An Undefined Unknowing

 Well, my first day at my new job absolutely kicked my ass. I hated it! Sad but oh so very true. The worst part about it, I fell into pieces when I got home. Also, very sad but oh so true. 

Yeah, I admit it… I am a crier. Even though I don’t cry over everything or cry all the time… my emotions run deep and they are very much in existence. This is a part of myself I wish I could change but at 42, know that just isn’t going to happen and me trying to change this is a lost cause. 

I might have a tough exterior but on the inside, I’m as fragile as they come. 

Why was my first day so terrible??? 

To begin with, I was “training” if that’s what you even call it for a job I wasn’t hired to do. Honestly, I didn’t mind the back breaking work I just endured… I’ve just never done it before and will also admit that I made a handful of mistakes. 

I hate making mistakes even though I know this is how most people learn. I’m not perfect and know I will flub up along the way but I was really just told what to do rather than shown and I was told by someone who doesn’t speak my language.  

Another thing I could beat myself up about… my inability to understand what to do because of a language barrier. 

However, I will say this… just as I would expect myself to learn the language of the country I am living in, I don’t understand why people who live here aren’t learning our predominant native tongue. Specifically when it comes to working in a field that it’s inescapable to not know the language. 

And before anyone gets angry about that statement, please understand a few things: no matter where I travel to I try my hardest to speak the language of that country. Before I went back to Italy recently for two weeks, I spent an entire year learning Italian. I was still a novice but I didn’t go over there demanding English from any Italian speaking person. I spoke to them in their language. 

Moreover, I have never told anyone in my country to speak English if that isn’t their native language. I didn’t do this once today but all I can say about that is it made for an extremely hard training day. 

We did our best to communicate and we got the tasks at hand done but by the end of it, I felt super inadequate and extremely stupid. 

It’s my first day… I don’t know where things go, how things are supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing. I just tried my best to follow along but even that was tough, given that I WASN’T BEING TRAINED to begin with.

The only saving graces…

1. Tomorrow I’m getting trained for the job I was hired to do. 
2. The woman I worked with today had the best laugh. It was infectious. I even had someone translate that to her… which I understood. 

What sucked the most about today though was the realization I had during my lunch break specifically. No matter what job I am getting paid to do… THE ONLY REAL ONE I WANT IS THAT OF A FULL FLEDGED, SELF-SUSTAINABLE AUTHOR. 

That’s it! That’s all I want to do. That’s my dream job and being this close with my first book and having my first taste into this world, is the only thing I am starving for. It’s the only career I am craving. 

And right now, I just feel completely lost and hopeless even though I am the epitome of HOPE… given that THAT’S  my freaking middle name. HOPE! Like I hope this life doesn’t kill me or I hope there’s more to this life than this. 

I have HOPE that it won’t and that there is. 

I apologize if I sound like I’m on a self-inflicted pity party for one or if I, at all, sound ungrateful or like I’b being a privileged brat. I assure you I am not nor am I neither. I just want my life to be different. I’m not afraid of hard work or climbing to proverbial mountain. I have been working since I was 15 and climbing this damn mountain my entire life. 

For many years, I even worked multiple jobs and in a way, I still am. My book series is one job in and of itself. Writing it takes time. Promoting it takes energy. Getting myself into the literary world takes effort. It doesn’t matter if it’s a passion project or not. It doesn’t matter if it was initially a hobby that turned into a paying gig. It doesn’t matter what the reasons are because it counts for something and towards hours in my day… and it’s all I truly want to do. 

Which brings me to another thing… while I write book two, I am promoting book one. I’m the only one doing this and now that everything is all about social media, some of my posts not receiving the feedback, I truly believe they deserve is disappointing. 

Meanwhile a girl with a dog or a girl on her umpteenth vacation posting yet again another goddamn selfie or a girl showing her ass sets the internet on fire. Also, if you have the money to pay… you have the money to play. 

Question: 

Have you ever wondered why someone’s post went viral or how one picture has 100’s of likes? 

Answer and FACTS: 

Those “likes” didn’t come organically. No, no… they were boosted for a small little fee. Those new followers and “friends” and comments were paid for. Nine times out of ten… the post that went viral had help from a bankroll. 

And if I see one more goddamn “digital creator” in another person’s byline… I am going to fucking scream. Listen folks, just because you have a IG page and you take pictures DOES NOT MAKE YOU A DIGITAL CREATOR. You are taking photos… you aren’t working for companies and promoting their brands. You aren’t digitally creating shit. Where I come from… when someone is a digital creator, it means they are hired out by a slew of companies to design web posts… like ads… for their social media platform. Real digital creators are hired to generate traffic to someone else’s page. Not theirs. 

Yet, here we are. Living in a social media world and everyone is a digital creator NOT DIGITALLY CREATING A GODDAM THING. I mean, at this point… I’m convinced this is what everyone does now professionally. 

This tagline is the new “Housewives From… Everywhere!” 

The World: What do you do? 

Everyone: I’m a Digital Creator! 

Me: So you do Brand Web Development? 

Everyone: No. I just take selfies. 

The World: Let’s make that shit go viral. 

Meanwhile, I’m over here just trying to promote a book I actually wrote and write the rest of its series. No biggie. 

And I’m not saying there is something wrong with boosting a post because I have utilized this for a couple of ads I created for my book but what I am saying is this… there truly is a difference in promoting something you did, in fact, create and you do, in fact, want to make a career out of vs. wanting more attention for vanity’s sake. 

To top it off, these paid for boosters, make those of us that actually CREATE harder to bust through the algorithm. It also makes it harder for anyone that doesn’t have deep pockets to even exist on the web. 

My reel that might get a few views can’t compete with that girl walking down the beach in a bathing suit showing her ass… because she paid for it to be seen. 

Granted, my book’s page has seen some posts break the few views mile marker by thousands but honestly that’s hit or miss. It’s all the luck of the draw. I can’t really say it has anything to do with hashtags or the time of day it was posted because I don’t know. One post that follows the rules might get zero attention while another one doing the same thing gets many. It’s so up and down and all around and sometimes this makes me feel absolutely defeated. 

Which is where I am currently. Sitting in this undefined unknowing. What I do whole-heartedly believe in though… is my book having the capability to make it! It’s got a great storyline, an absolutely beautiful cover and stellar reviews thus far. The trifecta of what people look for in books to read. 

And from what I hear, people genuinely enjoy reading it and are very much looking forward to the next two books. 

Furthermore, I am not only proud of it but I’m also excited for the doors it could potentially open. I’m waiting patiently for those doors to open. I HOPE that they will.

Until then, I’m tapping my fingers as well as the keyboard waiting on my turn. Waiting, waiting, waiting for that one post… that one book review or store or person to snatch up my book and catapult this dream into a reality. 

For what it’s worth, I know maybe this post wasn’t all full of rainbows and that I sounded like a whiny asshole through some of it but I am human and well, I am allowed to have bad days and sit in my frustration for a while. I am allowed to look at the world and scream, “This isn’t okay or fair and I want more… NAY… demand more,” occasionally. 

I promise next post will be more upbeat. I promise I’m going into my second day at the new job believing it will be better. I promise that I’m not giving up this easily. 

Thanks for listening y’all. Take care of yourselves and we’ll talk soon. 

~x~