I’ve had a lot of feedback over the years. I think it’s an important thing to engage with; if we don’t listen to feedback, what we’re saying is we have all the answers in life; we’re saying “Screw other people’s stinky opinions, my ego’s more happy in isolation”. But feedback can help us grow (I guess as long as it doesn’t latch onto our sense of self worth … another can-of-worms topic …).
So anyway, having lived with this philosophy for some years in various spheres, I think I’ve accrued probably a good few thousand opinions on my work, my approach, everything I do. This is great, and 99% of it, positive or negative, is from people who genuinely care, first and foremost, as humans.
However … I logged into the the general blog feedback thing for the first time in a little while, and a strange thing lurked there: trolling. Three or four comments submitted 24 hours apart, worded as vicious personal attacks. First time ever. Typical trolling; they included cyclical reasoning and inbuilt contradictions.
Hmm. So here’s my response if it was you (and I know you will be reading this): don’t worry about it.
I know the general advice is not to engage with trolls at all, but here’s the thing: I believe trolls are people too. So often I’ve confused my own pain for anger, so quick have I been to lash out and go Red Ross over a situation in order to disguise what is really, honestly, just pain lurking deep in me.
In fact if I had a penny for every time I’d said something stupid to cover a pain that was really rooted elsewhere, I’d have … I dunno, lots of pennies I guess.
So here’s to the trolls. Here’s to the angry. The dispossessed. The abandoned. I raise a glass to the gutter-dwellers, the self-hating, the constantly-livid. High-five the miserable. Hat-tip to the lonely. The vile. The addicted. The abusers and the abused. The neglected. Those who are convinced of their worthlessness for a trillion miserable reasons.
You are worth fighting for. You are worth time and energy. Even if you’ve been a dick. So what.
Your value does not correlate with your mistakes 👍
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Maybe I should do a comic about thi… oh wait I just did! Yay!
