A Writer's Notebook, Day Nine-Hundred-And-Twenty-Eight

I want to find new ways for me to respond to the situations I find myself trapped in, but that is not an easy thing.  I can think of the limitations around me, the choices that I could make, but which seem to be detrimental, but not ones that are potentially positive.  For example, if I discuss this in terms of my attempt to get my poetry published, I know that the efforts I am making right now have failed so far.  This involves my sending out work to journals and publishers.  I have attempted, numerous times, to tweak the formula for what I send out, where I send my work, and various other aspects of my strategy.  I do not think, right now, that just sending out work to journals is going to create a different result for me.  It feels crazy to expect that to change on its own, right now, but, I am still doing it, because I am still inside a perspective that limits my choices so much.  I am not open to self-publishing, in general, for a large number of reasons, and I acknowledge that I might be wrong about some of this, but I also recognize that being successful in self-publishing would not make me happy, unless it was as a stepping stone to traditional publishing.  I could explain it in terms of the community of poets that I admire and wish to join, the conversation I want my work to be part of, but I also must acknowledge that I do not feel equipped in terms of self-publishing, and the issues I have as a dyslexic are a large reason for that.  It is not that I haven't educated myself on self-publishing, it is that my explorations reveal that many of the responsibilities would not be feasible for me without a significant infrastructure to support me.  This is true in terms business aspects like book-keeping, marketing, team management, even overseeing the manufacturing of a book I write.   As well, I have deficits that would adversely impact other, more creative aspects to do with design and even editorial decisions.  I can explain all this, and it feels rational to me.  I don't want to self-publish, in all honesty.  It would be driven by desperation, and that is not a good motivation for any such effort.  

The truth is, it is easy for me to explain why the only path forward is the one I seem incapable of making work, and of offering reasons for why the alternatives are not right for me.  I don't see any real choice that keeps me moving towards my goal, but it is not working, and the repeated effort with no results is very destructive for me.  I don't know how to survive this, how to continue to be if I cannot make a positive change, and I have a very limited idea of what would that would mean.  In terms of my writing, it is specifically built around goals I've had since I was very young, around which large aspects of my identity have developed.  I can't give them up without shattering so much of what matters to me, and I do not want to change in those ways.  I want to be able to succeed based on the skills I have spent my life developing, and to feel that I am actually doing work that matters to me, but how can I do that when I also know that I don't see a way forward?  I know it is something I must change, that my perspective on things needs to shift in order to open up a way of seeing this that allows different actions on my part, but I don't have a clue what that would be.  I feel as though I can see it all very clearly, and that their is not an alternative path, but I also know that what I see, my perspective, is itself a part of the trap.

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