An Update and a Pivot

BOO!

I’m back, baby!

Although I’ve been commenting a little the past week or so, I haven’t posted or done much reading. So here’s a little update.

In a completely non-surprise, I’ve been quite busy. Wild, right?! My life, overall, has gotten quite complicated and among a few personal things, I’ve decided to change my approach to Vocal.

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t want to leave and am not planning to. I have my issues with the platform (don’t we all?), but I like the people, challenges, and accountability way too much to simply…leave. What I’m going to do instead is shrink my profile and limit my posts to three main categories: essays, challenge entries, and community engagement pieces. I can also see myself posting requests for Critique as the occasion calls for it, but it won't be regular.

I want to be published. While I’ve loved how much my poetry has been seen and appreciated by you all, there's a point where my work dies here. That's not my goal and I can't in good conscience keep posting my favorite work here knowing its doom. I want to put out multiple poetry books. I want to be accepted by several, if not many, literary journals. I want to submit to a variety of contests and eventually win. And more so recently, I want bandwidth and time to read the poets and authors who have been published. I haven't properly read in far too long.

With how addictive Vocal is, I simply can’t juggle all of the above and be an active commenter, poster, and replier. Right now, I care more about pouring my time into getting rejected by journals than making a few cents on pieces I can’t submit anywhere. Vocal is a dead end for me and quite possibly an echo chamber as well. I need iron to sharpen me, and I'm excited at the prospect of focusing more of my time on writing, editing, and reworking my work for submissions.

So here's my plan. This week, I will send an email to Support to get the bulk of my profile reverted to Drafts. From there, I’ll decide if I want to repost any or keep them off indefinitely. The ones I know I’ll be leaving up are my Emulation and 100 Word Story series, challenge placement pieces, community articles, essays, resource pieces, and anything fun. I have 155 stories currently, so this could reduce my profile by more than half. Kinda scary! I'm happy too, though, because I want my profile to reflect my current aspirations, not be muddied for future readers who may subscribe for things I won't be posting in the future.

At the beginning of my time on Vocal, I published frequently, multiple times a week and in a few different genres. This eased as time went on. I was constantly navigating and refining my approach, and now, I post about every fifteen days. I feel so guilty for not doing more on the platform every day that I skip out. Going forward, I want that guilt to stop. While I may post at a similar interval, it could possibly shift to once a month. It’s hard to say right now, but I’m hoping to have more time to read and comment between posts. I won't ghost anyone! Certainly by posting this, I can let go of any urge to participate at the rate of a social media site.

I hope you can have grace for me being more selective with my time.

Thank you to everyone who has become a regular reader and supporter (you know who you are). You’ve been invaluable to my improvement and best of all, you've reignited my passion. I can’t believe how much success I’ve seen from Vocal in just nine months, and it’s all down to you. Thank you.

This isn’t a goodbye, merely a pivot. I hope you stay tuned. ❤️