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Let's start with a banal statement that we will pretend is both cutting and absolutely true: "how you deal with the feeling of envy says a lot about you as a person."

We'll treat this cliche with respect for now and we won't come back to it later.

I've recently found it very difficult to "exist" in the world of the internet. Existing in the physical world is simple-- you exist by your very nature, ipso facto. I do not mean "living" or "enduring" which require effort and pain. I mean being visible and taking up space. You will do those things by default as a tangible object. No matter what anyone's behavior toward you is, there is an immutable fact that you are a physical object. People can't phase through you. They can *try* to ignore you but their active disregard does not erase you. You can with a little effort make yourself basically impossible to ignore by literally being in the way of something. A door, or in a narrow space. Next to someone in a line.

Communication is a specific effort. The internet is a world formed deliberately through communication. On the internet, we can communicate with each other, form relationships, even intimate relationships. But to exist on the internet you have to make an effort to seize people's attention. You have to call, or you have to write. To exist on the internet, you have to have something to say. Lately, the act of communication feels like arrogance in itself. I have nothing to say; I can't imagine I have anything to say that is *worth* saying. Posting about how I make split pea soup on bsky is this arrogant little act of space-taking that feels pointless to perform. I didn't care to tell you or anyone that I made split pea soup. It gave me no joy nor served any utilitarian purpose. It was an act of existence-- it was me reminding people I have this social media account and fuck, I have no idea what to say y'all.

I assume that someone out there respects me. I have very little confirmation that anyone does. I don't mean like perfunctory "respects" me, like baseline doesn't want to contradict my physical existnece-- I mean someone whose mental image of a good and admirable and productive person includes myself. Someone who wants to imitiate my behavior for the part it has played in their life. I don't think those people exist. I think most people who have personally interacted with me have been angry at me once, if not many times. There is no moral valence to this, sometimes I'm an idiot and sometimes I'm an asshole and people have the right to get upset at me. I'm not somebody particular objectionable-- I'm *nobody* really-- but I'm someone with strong and overwhelming emotions, fickle moods and very little patience. I recognize these things about myself, but I am not able to repair them simply by knowing I do this outside a moment of pressure.

Anyway, that was all a preamble to say that I experience envy really strongly, almost to a degree that makes me sick.

I hate when bad things get too much praise, but I also hate when good things get too much praise. This makes me insanely brave and adjusted.

Seeing a piece of fiction that is *really* good doesn't inspire me or give me energy. I appreciate it, I appreciate it deeply-- right now I'm reading a book that frequently makes me go "fuck!" out loud with delight because its structure and wordplay are awe-inspiring to me (it's not any of the books I've talked on this blog about before, and don't ask me what it is I'll volunteer this some other time-- you wait for the sequel with patience I don't have). To me, writing which is markedly better than mine is a physical object that is now taking up space in my world. I can't phase through it. I can't ignore it. It makes me wonder why I bother to do anything, knowing I won't surpass this. I *know* I will not surpass this. I am not the kind of person who will write a transcendental work. I am a fucked up weirdo who is obsessed with violence, can barely handle writing genre fiction that makes any fucking sense at all, and who is writing a blog about how she doesn't post anymore, and who is sad that her wife is going on a very short business trip. If I can tap into the *geist* of the present times against all good taste and sense in an effort to make my point in a pithy self-obsessed fashion-- I think both my opps and myself would say I am "literally r-worded."

And I don't mean "sick" as in, like, regretful of my behavior. I mean like, I get the shakes and gag and my temperature goes nuts.

God or whatever theobiological animus put some really self-destructive mechanisms into humans, and I have unlocked 100% of my capacity to use them.

So while I'm over here having an embolism because someone is a better prose stylist than me, I think about the arrogance with which I live. A physical object has an inherent arrogance that it will never be rid of-- it occupies space. It can't be shrunk down by non-destructive means, and, well, killing people is a solution to some things, but its not a good solution in this tortured metaphor about existence, because if we open that door, well, we're inviting the author here to walk a very demonetizable on youtube type path. To put it lightly. So perishing that thought, I have felt lately like I don't understand anymore the person who asserted herself on the internet however many odd years ago. Who published a bunch of rough work constantly, who continued to chase something ephemeral in the distance and never caught it. Who was she? Who was I? Arrogant is a word with a decidedly negative connotation, but it's all I can muster right now to describe her. She was arrogant-- she wasn't hurting anyone, this isn't to cast judgment upon her, but she thought she was really hot shit. And upon inspection I just don't think that she was. Hell, it was worse back then. When I lived with my parents, I would go on hours-long RAGES about books I hated, author I despised, putting out another volume, getting praise. She dealt with her envy by, aside from being so angry that she gave herself a headache-- somehow finding the arrogance to say: I'm better, and you can come see it right now. And nobody came to see it. Like 300 visitors a week come to see it but that's nobody. Does anyone respect her? Does anyone respect her successor, me?