Written for Dungeon Prompts: the message we’re selling
If I’m honest, I don’t know what I’m selling. Probably nothing. I’ve never liked the notion that I’ve got to sell lies to people, to stick my neck out and sell myself with flashy presentation and catchy soundbites. It feels dishonest – and it feels wrong, too. I like telling the truth, without ornamentation or omission. I’m also very shy and reclusive; I let my work speak for me because I find speaking for myself exhausting. If my work is loud – good. Job done. I can take pride in a good day’s effort and the fact that other people actually paid attention to it.
So I don’t like selling. I like sharing.
And what do I share?
Not much, if I’m honest. At the moment I’m going through a very selfish and isolated phase in my life, where I hide away from everyone. This isn’t necessarily because anything’s wrong (though my brain doesn’t work normally and I’m worried about my friends right now for personal reasons); it’s because I have several exams coming up and I need to revise. Well, I guess that does count as something being wrong because I hate exams (they test your ability to parrot and give you an arbitrary score), but most people consider them a necessary, if stressful, part of life and can’t be bothered to change this.
But when I do share, I share things that are important to me. The state of the world. The importance of eradicating suffering. And – most relevant to this blog – I share emotions and ideas that people put down in different languages, so that the barriers of language might be broken down a little.
I would like to change the world, but I’m not nearly brash and harsh and power-hungry enough to do it on my own. And I’m not prepared to scream and shout myself hoarse selling soundbites. So I share instead, and I hope that sharing touches someone.
Translation Scrapbook 