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rynlingThe experience of ADHD is having all sorts of useful strategies to overcome executive dysfunction disorder… until suddenly none of them work.
For the past week, I haven’t been able to leave comments on student papers. This is something I usually enjoy doing, but it’s been impossible for me to get started.
Basically, the recent zine pieces I’ve posted on AO3 haven’t gotten kudos, not even from the other zine contributors, and I feel self-conscious about that. Like, it must be that people don’t leave kudos because they don’t like me. They don’t like me because they’ve spent months on the zine Discord server getting to know me, and they’ve decided that I’m not the sort of person whose work deserves kudos. They don’t want their username on something I posted. They don’t want to associate with me. They would be embarrassed if I left comments on their work. The polite thing to do would be to leave them alone and pretend I didn’t exist. I don’t know why things turned out like this, and I will never know. There’s something wrong with me, and this is something everyone can see except me. That sort of thing.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the real reason people haven’t left kudos on my zine pieces is because:
(a) The process of creating a zine takes months, and most people have moved on by the end of it.
(b) The majority of people who read the zine pieces will read them in the zine instead of on AO3.
(c) Zines only publish genfic or fic of “safe” ships, which doesn’t get much attention to begin with.
(d) AO3 has recently gotten so big that a lot of work gets buried and goes unnoticed.
(e) A lot of traffic to AO3 used to come through Tumblr, which no one is really using anymore.
(f) The general culture of not supporting writers has carried over to Twitter, unfortunately.
(g) Maybe some people hate fandom zines, or hate that they weren’t accepted. Which is fair.
In other words, it’s become harder for anything to get kudos because of the current environment of fandom, which is based on Twitter, which most people read on their phones via an app that makes it difficult to follow links to AO3. For what it’s worth, my Twitter posts with links to my work on AO3 have been doing well, and every day I’m grateful for this.
But still. I’m in a strange place in my life right now. I need an outside source of energy in order to give positive feedback on other people’s work, and I’m just not getting it. There’s no use in asking for help or support, since it’s going to take time before I can give anything in return. Months, probably. And this makes me feel like a worthless person who takes up space without contributing anything.
And that feeling carries over to the papers I still need to mark. I mean, I’ve read them. I’ve even graded them and recorded the grades. They’re all excellent papers, and everyone got an “A.” But writing comments is something I just can’t bring myself to deal with right now.
Back in grad school, I had a close friend who wrote stunningly gorgeous fanfic. She posted some of her shorter stories on AO3, but she kept the majority of her longer pieces to herself. She said she wouldn’t be able to deal with it if her work didn’t immediately get positive feedback. I didn’t understand where she was coming from at the time, but I’m starting to get it. The weight of disappointment is cumulative, and it can be difficult to compartmentalize the psychological damage. Like, if nobody cares about your best and most compelling work, what’s the point of doing anything?
I should probably say that this isn’t a cry for help or anything. Despite everything, I’m doing my best. I'll get where I want to go eventually. I just wanted to try to explain what this headspace is like while illustrating why executive dysfunction disorder has nothing to do with being irresponsible or lazy or disorganized.
For the past week, I haven’t been able to leave comments on student papers. This is something I usually enjoy doing, but it’s been impossible for me to get started.
Basically, the recent zine pieces I’ve posted on AO3 haven’t gotten kudos, not even from the other zine contributors, and I feel self-conscious about that. Like, it must be that people don’t leave kudos because they don’t like me. They don’t like me because they’ve spent months on the zine Discord server getting to know me, and they’ve decided that I’m not the sort of person whose work deserves kudos. They don’t want their username on something I posted. They don’t want to associate with me. They would be embarrassed if I left comments on their work. The polite thing to do would be to leave them alone and pretend I didn’t exist. I don’t know why things turned out like this, and I will never know. There’s something wrong with me, and this is something everyone can see except me. That sort of thing.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the real reason people haven’t left kudos on my zine pieces is because:
(a) The process of creating a zine takes months, and most people have moved on by the end of it.
(b) The majority of people who read the zine pieces will read them in the zine instead of on AO3.
(c) Zines only publish genfic or fic of “safe” ships, which doesn’t get much attention to begin with.
(d) AO3 has recently gotten so big that a lot of work gets buried and goes unnoticed.
(e) A lot of traffic to AO3 used to come through Tumblr, which no one is really using anymore.
(f) The general culture of not supporting writers has carried over to Twitter, unfortunately.
(g) Maybe some people hate fandom zines, or hate that they weren’t accepted. Which is fair.
In other words, it’s become harder for anything to get kudos because of the current environment of fandom, which is based on Twitter, which most people read on their phones via an app that makes it difficult to follow links to AO3. For what it’s worth, my Twitter posts with links to my work on AO3 have been doing well, and every day I’m grateful for this.
But still. I’m in a strange place in my life right now. I need an outside source of energy in order to give positive feedback on other people’s work, and I’m just not getting it. There’s no use in asking for help or support, since it’s going to take time before I can give anything in return. Months, probably. And this makes me feel like a worthless person who takes up space without contributing anything.
And that feeling carries over to the papers I still need to mark. I mean, I’ve read them. I’ve even graded them and recorded the grades. They’re all excellent papers, and everyone got an “A.” But writing comments is something I just can’t bring myself to deal with right now.
Back in grad school, I had a close friend who wrote stunningly gorgeous fanfic. She posted some of her shorter stories on AO3, but she kept the majority of her longer pieces to herself. She said she wouldn’t be able to deal with it if her work didn’t immediately get positive feedback. I didn’t understand where she was coming from at the time, but I’m starting to get it. The weight of disappointment is cumulative, and it can be difficult to compartmentalize the psychological damage. Like, if nobody cares about your best and most compelling work, what’s the point of doing anything?
I should probably say that this isn’t a cry for help or anything. Despite everything, I’m doing my best. I'll get where I want to go eventually. I just wanted to try to explain what this headspace is like while illustrating why executive dysfunction disorder has nothing to do with being irresponsible or lazy or disorganized.
