In April of 2018, I joined a local community of women and contributed to their blog. After almost two years of the blog being shut down, it's given me a lot of time to think. In this time, I've come to realize I joined Cushy for all the wrong reasons. I started reading Cushy in early 2017. Around the same time, I started building a website for my blog. I started my blog with the intent to share my random thoughts and coping mechanisms with the world, in hope that maybe I could become an advocate for people with similar stories to my own. I started adding content to my site in March of 2018. As expected, I didn’t have a lot of followers. In fact, I think I only had one follower and it was my Mom. (Hi Mom! I love you!) At first, I didn’t let the number of followers affect me. I was just glad to be sharing my content with the world. Well, as mentioned before I was already a follower of Cushy. I loved what Cushy was about. I followed them on all of my social media. I LOVED this blog and wanted to be apart of it. I did everything possible to be noticed. I was a huge stalker. I am not afraid to admit it anymore. Well, once I got the attention of Cushy’s CEO and she offered me a position as a contributor I accepted with no hesitation. Yes! I was now a part of something wonderful! At the time of becoming a contributor, I noticed a change in myself. I noticed a shift in the reason why I was writing. Originally, I wrote because of my love of writing and being able to share my writing publicly. Now, I was writing to gain followers. Deep down I knew the true reason I joined Cushy, but I refused to admit it. Now, after almost two years of the blog being down I have come to accept the real reason why I joined their community in the first place. To put it simply, I joined Cushy to gain followers and get my work published in print. Before joining, I knew their goal was to publish a magazine. Knowing that I used it as the fuel to get noticed and become a contributor. A very selfish reason to join a community of women artists. It took me this long to accept the truth, and I am willing to admit I screwed up. Bad! I befriended some of the contributors on Facebook and followed them on other forms of social media as well. I became obsessed with these women and their lives. I was especially obsessed with the CEO. I wouldn’t leave her alone. I wanted to contribute more to the blog. I wanted so much more. I was crazy! Luckily for me, she didn’t seem to care (at that time.) Cushy had already printed the first issue of their magazine. As you can imagine, I ordered it and loved it! I became even more obsessed with being published I made sure I had the chance to be a part of the next magazine. I got approval and was asked to send in submissions. I sent in my submissions, got them edited and sent back to me, then came the day where I got that email. I got the email that Cushy was coming to an end. All my hard work, my dream of having my work published in print was being stripped away from me. I was extremely hurt. We had the opportunity to publish our final pieces written for the website before the site shut down, but I refused to publish mine because it wasn’t truly worth it in my eyes. I will admit I was rude at the end. I’m amazed Liz and Erin even talked to me after that. Well, I figured I might as well not waste my hard work and I published my submissions (meant for the magazine) onto My Heart Beats NM. I also got inspiration from other contributor’s ideas on the shared google doc for the second issue of the magazine. Someone told me afterward that I was stealing the ideas of others. Yes, I used their initial ideas but created something of my own. I was inspired by the ideas of others. My intention was never to steal their work but some feel I blatantly stole ideas and were quite upset with me. Then a few months after, I was ghosted by two of the contributors I looked up to. It truly hurt being deleted and blocked by these women. But now, after time to accept the past for what it is. I don’t blame them for doing what they did. I mean, look at what I did. I stalked and bossed my way up to the top, and where did it get me? It got me ghosted, upset with myself, and with no published work. If I could take it all back, I would. I wish things had never gone the way they did, but it’s my fault this happened. I let popularity get the best of me. I refuse to let something like that happen again.
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