So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye

When I first joined Vocal, it was the latest attempt at making a fresh start with my life; after decades of countless missed opportunities, undervaluation on all fronts, and being left to my own devices with insufficient support, this seemed like an ideal platform to start building a solid and stable foundation for my creativity and lifestyle.

Alas, this hasn’t been the proverbial golden egg I’d hoped it to be, with my present circumstances still interrupting each and every attempt to close the book on this hideous chapter, leaving me in a neverending story with neither escape nor happily ever after in sight.

“Verily, can there be a worse existence than not being the protagonist of One’s own tale, subject to the disownment of a plot that advances ever onward, its own hero left amid the ink-lain words and rough parchment of Chapter 1?”

Sure, most of us have faced trials and hardships in our time, and maybe it’s selfish to align with the unsung faces mentioned in the lyrics of “What About Me?,” but this feeling, this gnawing and unshakeable notion of having received far less than I deserve, offset by a newly clear realisation of excess self-sacrifice amid years of undue trauma and abuse, is obviously there for a valid reason.

I want to recover from these scars.

I want to nurture my creative spark.

I want to know how fairness feels.

“‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,’ so the saying goes; what then is One to do when life shareth not these divine fruits?”

You may be wondering how things can be so bad for me when I’m able to post content on Vocal. Surely if I have a way to access the Internet, there’s really no way I can’t find a pathway to success, prosperity, or whatever other crucial ingredient is missing from my life, yes?

The thing is… well… it’s the Internet. The World Wide Web. The hub for all of humanity to share ideas, content, stuff that’s not safe for the workplace… that’s a lot of faces, a lot of voices, and a lot of ways to remain totally unsung.

Yes, I’m a survivor of many a hardship. Who isn’t? What makes my problems so important for anyone other than me to prioritise my wellbeing at all? The funny thing… is that this was the sum total of my self-image for years.

After all that early-life B.S., I reduced my identity to a dim echo of what it was meant to be, insisting to myself that I’m not worth anything, and it’s a far better use of my talents to help those who are greater than I could ever hope to be; I’d regressed into a background extra in everyone else’s stories, believing mine would never become a bestseller.

That’s the price of selling Oneself short.

“To remain forever unspun; to have One’s gold thread strewn to the floor of the Moirai’s chamber; in Heaven and Earth is a fate deserved to none.”

My time on Vocal may not have been the golden egg, the lemonade, or the pageturner I’d hoped, and indeed the circumstances that prompted me to find a newer, better path may yet block the way forward, but at least it was an opportunity to test my limits and flex my creative muscles; if nothing else, I gave it a go. This thing happened.

And it was a wonderful thing.

One step closer to a better path…

One note closer to a better song…

One door closer to a better love…

I’ve come this far. No use turning back.

Goodbye…