Noëlle the 8-Bit🏳️🌈🎄 is a user on elekk.xyz. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse.
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Noëlle the 8-Bit🏳️🌈🎄
@noelle
It is REALLY HARD to not think of myself in terms of what I can do. And when I run across someone who can do everything I care about better than I can, it's REALLY HARD for me to not think that it would just be better if I stepped aside and didn't bother anymore.
@jk oh, Mastodon has completely turned off my desire to make music and art, and is slowly eroding my desire to write code.
@noelle :( it sucks. i find not talking about my own projects until they're done kinda helps a bit. like right now im kinda building (heavily modifying) a guitar, and i've taken loads of pictures of the process. but i haven't posted a single thing about it on here because for some reason that just completely destroys my motivation
@jk Especially since there's so much FOSS attitude in the DNA of Mastodon, so when I post something I'm even remotely happy with I /inevitably/ get a "look how I can do it better!" response.
@craigmaloney @noelle i really wish my brain didn't think like this, but i feel like fundamentally people only have a finite amount of time to look at stuff on the internet, so it kinda IS a zero sum game. like, at various points in my life, the more new music i've been exposed to, the less i've cared about or remembered it. i can't get that out of my head when i'm making anything, that the number of people like me making stuff is at least 100x what it was 20 years ago
@jk @craigmaloney Yeah, and the other half of it is: what does it /matter/ if it's me doing the thing? If I do X and someone else does X+1, why should anyone settle for X just because it's me doing it?
@noelle @craigmaloney my strategy for this kinda stuff has been to try to imbue an extremely personal aspect into my work, whether it be hidden or vague or something. to just make something that's entirely mine, that makes me feel something specific to me. so at least the work will have some value in as much as i am unique whether i like it or not. e.g. when i release my album i'm thinking of including a long set of liner notes describing how it came to be. almost like a personal time capsule?
@noelle @craigmaloney then i can almost avoid thinking of it as something i'm creating for the benefit of others, more of a scrapbook, or an archive, that happens to be distributed to a few (maybe even few dozen) others. i find that kind of reassuring. kind of
@noelle @jk Well, there's two ways of thinking about this.
The first is to think that they do the thing better than you so your voice won't be heard over their awesomeness.
The second is to realize that your voice is special and no matter what the other folks out there do you have your own unique perspective to bring to this.
It's not so much being the best person at the table, it's just showing up and finding a seat.
@craigmaloney @jk Craig, this is nice from an outside perspective, but I need you to understand that my perspective is shouting "WHY THE FUCK DO I DESERVE A SEAT AT THE TABLE?".
You don't. What nobody thought to tell you is that nobody else does, either. We all just snuck in through the back door.
@starbreaker @noelle @jk @craigmaloney speak for yourself, I think I was just standing here and someone put the table in front of me.
@noelle @jk We all do. And then we realize that the table is large and the seats are plenty now that we have the Internet.
I know it's hard. Trust me, I've been there. I worry all the time that I'm going to be performing to an audience of one (and that guy is a real pain). But that doesn't mean we don't keep trying.
Here, come sit next to me. I promise I'll save you a seat.
@craigmaloney @jk @noelle I just want to add that I don't think it's X + 1 and X, but X + Y and X + Z. Everyone has something different to offer. I'm the only consultant at Atomic without a college degree and I offer something very unique there; it took me awhile to appreciate that.
@noelle
It's a delusion to compare your lvl1 to others' final-boss builds.
I didn't start writing as good as I am right now. I started writing very crappily. I learned. I practiced. I never gave up. It's been 20 years since I wrote my first anime romance fan fiction. Maybe your first essay would be three times better than the crappy POS I wrote 20 years ago. But those years haven't gone to waste. Don't waste yours; keep doing what you love.
@jk @noelle Personal anecdote time:
I do a podcast called Open Metalcast. I listened to other metal podcasters and they seemed to do this so much better than I did. Professional shows, even. How could I compete?
But one day I said "fuck it" and just did my own thing.
One day someone else started another podcast (Rage and Frustration). I got worried. What if they were better than me?
Turns out they liked different music than I did. There was room for two CC metal podcasts.
@noelle There are a metric fuckton of people who are better #scifi and #fantasy writers than I am.
But they aren't telling the story I'm telling, and they sure as shit aren't doing it MY way. They can't. It would never even occur to them.
It doesn't matter if what you're doing has been done before and better. DO IT YOUR WAY.
Nobody else can.
I KNEW I should have immediately followed up posting this toot by muting responses to it.
@noelle Sorry. I'll stop.
maple classic™ 
@noelle I'm sorry. I know how chirpy optimism can be unwelcome when we feel unworthy of it and I stepped in it.
@noelle idk why ur acting (just what i think is) very hostile to people who genuinely want to help u 😦
@weirdoslam Please keep tone policing out of my mentions.
@noelle jfc? “tone policing”? i’m just honestly concerned about helping ya triumph over ur condition (which i myself have been in many times before) just as much as u do 🙁
@weirdoslam If this is the sort of thing that helped you, I'm so glad it did! But it's not helpful to everyone, and for a lot of us hearing advice that /doesn't/ help us just makes us feel bad for not being helped by it.
I understand it's hard not to Try To Help, but this is one of the cases where acknowledging someone's emotions helps a lot more than trying to talk someone around into feeling something else, if that makes sense?
@TheShyIon yeah i get you. but also i can’t know if my advise can help or not until i suggest it. if it doesn’t and i can’t think of anything else i’ll be sure to back off after that for the simple fact of That’s All I Know, Sorry
@TheShyIon a lot of people gave advise to her and i’m very unsure that *none* of the many of them wouldn’t work at all for her 🙁
@weirdoslam There are certain depression brainstates where advice at all can be hurtful, simply because one isn't in a good mental place to put such things into action.
If you want /my/ advice on the subject—asking first or putting an "advice" cw on the response can do a lot to minimize accidental harm.
If I could convince Mastodon at large of only one thing, it would be this:
if you see someone complaining, DO NOT give them advice.
If someone ASKS for advice, offer it.
But 90% of the time, someone complaining is just venting. They're not telling you the whole story, and they're not receptive to being given advice, because in that mental state, your "good-natured advice" is their "HERE'S HOW YOU'RE DOING THIS WRONG".
Do not respond with advice unless it's asked for.
@ratbaby you know what bugs me is like
do you know how much stress would be avoided if people just, like, asked first
why is everyone so bad at asking if people want things
@InspectorCaracal yeah its really easy. just ask for that consent cause otherwise, when you're in that state of mind, it feels like a lecture.
@InspectorCaracal @ratbaby Your toot points out what's one part of the problem: you're using questions rhetorically.
Okay, sometimes rhetorical questions are easy to spot, even for an autist like me.
But sometimes it is really hard to know that if someone asks a question, they really are not expecting to get answers.
So please everyone, make your own part and don't use rhetorical questions when you're really just venting out.
@InspectorCaracal @ratbaby Ah well, your toot was a response to the topic so I thought to reply to the end instead of branching the chain. Sorry for the inconvenience.
@Stoori It's okay, it was just a pretty specific tangent and I got confused how you made the connection.
I do want to point out that answering rhetorical questions and giving advice aren't really the same thing, though, because one is giving information and the other is telling someone what they should do. At least that's how it seems to work in my experience? I've found people get more upset about being told what to do than being given information they didn't want.
@InspectorCaracal Yes, rhetorical questions are not the whole picture, just one part of the problem of unsolicited advice. But they may be the most obvious group of ”false positives”.
For example, questions like ”why do people do this?” can be rhetorical venting or legitimate pondering, and if it's venting, getting a proper answer may sound like splaining on being apologetic, whereas the person answering may think that they're just giving information the other doesn't have.
@Stoori Oh, I know, I'm usually the one answering them.
@noelle second best trend would be CWing unsolicited advice as such because then you get to feel like you are Doing Good and people get to ignore your unwanted input
@noelle sorry if i was doing this btw. i find often to empathise with someone's situation in a way that tries to be validating i end up sharing my own experiences and things i've attempted. but the whole Unknowability Of The Other thing multiplied by low-bandwidth text means it's a gamble whether it will even be meaningful to anyone in any way
@jk I do this too, as an attempt to build understanding. It's kind of hard not to sometimes...but the positive experiences stemming from doing it seem to outweigh the negative, as long as the goal isn't to just talk about yourself.
@noelle I'm frequently pretty good at this, and then I'll have an interaction where I look back on it and think, "they didn't need my goddamn opinion, I'm an ass"
@noelle this is absolutely something I had to learn.
@noelle I managed to see this toot right after doing exactly that. Oops. 😖
@noelle I think you're already upset when you posted this, so I'm thinking twice whether I should reply this— but I disagree. Some people might really need help, in a shit situation atm, confused, in need of some company and could've been better off if someone at least gave them advice, even if it doesn't solve the actual problem. Some people sucks at asking for help or at communicating.
@noelle if they didn't want the advice, you can apologize (and please don't bitch about the other person being ungrateful). If they open up more, that's great. Sometimes advices doesn't need to solve problems, sometimes it can just be more of a knock on the head.
I commented this so people don't generalize, if you can help out, do so. And I respect @noelle side, some don't need an advice and just wanted to let stuff out
@jaan_paul @noelle I agree with Jaan. I've found unexpected help without explicitly asking for it and given advice the same way. Rather than transfer expectations onto others and require them to read your mind, or go through a process of asking if you're asking for help, how about signaling your intention to vent in the first place with a "venting" CW?
@tomasino @jaan_paul @noelle you could just ask them and remove any ambiguity
@jaan_paul @noelle Yes, this is my experience... If someone is venting they should say so. It is difficult to know their intentions otherwise. If not they are inviting people to discuss.
I have seen people venting.. then get upset because no answers.
If you post something publicly you should also be prepared to talk about it. If not... then just say so.
@noelle This is good for face-to-face too. Or telephone, or writing letters...
@noelle It took me about five years of annoying my wife to really learn this. 😅
People need to hear "That sucks." Not, "Your problem is your fault because you're not doing this easy thing."
@noelle i relate to this so much. every time i come across someone who's doing the same thing as me it makes me want to do that thing less. the more specific that thing is the worse it is. like, someone making music that's good? not that demotivating. someone making music very similar to my music? makes me feel like the whole thing was a waste