Aubade #11 – Can You See Me?

Look, I’m going to be honest… I have one small request: Can you see me? Can you see my posts? Please, “like” this, so I can be sure if my post even made it to your news feed. Somehow, I feel that these attempts of mine—to write my personal thoughts publicly and for these writings to have a reader—always end in disappointment. I don’t know if the algorithm cursed me and all my social networks have turned into a lonely ghost, or if, simply – the problem is me. But come on, let’s admit it, who wouldn’t enjoy good feedback on their posts? The numbers, the comments, the shares.

This morning I woke up with one, very clear and dangerous mission. I decided to write “that” post. The kind that hasn’t been written before. I want to write something genius. Something that will be all over every “newsfeed” tomorrow morning. I want a post that will make people go crazy, generate shares, astonishment, and the kind of buzz that will reach my monitor. I want people to read it and say: “This man is a genius. He saw something that we couldn’t see.”

This is the desire to be recognized. This is the artist’s eternal curse: to create something and die waiting for someone to finally understand what you meant.

And so, I sat down. I opened a blank document. The cursor blinks. The brain is working. And you know what happened? Silence. Absolute emptiness.

The more I try to be “genius,” the faker I become. The more I think about “shares,” the more useless my message becomes. This is the greatest weapon of my inner critic, my “Prok”. It forces me to think about the result, not the process. And as soon as I start thinking about the result, I die. I again become that Zura from the “paused frame,” who is so afraid of failure that he does nothing at all.

This is the “Nocturne” energy – fear, sadness, and analysis – trying to steal my “Aubade” energy.

And suddenly I realized. The only “genius” post I can write today is a post about why I can’t write a genius post. The only revolutionary act is not to gain recognition, but to defeat the thirst for recognition. An “Aubade” is action, after all. And today’s action is this: to admit this weakness, this childish desire to be loved by everyone, and to spit it right in the face.

I don’t need everyone to be talking about me tomorrow. I need me to be real today.

And you know what’s the funniest part? At the exact moment I’m writing this, the exact moment I finally let go of the idea of “genius” and write what I truly feel… The cursor starts moving again. The ideas return. Life returns.

So… maybe this is “genius”: being brave enough to publicly admit your imperfection. Here is my post for today. And it’s not genius at all. Probably no one will share it.

But you know what? It is written! And that’s the only thing that matters today.

P.S. If you made it to this paragraph, that request for “likes” was rhetorical. I have a reader, and it’s you! Thanks for two minutes of your life!