Stepping Back...

So, I've been on "social media hiatus" since Christmas (I actually started mine before Neil Gaiman did, so I'm just going to assume he's copied the idea from me) and generally keeping my head down to get some stuff done. I've dipped in and out of Twitter to see what's going on, but I've felt no desire to jump back into the maelstrom yet.

Re-reading this blog post by Jim Zubkavitch on jealousy being creative poison resonated with me quite a bit, actually, especially considering how things have worked out for me over the last couple of months. This is hard to admit, but I fell down the well of creative jealousy in the weeks before Christmas, and it was not a pleasant experience. Deliberately switching off before the festivities and staying away from social media helped me pull myself out of it, but looking over Twitter again today, I almost slipped back down there again.

See, social media seems to pit writers (and other creatives) against each other in an endless "arms race" to promote themselves and their work; whether it's tweeting their current word count, links to reviews or talking vaguely about projects they've got planned that may or may not come to fruition, it just comes across as a never ending cycle of people saying "I'm great, me!"

Yeah, I know social media is all about ego and it's only to be expected, really, but it grinds on you after a while (or it does me, anyway) and feeds that creative jealousy that Jim Zub talks about. It's basically a game you can't win, and, like the Beastie Boys, I don't play no game I can't win.

Which, I guess, kind of leads me to a point with this blog post: it's a new year and I want to mix things up a bit and do things differently - and I think one of those is trying not to feed that green eyed bastard that is my own creative jealousy anymore. It actively hinders my productivity and gives me excuses not to do stuff (I've lost track of how many times I've had to force myself to finish a piece because I couldn't get over the whole "What's the point of me doing this? No one will want to read it" bullshit), and that's something I really don't need right now, because there's no place for it in my plans for world domination 2014.

So, yeah. For me, my head is staying down for a bit longer and I'm going to stay off social media for a bit longer to concentrate on doing the best work I can and improving on that. It goes without saying, though, that I'm still available via Twitter DMs and good old fashioned electronic mail.

Update: As much as I wanted to leave social media for a while, social media wouldn't leave me alone, so I'm bacl on the Twitters for a while. But I stand by what I said above and I just have to make sure I don't fall down the well of creative poison again...