Thank you so much for reading. Please subscribe as I am posting more and more each week. Going to use Substack as my main outlet of sharing thoughts. Also consider a paid subscription for more content coming in the future and as always, if you enjoy what you see and wanted to support what I do, you can tip/donate/buy me a coffee here.
The other day I asked people on Twitter to describe me in one word. Twitter is a weird thing because it has always been bad, but more and more people are seeing it for what it is because of Elon. Twitter was always bad about correcting hate speech. Twitter has always been bad about suspending hate accounts. Twitter has always been bad about harassment and doxing and shadow bans and all that jazz. But its kind of like people who want to believe life was simpler when they were younger. Trust me, it wasn’t. You had three channels, everyone smoked, and depression was known as “being in a bad mood’. So chill out.
Anyway, when I asked this, I did not check it until the next day. I wanted it to be shared with both the left and the right. I told myself not to get mad or lash out because I wanted true honest answers.
So the next day, there were a thousand responses. Well, close to it. And I started scrolling through. Some of the nicest descriptions were there. Creative, Kind, Funny, Talented, Smart, and Intelligent were used over and over again.
Now you think that this would be a happy ending story, right? Well, see, out of the thousand of kind words, three stuck out.
Grifter, Insecure, and Failure.
Let me be clear. Those were three out of a thousand comments. They were from Twitter accounts that were created this year. They were from people who I have never seen before. Yet, for some strange reason, in my mind, I believed those three and not the thousand others.
Grifter really gets me. If you want to make me mad, call me that. I have sold my art online for five years. I have posted and let people message me to make an offer or I will tell them the price. I have sold over 2500 art pieces and shipped to over 50 countries around the world. Yet, there is always the one person who will tell me that its just a stick figure piece of shit that their dog can do and people only buy because they feel sorry for me. Now, this is not the case. But it does not matter. When someone says that to me, that is where my mind goes.
Insecure gets me. Yeah, I doubt myself at times but I believe in myself…
Wait, what the f*ck am I doing?
Why am I trying to justify those three comments and not embrace the others. Why am I not focusing on the good and dealing with the negative?
Because for years, I only told myself how bad I was.
Negative self talk is the worst. I am the most guilty of it. Ever since I was a kid, I would only focus on what is wrong with me. I would tell myself what a crappy person I was so that when I was insulted, it would not even phase me. I assure you no one has ever insulted me like I have insulted me.
I rarely focus on the good. I do not know why. I do not understand why I want to focus on what I am doing wrong instead of once in a while, embrace what I am doing right. Why is it do hard for me to believe that I am funny. I have proof that I am. When I comment on a post, it gets a lot of attention. Why is it hard to admit that I am an artist. Why, because some piece of sh*t shades of whey guy on Twitter who posts stolen content and two Canadian podcasters who have amassed three hundred listeners think otherwise? Why is it hard to understand that I am not a failure? Why is it so hard to see myself like the majority of people do?
I truly do not know.
My son is a real good baseball player. Young. He is thirteen. He is already five foot seven and 175 pounds of muscle. But he is on a baseball team for school (He goes to a sixth through twelve middle/high school) where the majority of the kids are in high school, mainly seniors.
With this being said, he is a top nine player. He does not play much because he is young and that is a good move. But it also brings him down. The players on the team are good to him. They are all so much older than he is, but they treat him like one of the team. Well…
Almost all.
Yesterday he came home and was doing exactly what I do. Talking bad about his playing. He is not good, he cant hit or play defense or anything. And I was talking more and more to him because I could not figure out where this was coming from.
Well, after a while I found out a freshman on the team, who may or may not be the worst player I have even seen, was telling him all of this. Now keep in mind, I bought a radar gun to test his hitting exit velo. It is the highest I have seen posted online for his age. Keep in mind he has had twenty plate appearances and only struck out twice, hit two doubles, and has scored six runs. All against high school teams. He can hit mid 80’s pitching. He is good. His coach, who played pro ball for years, tells him he is good. People in the facility where we train who keep coming up to me and want him to play on their travel ball team thinks he is good. Can he work on things? Hell yes. But there is no reason for him to have any doubt.
Yet, for some reason he believes the one kid who should never be holding a bat.
Just like his dad, who believes the one person who does not deserve a Twitter account.
So I need to focus more on the positives about me. I need to see myself like my son sees me.
Because I want him to see himself like I see him
Thank you so much for reading. Please subscribe as I am posting more and more each week. Going to use Substack as my main outlet of sharing thoughts. Also consider a paid subscription for more content coming in the future and as always, if you enjoy what you see and wanted to support what I do, you can tip/donate/buy me a coffee here.
Love this Tony! And I can relate. I grew up hearing how worthless I was whenever my dad got mad at any of us. He could spew out quite the tirade. Anyway I remember how I got through that was I told myself that I was not worthless and stupid and all that. I just said it to my heart and I believed it. Of course I have my moments like most people, but I know I am a smart, worthy and kind person. In my heart, not just my head.