A few days ago I noticed a sudden spike in the view time of one my videos on YouTube. I saw that 80% of offsite traffic was coming from a certain social media platform and far more views were coming from offsite than usual. After some digging, I found that my dad had shared a link to my video.
I didn’t even know he was watching 😬
I feel a little nervous about the fact that both my parents are watching everything I put up now. We haven’t always ageeed on things in the past. My parents often misunderstand what I say and take something I say casually or as a joke as something literal and serious. My mom even thought I was a polygamous Scientologist back when I was on MySpace. I had just thought of two provocative labels that didn’t seem to match and used them as a statement about how people focus too much on labels.
One time I trolled my dad pretty bad. After the 2011 earthquake he was messaging me often. I told him the media was blowing the food shortage narrative out of proportion He knew I was ok but I didn’t have internet connection for a day or two and so when he said “just say two words to me!” I said “I’m gay.”
My dad doesn’t have any prejudice against gay people…as long as they aren’t his son 😆 it’s not what he wanted me to be and I wanted him to realize that these kind of expectations are unfair.
He seemed to be more troubled by this statement than by his worries of natural disasters. I knew he would have a hard time accepting me if I was gay and I needed to help him get passed that point. I’m not gay, but I COULD be, and in many ways, I’m even more of an outlier in society. Some of my choices and perspectives challenge society just as much, so I wanted my father to shed a little bit of his prejudice and expectations for my own sake and also for his own.
My relationship with my parents keeps getting better and better though, and they probably don’t see it but I think a large part of that is how I troll them like this. I used to argue but I found it doesn’t go anywhere. I tried being distant but that only made things worse. So finally I realized that the best way to get through to them was playfulness and acceptance towards them but a very firm (and friendly) stance that I don’t need to be lectured by them anymore, and won’t be.
I don’t expect them to understand me, but if they want to try, I let them.
Thanks to the world falling apart, they’ve finally come to realize that I was right about many things and thanks to having to face their own mortality, they no longer stress about the little things.
It feels good when anyone shares your work with their friends. I’ve wanted to find an audience who want to share my novellas and my vlogs and podcast with their friends. Most people are busy and distracted and all of us here are busy creating our own stuff on top of any kind of exploring we do of other people’s work.
So at least I’m very thankful that my parents are doing their best to help me reach more people, even if it’s a bunch of American senior citizens 😆
I’m also very thankful that they are no longer fighting against me or doubting me and my path.
And just a reminder, if any of your friends produce something you love or something that you think might resonate with others (even if you don’t like it yourself), share it with whoever you can! Word of mouth helps an artist or creator more than anything else in the world!
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My work:
Confessions of the Damaged: novella series
digitally available on Amazon, Apple, Kobo etc
Untangled Knots : vlogs and podcast
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