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What if we’re more talented than our inner fears allow us to admit?

By David McElroy · May 16, 2019

I’ve always been terrified to believe I’m talented.

It was easy to believe I was smart. School work came easily, so my grades were good. Everybody told me I was smart. I had objective measures that showed I performed better than other people.

But talent was a much scarier issue. I could take IQ tests or other standardized tests which seemed to prove I was bright. But there were no tests for talent. No matter what I did, I was always terrified that it wasn’t good enough. Even though other people told me they loved the creative work I did, I was scared to get my hopes up.

So I lied to myself. Maybe you do, too.

Writer V.S. Naipaul famously wrote, “The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.” And my self-deception about my talent has held me back time and time again.

What do I really want in life? Honestly? I want your attention

By David McElroy · March 18, 2019

I’ve spent my whole life begging to be noticed — but it took me a long time to realize this.

It was the summer of 2005 when I finally got the finished DVDs of my short film. I was bursting with pride about having made something I was proud of. I wanted my father to be proud of me. I gave him a copy of the DVD and waited for him to say something, but he didn’t say a word.

Several times over the next couple of weeks, I asked him if he had watched it yet, but each time, he said he hadn’t had time. The film was only 10 minutes, so that stung a little. The next time I was at his house — and nobody else was there — I told him we were going to watch it right then.

I played it for him, but he didn’t seem interested. It was an uncomfortable 10 minutes. Afterward, he had very little to say. I felt deflated and hurt. The two dozen film festivals that had accepted my film and the awards it had won didn’t matter. I wanted his praise.

I’ve come to realize that this has been a painful template for much of my life. I don’t like admitting this. I feel as though I’m in therapy again to talk about it. But I’ve spent my whole life begging to be noticed. It’s been a very unhealthy part of my life.

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.