Curry Zawa Kaoru's Creative Counseling - "It bothers me that my mutual is getting along with another author." Don't forget to act like a pro.

When I first read your message, even I felt suffocated.

Not by your feelings toward this mutual friend, but the actions you were taking regarding your mutual seemed super intense. When you said their interactions were out in the open, my first thought was that you were stalking your mutual and taking pictures of them interacting with Author A or something, but I assume you mean they interact online on public accounts. Still, knowing how you feel about this mutual friend, there's a chance I'm not wrong.

First of all, unless either of them has given you permission, refrain from posting about them by name. Definitely don't post your stalker pictures online. If they left home telling their spouse they were going on a business trip, it could turn into a huge scandal. Even without that, you never know what might happen if you post too much personal information on the internet, where all sorts of shady characters run rampant.

Yet the fact that you’re writing this suggests you’re desperate to let the world know that your mutual is on uncomfortably (for you) good terms with Author A. In other words, your problem isn't that your mutual is giving you the cold shoulder—it’s actually that Author A is being showered with attention, while you’re just being treated normally.

I suspect that Author A is the one most troubled by this situation, but that’s just my guess. In reality, they might have their own photos of your mutual and be uploading them to the realms of interpersonal chaos (social media platforms) for everyone and their mother to see as we speak.

However, that, too, is just speculation.

Creatives tend to have vivid imaginations, and while they’d be better off quietly using that ability solely for their creative work, they often get bogged down by wasting it on pointless things like other people’s feelings.

It’s part of our charm that we can sink into deep depression just from our imagination, but imagination is, after all, all in our heads—it isn’t the truth. Let’s focus solely on the facts.

First, it’s a fact that while Author A received illustrated feedback from a mutual follower, you received no feedback on your work during the same period. It's also a fact that while they’ve kept their offline meetup with you under wraps, they’re making their interactions with Author A public—whether this means they're hanging out in an open-air cafe visible from your perch or just posting it on social media, I’m not sure, but they’re making it public nonetheless.

It’s unreasonable to expect you not to feel hurt or lonely because of learning these facts. I’d like to tell you not to worry about it—that your mutual follower had no ulterior motives and it was all just a coincidence—but that’s just speculation, and such thoughts can’t possibly compete with the cruel reality unfolding right before your eyes.

It’s natural that you feel hurt. However, it’s also a fact that your mutual hasn’t done anything wrong.

Maybe they’re some kind of devious psychopath who’s hinting at a deep relationship with A—someone they’re not really interested in—just to hurt you, but that, too, is just speculation. Besides, the fact remains that your mutual is free to be friendly with whomever they want, and free to choose whether or not to share their thoughts with anyone.

It’s unfortunate that you’ve been hurt. But if it’s no one’s fault, then it’s just like an injury from an unforeseen accident. If you’re going to curse anything, you can only curse the bad luck of having collided head-on with that reality—and after that, all you can do is wait for the wound to heal.

What’s important from here on out is to avoid creating new wounds.

Since you already know that seeing your mutual friend and Author A getting along well will strain your emotional ligaments, keep your distance from them both until you’ve calmed down. Under no circumstances should you stalk their social media accounts to conduct a “scientific investigation” for traces of their encounters, or spend any time reading between the lines of what you do see.

Also, you're making a huge leap—as if you’d skipped about 200 pages of a novel—from how your mutual treats A differently from you to the conclusion that your work isn’t good enough for anyone to want to send feedback on it.

It may be true that your mutual likes A’s work and thinks it’s worth sending feedback with illustrations. However, since you and A aren’t inseparable soulmates who are two sides of the same coin, the fact that you don’t receive feedback doesn’t mean they dislike your work or think it isn’t worth even a glance.

The reason you feel this way is probably because your mutual has become too important to you; you’re overanalyzing their every move, and the only measure of your work’s value has become whether your mutual likes it.

It’s true that creators can start to view the first person to give them feedback as a kind of creative parent and follow their lead, so it’s common to develop overly strong feelings for a specific reader or fellow creator, to try to make work that pleases them, or to get deeply upset when they don’t provide the feedback you expect.

While this is common, it’s also something you only need to experience once. If you’ve learned that obsessing over a single person to the point that your own self-worth depends on them leads to nothing good, make sure not to repeat the same mistake again.

That said, I don’t think people can change that easily, but I'll try to help you avoid letting it affect your creative work.

I assume you’re creating as a hobby, but at the very least, let’s treat your readers with a professional mindset. This doesn’t mean that professionals view all readers equally. Even professionals are aware of the readers who’ve supported them from the very beginning, and deep down, they do hold them in a special place in their hearts.

It’s lonely when those longtime fans stop following you or visibly start supporting another author. I want to corner them and demand, “What’s so great about that Demon Slayer guy compared to me?” and lock them up until they spill every single one of the 300 million reasons. Since even some professionals feel this way, it’s truly understandable that you feel hurt and lonely because of what happened with Author A.

However, just because some long-time readers have drifted away doesn’t mean what I’m drawing now has no value, and I certainly don’t plan to stop drawing. It’s sad that the hearts of readers who used to support me have drifted away, but regardless of that, I draw my work for the readers who are reading it now.

It’s understandable that you were hurt by what happened with your mutual and ended up posting something in a depressed state; there’s no need to force yourself to create right now. But how about at least making your existing works public for the sake of your other readers?

If you've somehow convinced yourself that your mutual was your only reader and the universe is just the two of you, then I think the root cause is that your personal relationships are too intense.

If you find that you tend to harbor massive emotions toward specific people—and there’s nothing you can do about the way that your creative work itself is swayed by that—why not try spreading those intense feelings across about five people instead of focusing them all on one? Even if you can't completely eliminate the risk, you can at least improve your odds of mitigating it.

↑ Feel free to send your troubles in languages other than Japanese, too.