When 'playing the game' makes you miserable

For the last few months, I've been trying to put across a persona here on the JEMI blog of being a serious, educated, knowledgeable person who REALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT, when it comes to mental health issues.

Look how much stuff I know about depression!

See how many cool facts I can tell you about social anxiety!

Be majorly impressed by the weird medical references I'm casually tossing into my posts!

All this stuff is collectively called 'playing the game', and it's what all the marketing bumpf told me I had to do, to get anywhere on the web.

But you know what? It's completely soul-destroying and I'm sick of it.

The turning point came last week, when I decided to do a new 'Linked-In' profile, to 'boost my platform' (cue: barf noises.)

I really, really wanted to include an entry clearly stating that I'd burned out from my ridiculous London career, and had spent the last few years pulling myself back to together, in just about every way possible.

But then I made the mistake of telling someone who knows 'how to play the game' what I was planning, and they pooh-poohed it the loudest way possible:

"You can't do that! No-one's going to take you seriously! They'll just think you're crazy! There's a time and place for everything."

I was crestfallen.

I listened to what my internet guru told me, and I didn't post up: 2006-2014 - Massive Repeated Nervous Breakdowns, panic attacks and major anxiety.

But then I realised something profound: No-one's taking me seriously anyway!

So why do I have to pretend, and 'play the game', and write all this pseudo-scientific cack that's actually killing my writing and my true self-expression?

In one of those ironies that God is so fond of, as I was off 'building my platform' about being the world's wannabe expert on overcoming depression, I was starting to get pretty miserable about it all.

So this post marks a turning point on the JEMI website: no more writing SEO-optimised posts that keep search engines happy (apparently…) but mean that 3,000 people are turning out identical numbered lists for Google.

So don't come here for '10 easy ways to get happy' or anything like that, because I'm not writing that stuff anymore (unless I really want to.)

What you'll get here is my honest take on emotional and health issues, from the birds' eye perspective of someone who is probably completely bonkers.

If that floats your boat, great. If not - there are MILLIONS of people and websites out there that are much better at 'playing the game' than I am, and I wish you the best of luck in tracking down '7 things to banish depression' and 'How to make millions via your website.'

As for me - I'm back to writing real stuff, warts and all. It may not make me millions (or even, pennies…) but it will make me feel a whole lot happier, and that's what really counts.

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