Jessica Russell's Blog - Posts Tagged "jealousy"
Beware the Green-Eyed Monster
You’ve written your book, and to your amazement you’re getting a little ranking, you’re getting book signings scheduled, you're selling copies, in short, you're achieving success! It may even surprise YOU!
All along, your circle of friends has been happy for you, routing you on, giving you a thumbs up, and then all of a sudden you have one, or worse yet more than one, who is suddenly snarky, sulky, pouty or downright rude. In some circumstances, you may find yourself with a friend who has decided to boycott you on social media or in extreme cases, ghost you entirely out of his or her life!
Yes, it happens!
It’s happened to many people I know, and it’s happened to me. One reoccurring thought I had in my own mind was “why did other authors warn me about all the other things that might happen, but no one wanted to warn me about this?” Well, the answer to that is that it’s negative, and who wants to talk negative when you’re trying to uplift other writers and keep yourself positive?
Unfortunately though I think it’s advice that every new author should be given from day one: don’t get blindsided by that jealous individual. He or she is out there, and the jealousy will surface no matter how good a friend you’ve been.
They may push it off on a number of other things, “I had a headache today, there’s ‘something going on in my life,’ I had a bad day,” Etc. etc., and you're left wondering why they never acted that way before for those reasons.
Because those aren’t the reasons.
The jealousy has been eating away for a long time and it’s finally surfaced. Sadly, I don’t have a solution. If the person never wants to put the cards on the table, there’s absolutely nothing you can do to repair the friendship.
That kind of situation is a one-way street: that person has to feel your worth a 30 minute conversation at some point to explain what happened and either defend it or apologize or anything in between, but they owe you that much.
Don’t run after that person groveling and dog paddling and begging for crumbs. If he or she is okay with treating a friend that way, then maybe your friendship wasn’t what you thought it was. Anyway, ignore the green-eyed monster and write on!
All along, your circle of friends has been happy for you, routing you on, giving you a thumbs up, and then all of a sudden you have one, or worse yet more than one, who is suddenly snarky, sulky, pouty or downright rude. In some circumstances, you may find yourself with a friend who has decided to boycott you on social media or in extreme cases, ghost you entirely out of his or her life!
Yes, it happens!
It’s happened to many people I know, and it’s happened to me. One reoccurring thought I had in my own mind was “why did other authors warn me about all the other things that might happen, but no one wanted to warn me about this?” Well, the answer to that is that it’s negative, and who wants to talk negative when you’re trying to uplift other writers and keep yourself positive?
Unfortunately though I think it’s advice that every new author should be given from day one: don’t get blindsided by that jealous individual. He or she is out there, and the jealousy will surface no matter how good a friend you’ve been.
They may push it off on a number of other things, “I had a headache today, there’s ‘something going on in my life,’ I had a bad day,” Etc. etc., and you're left wondering why they never acted that way before for those reasons.
Because those aren’t the reasons.
The jealousy has been eating away for a long time and it’s finally surfaced. Sadly, I don’t have a solution. If the person never wants to put the cards on the table, there’s absolutely nothing you can do to repair the friendship.
That kind of situation is a one-way street: that person has to feel your worth a 30 minute conversation at some point to explain what happened and either defend it or apologize or anything in between, but they owe you that much.
Don’t run after that person groveling and dog paddling and begging for crumbs. If he or she is okay with treating a friend that way, then maybe your friendship wasn’t what you thought it was. Anyway, ignore the green-eyed monster and write on!
