Reflection on 500

I won't say that I never expected to reach 500 in much the same way I won't call the experience humbling. I don't go in for falsehood, and it's truly an honour to have been read and recognized by such wonderful creators.

Humbling is when a too large ego is brought low, but the support I've received from this community has meant the world to me and banished a lot of my imposter syndrome. In a very real way, it's been the opposite of a humbling experience.

My work is enjoyed by those who read it, and there have been rather a lot of those. Since starting on this website in February with my first piece Wasting Away, written for the Time Capsule Haiku Challenge my work has been read over 500 times!

Arrogance, perhaps is at the root of my expectation here, but the speed at which it happened is astonishing. I never thought that I would reach that milestone in only 6 months!

For the longest time I imagined that I would write quietly in a corner, with occasional Vocal archive delvers stumbling across me. I cannot express how lucky I feel to have you all in my life. Your comments have pushed me towards being a better writer and being able to read through your own work has proved to be such an inspiration that I know not how to quantify.

But, before I go on with my aimless wander down the trails of my own thoughts, thank you so much to everyone who's read my work! I deeply appreciate you taking the time to look at what I've created and I hope you enjoyed it. Even greater thanks to all of the creators who take the time to comment on my pieces, connecting with you has been one of the most rewarding parts of this whole adventure!

As of the drafting of this article, I have written and published 48 stories on Vocal and entered goodness knows how many times into many many contests. (Maybe I should make a spreadsheet)

I chose Vocal for two reasons. 1) the transparent revenue system that I once had dreams of making it big with. 2) the contests providing the carrot of maybe winning money, the stick of deadlines, and the prompts I needed to get me going.

The reason I stay, and do my best to be as active here as my life allows, is because of the community. The people who pushed me over that 500 read threshold, the people who create such amazing art, the supportive, wonderful authors who take time out of their day to share their opinions on something I made.

People like all of you deserve so much more praise and attention then I can reasonably give you. You all inspire me to keep going, even when I want to quit for a day or give up on a story in progress. Imagining you being able to read it often gives me the push I need to get my ass in gear and write.

So thank you all for that. I'm reasonably prolific and have at least one friend who envies my word counts (as though she doesn't outline like a champ while I'm lost in the pantser wilderness fighting off writer's block mythobeasts) but you really are the reason that I do as much as I do.

Without the amazing connections that I've made on Vocal I don't know if I would ever have been brave enough to even try a poetry challenge after the first one. Let alone throw my hat into the micro fiction ring way back in May.

Poetry has always been a struggle for me, much like music it mostly goes over my head. I struggle with subtlety and subtext and work really hard to try and figure out the meaning in poetry I read. Not that I don't enjoy it, music for me is pleasant noise mostly and poetry is nice words arranged nicely. But you've all helped me grow my ability to appreciate and write it so much!

Since starting on Vocal I've published 8 poetry pieces and wow, holy cow I never thought I would do that. In school I tended to avoid poetry as I didn't quite get it, but I think I've come a long way and I could not have managed that without the support of this community!

My most read poem is called After. It was originally written for the Sensations Challenge and I did not think I would enter it. A free form poem about the five senses? How could I, a plebian, ever hope to write that? But seeing the love and support of my fellow creators as well as their amazing work inspired me to try.

Though I didn't win, I got what is most important at the end of the day, feedback! People liked it, and more importantly they told me what they liked about it! I was able to learn from that experience in building my later attempts at poetry and I could not be more thankful.

If you peruse my catalogue, I hope you can see the progress I've made in short fiction over these past months. Before joining Vocal I never really paid attention to short fiction, I was a novel reader and writer, but the challenge of something new was so enticing.

Before joining, I spent about a week going through the top stories and reading through challenge submissions. Everything I saw was excellent! Ever piece I read inspiring because someone put their blood, sweat, and tears into it and then shared it with the world!

That act of sharing showed an ability to be vulnerable that I envied. Before joining Vocal, I had to manually share my work with select people I wanted to read it; but here I was inspired to be braver.

Inspired to share my work with the world writ large and all of my friends and family in a way I had never dared to before. This is all practice, every story I publish an other step towards the infinite goal of improvement.

Storytelling is, very much, one of my greatest passions. I read, watch, or listen to stories and disassemble them in my head. I analyze what I like and why, then I try to bring those traits into my own work going forward.

Comments on my stories have brought me to new and wonderful creators from whom I have learned so much. Their styles and choices are fascinating to me! They also happen to be extremely excellent people with fantastic insights who inspire me to do and be better.

When the time came to share more of myself, when Vocal asked for reflections in the then newly minted Men community, I was scared. As with many of us, I've been through some deeply unpleasant things that are typically laughed at and ignored. But Vocal gave me both anonymity of a kind AND a community of supportive people who would read with the intention of understanding.

The experience of reading the comments on my article Growing Up Big (my first top story) and The Man I am Today was so incredibly gratifying. I felt seen in a brand new and completely supportive way.

One thing that few people consider is how much a person's physical appearance can colour the interpretations of their experiences. I'm 195cm tall (6 foot 5 inches for my American friends) and white presenting. That puts unconscious blinders on a lot of people. They think that people who look like me are immune to harsh treatment.

I know I live with certain benefits thanks to how I look. I do my best to be aware of that privilege and be the best man I can be. Reading through some stories on Vocal, I have gained a better understanding of experiences I've never had, and what a wonderful thing that is. To learn from other experiences is a tremendous gift, and thank you all for giving that to me.

I hope I always treat you with the kindness and courtesy you deserve. That all people deserve. And if I don't, please let me know. I'm far from perfect, as my exes will attest, and always trying to improve myself.

Here, though, people read my work without those likely unintentional biases. None of you really know what I look like, nor have you met me in person. Instead I was simply one of you and so you read and understood.

Sympathized and affirmed. I never, in my wildest dreams expected the response and support I have received from this community. Maybe one day I'll talk about the legacy of Residential Schools my family lives with in more detail. Then again, maybe I won't.

The point is that Vocalites are the best and will read and understand if I do choose to share! And if I don't, then you'll understand too.

5oo isn't a huge number. I walk close to 10x that many steps on an average day. But when I think about the fact that it's 500 people who took the time to read my work? To experience MY art? That is almost too much to wrap my head around.

You are all wonderful! (Except the AI spammers, you're not welcome in my celebration)

Seeing the counter tick over 500 was incredible rewarding! What a milestone!

Even though I don't know exactly what the judges want, even though I don't know the trick to getting on the front page, I'm still happy. I'm so happy to have found this place and all the wonderful creators herein!

Thank you so much for boosting my belief in myself and my art! Thank you for sharing your amazing creations with me! And thank you very much, for reading my work.

Vocal has come to mean so much to me over the past six months and I cannot wait to see what the future holds!

Here's to 500! You're all the best and I couldn't imagine sharing this journey with more excellent humans.