the subtle power in emotional neutrality.

I have now made these journal entries live on my site but I have not specifically promoted them yet on threads or wherever I end up doing so. I actually feel really, calm so far. Normally when I launch anything new I am launching it on an emotional high which in the moment does feel really exciting but I normally let that high only continue if it succeeds. Which is hard when you are a smaller creator because nothing actually succeeds right away. 

I take that back, I ‘believe’ nothing can succeed right away so that’s probably why it doesn’t. 

But even still, it can sometimes be hard to post or launch under the high emotional wave because you are going to come down eventually and typically you come down at the same time it’s not performing the way you had hoped it might. So for it sort of compounds on us. 

Even yesterday I ended up posting my sourdough video, finally I thought. But I wasn’t feeling high about it because it took me longer to edit. My turn around time was just slower because I had over 3 hours of raw footage to sift through and I never really force myself to edit, I just do it when I want to. I knew it didn’t mean it was boring, it was just that I was bored of it because I had watched it so many times. An average person will watch it just the once. It’s way more thrilling for me to put 1.5 hours of raw footage to 15 or 20 minutes which is what I can turn around fairly easily, nearly weekly. 

But I still decided to post it even though in the moment I was feeling emotionally neutral about it and I realized that it actually feels really good for my body to do that. I wasn’t refreshing YouTube studio every five seconds because I wasn’t in the high. 

I’ve realized that maybe when I’m feeling emotionally high is when I simply need to do the actual work. 

When I’m feeling that high, I don’t need to hit post.

That’s when I need to make the art.

Because when I’m creating there’s no refreshing stats, there’s no opportunity for disappointment really. There’s just flow state and that’s truly where my emotional high wants to be.

Filming or writing self is free to express however high she is feeling. 

I think when I post on a high and feel like I’m refreshing to check on my success I am merely giving my high permission slip over to data and numbers that are mostly meaningless! 

It’s like, wow wow I feel really good, let me make sure I’m succeeding so that it’s really okay to feel really good. Let me make sure the stats are up just like my energy….oh the views are 22% lower than average, maybe it wasn’t actually a good video, no no that’s not true I really liked it, I know I did I felt so excited when I posted it, these views mean nothing, you know actually I don’t care about the views at all, screw the views it doesn’t matter. Well actually they do matter because if they are doing good I would feel really good, I’m just pretending they don’t matter when I perceive them as doing badly. Oh, oh wow there’s been a surge in views!! Look at that I’ve gotten a few comments and people are liking it, see I knew it was a good video. 

This is what happens in my brain when I post from the emotional high. It’s a bit exhausting. And let me tell you up until yesterday I basically only posted a video from an emotional high because that’s when I feel most excited about sharing something. We can see that yes my feel-good permission slip goes to numbers no matter how much I try to not let them matter. 

So here now, I am claiming that I want to practice this year. Only hitting post when I’m feeling more emotionally neutral OR if I am feeling high, cool but I need to hit post and delete YouTube Studio from my phone, close my laptop for the day and just continue on creating and being in my emotional excitement. I can check it all the next morning, or the next time I truly feel emotionally neutral. 

This will be a good practice for 2026 I think. 

I just went out to let my chickens out for the morning and the sunrise was so gorgeous! It’s like January 8th was saying yes to everything I’ve just written, and also telling me that today is going to be a beautiful day. 

Anyway, another thing I think I should tell myself when I go to check my stats, even here because now I’ve made it live I’m curious if I have a subscriber yet or not but I don’t know. In some ways I want to just sit in the delusion that I do!! That’s what I’ve been doing so far. I almost just don’t want to look for an entire month. I will have no idea if I’m writing to the void to myself or to 100 people. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day though because wow do these help me. 

For context I journal every day nearly. It’s always been a solid practice, though I seldom go back and look at what I write, if I do I go back years not days. I think there’s a goodness in that. 

But typing here, actually analyzing my thoughts, writing them down with the knowledge that someone will see them. Sure I am still being vulnerable but it’s almost a different layer of being vulnerable with myself as well. 

I truly love it. But I’ve gotten off track again. 

Another thing I should tell myself when I go to check any stats, is that, it is safe to feel disappointment. Disappointment in performance doesn’t mean I like my art less, think I should just throw in the towel. 

I know deep down I desire it to do well because I want to feel seen, and exposure also might pay the bills one day. But that’s all it is. 

I know I would hate to get to 80 and look back on all the videos I was creating at 27 and think, wow I really polished that up so much for performance and I really wish I would’ve just kept it real. 

Of course inevitably performance will alter your art, it’s bound to happen. But if I can just mostly stay true to myself and create things that matter and feel meaningful despite the numbers. 

I will count that as a success. 

And I will count the numbers as a success to because hell, they ARE! 

It is fun when it is performing well! 

And I won’t deny that but I will separate it from the videos or blogs worth.  

I have to separate it. 

Or the disappointment of low performance would stop the art from existing entirely. 

In some ways I think this will help too with the notion of separating who I am as a promoter of my art. 

The promotion is in a different category than the execution 

I’m okay with being a lousy promoter (up until recently, I’m going to get better this year) 

Okay that’s all for now.