A few things I wanted to say. Social media is used for many things: promoting oneself, trolling others, showing how great our lives are. What we seldom use it for is to unburden ourselves, to talk about our failures and our insecurities.
We don't for various reasons. One, it undermines the perception we want the world to have of us: that of being successful. Also, we are afraid that this would give joy to our haters, and all of us have them, to show that we are hurt. Which is why we keep things inside, & pretend.
Life is a lonely place, and many times, we feel that things are happening to us, we lose any frame of reference except ourselves. It is worthwhile then to search for other frames, to frame ourselves from a third perspective.
Is this desperate, calling out for attention? Who cares? There is nothing to be ashamed of for being desperate, nothing to be ashamed of for craving validation. You do it anyways with pictures of your picture-perfect life, why not do it for other things too.
One of the things social media has brought about is a lack of empathy for human beings. We say far more mean things on social media to people than we can in real life. That is because in social media, people come across as unidimensional successes, not as well-rounded individuals
I try to talk about my failures on social media, not all of them but some, and well-meaning people tell me not to provide ammunition for my enemies, & they use it too, so it's not just idle advise, but I still do it, because it helps me. I also want you to know I am a human being
1 thing I want to put out there. Walk away from toxicity. Few years ago when my agent told me that publishers consider me unpublishable obviously for my politics, I walked away from what I loved most. Writing books. It was terrible, but it was not worth dealing with publishers.
There are other things in my life I cannot walk away from. Those are the things you manage. Walking away isn't easy, but sometimes it is the easiest thing you can do. Something has to go of course, but you do a cost-benefit analysis and move on.
Walking away isn't accepting defeat. I will write again. Someday, when I have been able to work out how to get heard without agents and Indian publishers. Someday when the market is for direct-to-reader. Till then I will keep trying.
But if writing, my hobby, leads me to unpleasant interactions with toxic people in Indian publishing and the agent world, it is not worth the happiness it brings. It's not that I am always this rational with myself, I frequently feel depressed, but then who said coping is easy?
Even though I don't listen to this myself, the *only* way to happiness is to set yourself goals that depend only on you. Watch a good web-series. Take a walk. Finish a book. Do something for a cause.
I would have added "help someone" but often there is an expectation of gratitude, which means you are putting your happiness in the hands of someone else. Which usually ends up in disappointment.
Stay off Ted talks and self-help gurus who say "you can be anything you want". You can't. Don't set yourself up for failure chasing an impossible dream. Putting your phone number as a comment in Disha Patani's insta won't get you a call, so don't peg your happiness to it.
One of my pet peeves is we as a generation don't talk about our failures. On social media. In physical gatherings. This is one reason I do not enjoy meeting people in real life, it's like social media but in person, where you can't even go to another tab.
