I got myself a new outfit. For what purpose? To take promo photos for my social media singer-songwriter account, and also to be able to write a Monica’s Closet blog post about. Because, even though I’m still making less than a dollar a day off this blog, I haven’t given up on it yet. Or on myself. Of course, spending $300 on an outfit just to write a blog post on a blog where you’re making less than a dollar per day does not make any sense whatsoever. But…
This is a custom made outfit. I commissioned Zoe Arku Designs (instagram) to make this outfit for me. The only thing that matters is that I love it, so I won’t ask you what you think. I’m tired of asking people what they think. They always find a way to make me feel like I’m a pathetic joke.
Would have been nice to get some higher quality photos but my camera decided to not work and the pictures had to be taken with my cell phone by someone who doesn’t really have an eye for photography. And I was out in public so I wasn’t really able to relax. Then there was the wig. It was a nightmare to deal with.
But this is an accomplishment for me, because I went out in public to take my pictures. I still have such a long way to go; but I’ve come very far from where I used to be. I was reading some posts I wrote on another blog years ago, and it reminded me of what I’ve been through in my life. Sometimes I can get hard on myself. As I try to pursue my singing and songwriting interests, I expose myself to the rejection of people not listening to my music, not liking my pictures, not following my accounts. It can make you question yourself and question your worth. For me, it’s tough because I’m trying to find myself after decades of allowing rejection to send me into hiding. So to expose myself to the very thing that caused me to become agoraphobic in the first place is challenging. I often feel like crawling back into my hole. But coming across those blog posts the other day, it reminded me of what I’ve been through in my life and how much I’ve had to overcome. And as painful as this can be, trying to make something of yourself and your life but failing, I have to keep going. It is hard to keep my chin up sometimes. It’s hard to keep on going. It’s hard not to feel like a fool. But I have to fight. I have to fight and I have to measure the value of what I’m doing by the strength it gives me. And after reading those blog posts, being reminded where I was, although this stuff hurts, I can see that I have gained a great deal of strength and self-belief by comparison to the past. I still struggle, but everything I am doing, pointless though it seems, financially unrewarding though it is, it is helping me in ways that are important. And so, I will keep on doing it, and just fight harder not to take the rejection and allow it to undermine my sense of self like it wants to do.