Money. Yep, I’m really going there.

Posted on September 20, 2014 by luckyotter

Talking about money is something I hate. It’s because I don’t have any. My years of abuse as a victim of psychopathy was so demoralizing that it nearly destroyed all my self confidence (something I never had much of to begin with). I think being poor is something a lot of people who spent most of their years trapped in the bubble of psychopathy have been forced to deal with–especially if they were the family scapegoat who was always told “you’re a failure” or “you’ll never succeed in anything.” News flash: we got brainwashed.

I have the native intelligence to have become pretty successful, and I did have a few false starts and a promising beginning in publishing many years ago. But I’ve always had trouble sticking with anything or following it through due to my pathetic self image and negativity. When I’ve had opportunities either I (or my psychopaths) sabotaged them.

Being a person with autism doesn’t help. As an Aspie, I lack the social skills necessary to be able to connect and network well with those who could have helped me. Family? Fuggeddabout it! They were never any help at all. I won’t go into anymore detail about that in this post; if you’re interested in my sob story you can click on the link at the top “My Story” and link to my memoirs. You might just want to do that anyway, since you’re interested enough in the topic of NPD and psychopathy to be reading my blog.

So, here’s the good part. Currently I have a crappy job that barely pays more than minimum wage and I’m supporting myself and my daughter. I was pretty much resigned to always being one of the “working poor” especially since I’m over 50. I didn’t have high hopes for the future. I felt like I was just marking time until death.

Almost a year ago I kicked out my psychopathic ex-husband, who I wasn’t even married to since 2005, but allowed him to live with me anyway. Pretty crazy, huh? Being divorced but allowing him to live with me and use me for 7 years after the divorce. Can we say insane?

At first being completely independent (and no longer depended on for narcissistic supply) was pretty scary and slow going. Many times this past year I feared I wouldn’t make it.

I’ve always loved writing but thought I forgot how to write. Actually I just lost the motivation and desire, and that was due to severe depression and C-PTSD from so many years living under the shadow of psychopaths. My depression has been lifting, and one day not even two weeks ago I decided I would start a blog. And here it is.

I’m pretty proud of my blog. But more than just making me feel good about myself, I realized I never forgot how to write. In fact, writing’s an addiction now, and I’m posting so much I’m afraid it might be too much and people will get bored. But evidently they are not, going by the increase in my view and follower counts.

At first I was writing this blog just for me, as self therapy. And it still is that. I still have a LOT of shit to work through. I’m not out of the woods yet.

But now I have a vision beyond just writing for myself. I want to help others, and I want to make a living blogging while I help others. I absolutely love doing this. It’s a passion and I haven’t had a real passion in…forever.

I already got the custom design upgrade (pretty cheap at $30) and am thinking about taking a class in CSS at the community college so I can use those features. I can try to use the tutorials here but find them a little hard to follow.

If this blog ever gets big (I’m not counting on it but you never know!), I’ll probably be wanting to upgrade to WP.org to get my own domain name and maybe allow ads on my blog which would also bring in a small income. I have to learn a lot more about this.

Which brings me to my main point, which is a request of sorts. I was afraid to ask for money because I didn’t set up this blog to make money and it just seems, well, greedy. But here’s the thing. You already know I’m strapped for cash and don’t make much on my day job, and I dearly want to keep my blog going, for myself as well as for others who may be helped by it. But right now, I’m even struggling to pay for Internet access. I could use some help.

So what I am doing is setting up a Paypal account and a link in the green bar in my header if anyone is interested in donating to my blog (the money would ONLY be used to keep the blog going, not for anything else-you have to trust me on this). Of course I don’t want anyone to feel obligated to donate, and I don’t actually expect to get any donations. But anything you could afford would be deeply appreciated. If you can’t afford anything (or don’t want to donate), no worries! Following and reading my blog is fantastic support in itself and is more than appreciated, believe me.

But I’m going to throw it up there anyway and see what happens.

One more thing. I have been meditating a lot recently and there are some great subliminal videos on Youtube to help you do this more effectively and help you relax. People may be skeptical, but something kind of weird happened. While browsing meditation videos last night, I came across this one, which promised after viewing it, you would begin to find new ways to attract money you never had before. I thought of the donation idea today and also decided I want this blog to more than just for myself and also become MY JOB. So I wonder if these new desires are a manifestation of whatever subliminal “messages” were implanted in my brain last night.

Here is the video I watched.

Even if you’re skeptical about it’s money attracting powers, the images of space and the universe are beautiful beyond belief and the music is very relaxing.

Good Read: Blogging is narcissistic (except when it’s not)

Posted on September 20, 2014 by luckyotter

I was going to post the last part of my story yesterday but I had a long day and wasn’t up to it (well, actually…I was just procrastinating as usual). I PROMISE it will be up today or tonight. Really. Be patient, grasshoppers.

In the meantime, I want to share an article I just read that ties right into a post of mine from the other day about whether or not blogging about narcissism is narcissistic. This has been a bit of an obsession of mine lately. (My verdict: it could be.)

I didn’t see a re-blog button on the article (it’s from WP.org–is that why?) so I’ll just repost it in my clunky amateurish fashion because I have no idea how to use the CSS feature I just purchased as part of custom design. Boo on me.

Blogging is Narcissistic (Except When it’s Not)
By Tom McFarlin (originally posted September 17, 2013)

One of the things that’s becoming more and more common is that certain critics are claiming that we’re becoming more and more of a narcissistic society with our constant sharing of things on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, and so on.

I don’t know if I observation really holds water or not – rarely are things black and white, so I’m sure it’s true in some cases – but I’ve never really considered blogging in and of itself of be narcissistic.

This isn’t to say it can’t be, but I don’t think that it – as a medium – is meant to feed that particular aspect of the human condition.

Blogging is Narcissistic…
I mean, I get it. The argument goes something like this:

Narcissism is excessive or erotic interest in oneself
Blogging involves talking about oneself
Therefore, blogging is narcissistic
And, like I said earlier, rarely are things black and white, but I don’t believe that the majority of bloggers are out to serve some level of self-involvement. Instead, I think that they are sharing their content in order to either help one other or to get feedback from others on any given set of circumstances.

So what’s the point of bringing all of this up?

What You Have To Say Matters
In short, I’m one of those idealistic people that believes everyone has something to say regardless of how good or how poor of a writer they are.

We’ve all got our beliefs, our ideas, and our things that we want to share with others, which is why I love building things on the largest publishing platform on the planet. Simply put, it helps people share whatever it is they have to share.

And even though it may not be of interest to me, it’s of interest to others, and that matters.

Share Others Work
The aspect of blogging is that I – as well as you – know plenty of people who manage blogs that do nothing but share and/or promote other peoples work. On top of that, there’s nothing wrong with promoting said work on your own blog to help evangelize someone else’s work.

But at the end of the day, it’s your blog and you’re free to do whatever it is what you’re want to do with it; however, I do believe that we should help share other people’s work. That’s my two cents.

…Except When It Is

Ultimately, my point is that for those of you who are blogging to keep at it and keep sharing. The majority of us love to see what it is that you’re working on, and we love to get into the conversation when possible.

But know that blogging can be as narcissistic as you make it. Don’t listen to whatever anyone else is saying. Write on – whatever it’s about – as we, or someone, do want to hear what you have to share.

I’m frustrated.

Posted on September 18, 2014 by luckyotter

I started my blog a week ago as a form of self therapy and didn’t care if anyone read my stuff. Or didn’t think I cared. But I admit it: I do.

I read a lot of other blogs here at WordPress and some of them have thousands of followers and hundreds of comments for each post. Of course I realize most of these people have been at WordPress for a long time, and naturally those people will have more followers and comments than a newbie. Some of them may be professional bloggers who have paid for SEO and know all sorts of tricks I don’t to increase the numbers of hits they get.

But all that said, I still find it frustrating and disheartening when I spend hours writing a post and then another hour or so editing and trying to make it look great, only to come back in the morning and find NO comments or even any likes.

I was a little afraid to post this because as a person surrounded by a lot of narcissists, I worry that I may be seen as a narcissist myself, and as I mentioned in other posts, blogging on a public website and airing your most private issues for the whole world to see is really a very narcissistic activity. Admitting you want more comments or followers is akin to the six year old who whines, “Look at MEEEEEE!” and “Do you like MEEEEEE?” I certainly don’t want to be seen as self indulgent and whiney.

But another part of me thinks it’s justified. All of us are narcissists to some degree or another whether we like it or not. We all fall somewhere on the continuum and it’s only human to want people to read the stuff you spent an entire evening working on. If I was just writing for myself, why spend so much time and effort on my blog’s appearance? Why pay for Custom Design? I might as well just put it in WordPad, errors in spelling and punctuation and and all.

My blog is my outlet. So I won’t censor myself except for a certain level of political correctness. I don’t like to offend people. Of course offending people is something that can’t be avoided unless I completely censor myself, which I won’t do. Political correctness is overrated anyway. Hell, it’s my blog and this is something that’s bothering me, so I’m posting it. It’s not like anyone’s reading my stuff anyway.

I do want to take a moment to thank Opinionated Man for his awesome blog Harsh Reality. His blog is very popular and its easy to understand why. OM gives fantastic advice to new bloggers. He’s always quick to reply to his comments and questions too. I’m trying some of the stuff he suggests to draw more attention to my blog; hopefully it works!

Patience is not a virtue of mine. Maybe I just have to chill and not worry so much about whether people are “Liking” or commenting on my posts or not.

I’m inviting others to share their experiences when they were new to blogging and let me know if they had this same problem when they started. If anyone has any tips for getting more traffic (though OM seems to have pretty much covered everything in his blog) please share that here too.

Meantime, I’ll keep writing regardless of whether anyone’s reading my blog or not.

Blogging is crack for the soul, but is blogging about narcissism, um, well, narcissistic?

Posted on September 16, 2014 by luckyotter

I’m taking a short break before I post the next part of my story, and I apologize for that. That project is giving me a lot of clarity and insight into both myself and my abusers, but it’s emotionally and mentally exhausting, so today’s posts are a bit lighter.

I read an article yesterday by another survivor whose work I really admire (An Upturned Soul) which brought up the question of how you can tell whether a blogger who writes about narcissism is actually a narcissist. It’s an interesting question and one that left me scratching my head and a little bemused. The answer is, you can’t. Not really. There are some clues (which can be found largely in the way the blogger react to comments), but unless you meet the person or are very familiar with their posts and online behavior, there’s really no way to tell for sure. After all, how do you know the blogger isn’t the real narcissist shifting the blame to the “narcissist” who is really the real victim? Here is her article. Make of it what you will, but it does raise intriguing questions. I think as survivors of abuse, we have to suspend disbelief to some degree and just assume the authors on this topic are on the level until we get to know them better. We must assume they are innocent until proven guilty. It’s all we can do.

Which brings me to the main reason I dragged my feet for so long about starting this blog: I was afraid if I started a blog about narcissism, people might think I was a narcissist. After all, isn’t blogging about your personal life story to complete strangers kind of a narcissistic activity, especially when we make use of things like “Like” buttons, “Share” buttons that send our posts to other social media, comments sections (we want proof people are reading our posts!), rankings and ratings, and various and sundry other widgets that call further attention to our posts and ensure we get as many hits as possible? Oh, and there’s the stats, which let us know how we’re doing and how much our blog is being read and how much it’s liked, and even if out posts are being read by people in foreign countries! On top of that, we want our blogs to look great too. I broke down today and even though I couldn’t really afford it, bought the “custom design” package for $30 so I could change the fonts and color strip on the header to something I thought looked more striking and professional. (I have no idea how CSS works yet though). We want our blogs to be the sharpest and coolest looking ones out there! We want to be noticed and our work admired! Isn’t this all pretty narcissistic when you think about it?

But you know what? I don’t care if it’s narcissistic or not, because I decided I love blogging. Now that I’ve started I can’t stop! In less than a week, I’ve discovered so much about myself, even remembering things long forgotten. Blogging’s a lot cheaper (and maybe sometimes even better) than one on one therapy. I no longer feel so alone, knowing how many of you fellow bloggers have been through similar experiences. I think people who have been through our kind of experience tend to feel more comfortable writing about it than talking to someone, because so many of us have trust issues with the people we are closest to irl, who have all too often disappointed us, proven to be untrustworthy, or have even triangulated with our abusers against us.

Here’s my other reasons I waited so long to start doing this.
— I thought you had to be an expert on something. I’m not an expert on anything; I just know a little about a lot, but am deeply interested in certain topics. So I guess that makes me expert enough.
— Even though I know I can write, I was afraid people might hate my writing.
— I’ve never had a blog before. The closest I ever came was posts on message boards, forums, and other people’s blogs. It’s like diving into the deep end for the first time. Even though you already know how to swim, the deep end is a lot scarier than the shallow end at first.
— I thought it would be hard. People told me WordPress was really hard to learn, but actually it isn’t at all. There’s a little bit of a learning curve, but by my 3rd post I felt like I knew what I was doing.
–I thought you had to know coding or be a tech geek. I only know a little rudimentary HTML, the sort you can use on any forum post. I thought you had to have some sort of esoteric programming knowledge.
— I thought my story would bore people.
— I thought my blog would look like crap.
— I thought it would be time consuming. Well it is, but I’m fine with that.
I’m pretty damn proud of my blog–does that make me sound like a narcissist?