i have adhd, and with that comes a hefty dose of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. it basically means that any kind of perceived rejection hurts much more to me than to most people. and "rejection" is really any kind of feedback which could be interpreted as negative.
the thing that sucks is that it's entirely an emotional reaction. i want to be able to receive constructive criticism of the stuff i make/write. hell, if someone is an asshole to me, i want to be able to shrug it off and just not really care what they think. but it's a massive uphill battle. rejection in any form takes a toll on me, and it takes a lot of energy for me to get past that and face it rationally. and even then the pain still lingers. in extreme cases it can linger for weeks.
anyway, all of that is to say: some of my blog posts have been posted on lobste.rs recently (and hacker news, but i'm too scared to read any the comments there so i haven't yet lol). and that's great! genuinely, i'm really happy about that. i don't want this to be interpreted as me saying i wish my stuff wasn't being shared. and i'm glad people are talking about my stuff!
whenever i post something, i always kinda hope that it gets shared around and people talk about it. as much as i wish i could just write stuff purely from intrinsic motivation, without needing anything external, the fact that other people care is something that keeps me going with pretty much everything i make. sometimes i'll make stuff just for myself. but ultimately, if i'm putting it out there, it's so that the world can see, and i want the world to see.
but that perspective is directly at odds with the pit in my stomach i feel everytime i see that one of my blog posts on the lobste.rs front page. and that people are commenting on it! fuck! what are they saying? did i get something wrong? do people think i'm stupid? it's... stressful.
so anyways. i hope that the more it happens, the easier it'll become for me to handle. i do think there's a path forward for me to grow here. at least i hope so.
i'm trying to internalize a few things:
- it's ok to be wrong. it's a learning opportunity! that's exciting! if i hadn't put out the wrong thing, then i wouldn't have learned the right thing. and learning is good.
- not all criticism is bad. most is good, actually. and oftentimes it doesn't actually mean they reject me. someone can enjoy the article and still have stuff to say about it that isn't strictly positive, or have questions about parts of it, or whatever.
- not everyone has to like everything i post. this one is (rationally) so obvious and yet it's still so hard for me to internalize.
- at least for blog posts, it's pretty rare for people to comment that they liked it if they don't have anything else to say about it, unless there was some exceptional insight or quote or something. people generally just upvote and move on. so the comments will naturally lean towards being more critical.
- i feel like i had other stuff to write here but i forget and like whatever you get the idea
i don't really know what the point of this post is. maybe i just needed to vent, idk
and it's still really cool to see people enjoy the stuff i post. when i see that something got, like, 40 upvotes, it's so easy to abstract that away into just a number. bigger number better. but like, those are 30 people who read my post, and all independently decided it was good enough to warrant an upvote. and there's even more people who are reading it. those are real people! that's so cool! that's so fucking cool. it's so easy to forget that.