footprints from the sand. It wasn’t enough to express my own feelings. I had to convince others that I was right!

A bit silly seeing as I had confidently expressed my thoughts on objectivity and subjectivity not that long ago. On the one hand I really ought to learn a lesson from that piece. I had feared to broach that particular subject for so long, and yet there’s been no backlash to it at all. Of course, if you put your ear to the glass half-empty you can hear the echoes of negativity insisting “that’s because no one cares”.

Ouch! A boxer’s punch busting right past the ribs and directly in the need to be acknowledged by others!

Accurate representation of audience members every stinking episode of Iron Fist.

As I sit here and write the first draft of this essay, I feel a sudden sense of… not apathy, but a cathartic release of care. Poring over my notes on Rise of the Tomb Raider I confirmed that I would have to dispose of the majority of it should I wish to discuss a single, coherent thesis. This concern had been chewing nervously at the stem of my brain for the past week or two, but rather than run my hands through my hair and groan out in existential bitterness I shrugged. Who says I need a thesis? It’s my channel, and I can discuss as much of Rise of the Tomb Raider as I please! If Joseph Anderson can spend three unnecessarily long hours on God of War then I can spend thirty minutes discussing whatever I feel like on a game I enjoy!

There’s a freedom to be found in this feeling, and it’s what allowed me to rush out an essay on Marvel’s Spider-Man earlier this week. Even now, despite this “cathartic release”, I acknowledge that I didn’t argue my point as well as I could.

In other words, I have this freedom to express my thoughts as I please now, but how long until I revert to the greedy coward craving glory? How many times have I been through this cycle on my blog? A revelation felt, a push forward, and a craven crawl back into the fetal position, frightened of the sunlight I leaped into.

It must be as tiresome for my readers as I find Danny Rand’s insistence on doing whatever he wants.

To say that I am exactly the same person I was ten years ago would be a lie, however. That I have effectively sought to “reboot” this blog in an effort to (ineffectively) hide some of those old posts is proof that I no longer see eye-to-eye with my younger self. People can and often do change, but sometimes that change is slower than the tortoise racing the hare.

Every time I have this revelation I come closer to actually believing it in my heart. The change may not be immediately permanent, but as long as I continue to feel this way then permanency is assured. I will one day truly write for my own joy and benefit rather than the desperate hope of being beloved by readers I’ve never met before.

I feel like such a child in some ways, a thirty-three year-old man confessing to wanting the admiration and respect of unknown strangers on the Internet. At the same time, it’s built into our every electronic social platform. Number of friends on Facebook. Number of likes per post. Number of retweets, followers, subscribers, views. Even before these platforms were replies to blog posts or forum threads. Statistics that determine your greatness and relevance rather than the rejuvenating energy shared during personal interactions.

I sincerely believe my time on Twitter was getting out of hand, but reducing my presence there can only help so much. Every piece of social media in some way encourages narcissism and vanity. Perhaps not in the most literal sense regarding physical appearance, but certainly in every sense of the term “self-image”.

If I’m going to express my opinion without concern of the judgment of others, then I need to step back further from the social aspects of the Internet and just do as I desire. I still wish to write the best content I can, but if that means being self-indulgent or acknowledging my subjective biases, so be it. I am only human, and I already have a full-time job to give me enough stress during the day. The last thing I need is for my leisure to cause me grief as well.