Tag Archives: openness

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*Cringe*

HEY! Napping is a VITAL part of the writing process

Note on the picture: I have a pink IPod like the one the pig has. I hate it with a passion. On down moments from writing, I will plot new and innovative ways to bring its destruction.

So, I am in a strange position that I haven’t been in a long time. I should have foreseen it, but you know how me and common sense work. We have a fleeting love affair every once in awhile, but mostly we remain with our orbits barely intersecting in places. For the first time in a long time, I know someone is reading my blog that is new to me, and I actually give a crap what they think of me.

I know people read this. Most people I know who read it, I know are aware I am this strange person bumping through the world, and I know you guys love me anyway. The rest of the people who read this are lurkers or strangers. It is easy to be all brave and militantly open when you know people either love you, or they are strangers. I haven’t been worried about a reaction to a blog since “Strong Woman”, and suddenly I find myself thinking over everything I have written over the months, and covering my face with my palm.

I was thinking about what to write today, and I always came back to this thought. I had this safe but interesting post planned in my head about me trying to stick to this new idea of discussing and listening instead of debating. That seemed so safe, but so very not what I am about.

I have this aspect of my personality that I play chicken with myself. I have a lot of weird fears and insecurities, like everyone, and sometimes I bump up against one, and I dare myself to push it. I don’t know if this is a brave driving force thing or a stupid thing. It is probably both. I am forever scootching myself to the edge of my comfort zone just to prove to myself that I can. I see the potential for disaster.

So, the safe and sane thing would be to try to write a really cool treatise on how civil discourse works. Instead I am playing chicken with myself, and writing about feeling exposed and crazy.

Truth is, this blog is exactly me. That is the point of this blog, to be unabashedly me, because I know no matter how strange I feel, I know there are a lot of people like me. I wouldn’t suggest anyone else in the world being quite this open. I know I am taking this to an extreme, but I do that on purpose. I also know that ideally we reveal ourselves slowly to the people around us; giving the not so awesome bits wrapped with the really cool parts. All of my bits are out there, without awesome bacon wrappings.

The good thing is that I do know that anyone new who reads this, and still wants to be in my life, knows all of the crazy insecure bits, and still likes what they see. Anyone who reads this and flees, wouldn’t work with me anyway.

It still doesn’t keep me from cringing a little. Just a little though.

 
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Plans? Silly Woman!

In my mind, I was going to write this epic year in review post that was moving and insightful and summed up every awesome thing I have ever written. Turns out I did that already with my 100th Blog post.

Oh yeah, Kathleen linked this to me and, since this is my damn blog, I am embedding it here even though it has nothing to do with anything.

So I wrote out two paragraphs linking things. I hated those paragraphs. I am struggling with the idea of this blog but I think it is because I am working too hard to present a certain thing. I am not so good at that.

I feel like I have said everything I would say here many times before. The only thing I am going to say again is “Thank You”

My world lately has been so wrapped up in writing. When it comes time to blog, all I want to write about is writing, the things I want to write about, or Star Wars The Old Republic. I worry a lot about being interesting or funny or insightful. Mostly, I think I should stop worrying about that.

I forget sometimes that so much of my happiness comes from accepting myself and being as open and honest as I can be here. I forget sometimes that the reason why this blog works is because I am willing to write boring shit sometimes as an exchange for the honesty.  I forget to accept the crappy posts with the good posts.

I am pisssed right now because I am feeling so insecure. I am hoping that insecurity is a normal human emotion. I am working on the premise that it is cyclical and the only weapon we have against it is to see it and try to see why it is wrong.

The happy news is that I am not insecure about my writing. I finally finished revising my first chapter and I think it will be far easier from here on out. I went back and read a lot of my posts and it turns out that I have some pretty killer posts. I am feeling pretty good with my abilities.

I am feeling ugly. I hate admitting that. I hate admitting that I am feeling insecure about my looks. It feels like a silly thing to be insecure about. Logically, it makes no sense since insecurity makes you even less attractive, but when have I ever been ruled by logic?

I wasn’t going to write about it since it feels like whining and fishing for sympathy and compliments but it is blocking my ability to write about other things. Normally when I try avoid writing about something that is really bugging me, I get frustrated with the fake feel of my blog.

So here it is: I feel ugly and unattractive.

I know it isn’t true. I do really know this. I also think that it is normal for women to feel like this on occasion. It becomes an ugly cycle because we feel less attractive so we start to hide in ourselves and then we get lost in the dullness that we cover ourselves in and then we have to fight even harder to get back to the shiny we had going before something set off the ugly cycle.

I can’t think of anything in particular that set off the ugly cycle. I know I will recover my shiny soon. I think I need to get back to working out like I was before I got the stomach flu.  I like me better when I work out.

On a side note: I found post it notes. I love post it notes. I have an office supply compulsion but post it notes are a particular weakness of mine. I have neon yellow post it notes with my crazy five-year old scrawl covering the sides of my computer screen. Simple things, people, simple things.

Also, Tina is a silly and my site is the right amount of feminine for a site with goddess in the title. Plus, I like purple

 
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Out of Nowhere

Sometimes things come out of nowhere and effect you. My interwebz surfing generally centers around funny stuff. I have a few sites I go to on a regular basis including the Scrw Media sites. This site started as an attempt to be cool enough to contribute to urlybits.com (where I got this video.)  I have been lucky enough to be friends with the founders Paul and Sara O’Flaherty for a year now. Anyway, I was cruising around because they have the best of the funny and the cool when I stopped to watch this video that Paul posted:

I cried like an emo little girl. I watched it three times and cried all three times. I will probably watch it again after I post this and cry again.

Okay, I know that I am apparently a dirty hippie, and I believe in happiness and rainbows and kindness and crap. I used to believe I was a misanthropic misfit that hated all thing pop culture and all of that bullshit. Truth is I have always been a bit of one those crazy people who have always been positive in spite of myself. So, of course this made me cry. I have the strangest set of biases ever.

I have thought all afternoon about why this video effected me so much. I think I have figured out some of it.

My most superficial reaction is: “Who the hell wouldn’t be a bit weird-ed out by someone standing in the middle of the street wanting hugs. That is so Pedobear.” (If you don’t know who pedobear is then you fail at the interwebz. Here, educate yourself.)

I hate this reaction. I hate that I had it.

I have this strange habit of giving total strangers compliments. I will go out of my way to tell someone that I like something they have or have done and I always try to tell parents if their kids are cute or well-behaved, normally in front of the child.  I have embarrassed the hell out of some my friends and family by doing this. Honestly, I don’t care. I believe in telling people good things. I know how a compliment can make a day better or make someone walk taller. I know giving someone a compliment can make them a little happier. So what if I look like an ass?

The thing that stuck with me after the girl got raped in the parking lot of my old work place is that she was obviously in distress for a long time, and I did nothing to help her until she came to us. I felt low, very very low, that I let a child be in pain and did not help until she came to me, and then only after I saw the blood and it became real. It was this societal taboo on interference in strangers lives that kept me from walking over to her and asking her if she was okay. I decided that I was going to ignore that societal idea of non-interference and try to do what was right whenever I could.

Still.

My first thoughts were negative and ugly. I retreated back to that bullshit mindset of total self-involvement and mistrust of anyone willing to be open to the world.

Then that young big guy breaks from his group of friends and goes up and hugs the bear. That was an everyday act of bravery; he did something even though no one else would. (This is where the tears started to pour.)

Enter the video of all of the hugs. It was this simple and beautiful act of hugging someone and meaning it. I cried because all of these people were made so happy by this unexpected connection with another person. These people were doing something that I might not have had the courage to be open to. (For the record, I get why the parents were hesitant to let their kids walk up to a stranger in a teddy bear costume.)

What really hit me, though, is the end. The man took off the mask, and the tag line popped up, and I felt like such a douche cannon. The tagline is true. Honestly, I think most people would have been hesitant to hug anyone not in a costume, and the costume makes it easier it break through that barrier, but I KNOW most people (myself included) would have never hugged a stranger that had a visible disability.

That man brought so much joy to so many people simply by dressing up in a suit and hugging them. Without the suit, no one would have stopped, and they would have missed out on that joy.

It wasn’t just the disability. It is the strange aversion we have to openness because we might get hurt or something bad might happen.

I need to do better. I need to be braver. There is a lot of good that can come from being open and I don’t want to miss it from fear of the bad.

Tomorrow compliment strangers, you will see what I mean.

 

 

 
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Dreams

I had a dream last night that I found a review of my website in a book. It called my blog innovative, honest, funny, and a worthy read. I know there are no books that review blogs but it was a dream, several other things happened in it that weren’t real. In my dream, I was so elated.  I tried to explain to someone last night why blogging is more than pure narcissism and that it actually means something.  I know some people will never understand why this site means to me and why I am so willing to give up so much privacy to the mass world of the interwebz.

I spent so much of my early life trying to hide so much of myself. I was so closed off. I felt like I was too different to be anything of any worth. I was just too much and at the same time distinctly not enough. I always put too much pressure on myself to be something different or better than what I was. (I still do this.) I tried changing myself to fit everyone else and failed miserably. I couldn’t even fake being like other people, so I developed a coping mechanism in which I would find the part of my personality that was the most acceptable in that social situation and only show that side. I was completely myself with very few people because I felt I had to be careful what everyone saw of me. High school was a bitch and sometimes I feel like I actually started in college.

In college, I started to relax this but it took a long time. I faked it a lot at first. I decided before the first day of class I was going to talk to everyone and start over from who I was in high school and become who I wanted to be. Ironically, I met one of my best friends on that first day of college in front of our Art Survey class, we just didn’t know we were going to be best friends until a few years later. By the the last time I left college I think I was pretty good at being me. I still freak out about not doing enough or being good enough but I think that is just a core part of who I am.

I still had the tendency to be very controlling about how I showed myself. I know this part of the grown up world. I know everyone worries about appearance and presentation. I hate it. Sometimes I can manipulate parts of my personality to fit what the situation needs but I really hate it. I hate the feeling that I am going to stumble and my real personality is going to burst through. I am no good at containing what I naturally am, as a matter of fact, it makes me miserable. People tell me that not being careful about what I show or write will make my life more difficult. Trust me I know. I spent many years of my life trying to be more normal, more quiet, less reading and more sports, more make-up and high heels and less flip-flops and stupid skirts. I tried. I can’t do it. This is what  I am and trying to be anything different leads to failure.

This does relate to the the beginning, I promise. Why this blog is so important to me is because it is so very part of me. This is my place to get over those last bits of not good enough or too freaking weird. This is my place to test myself against my fear of vulnerability. This is were I learned that I am strange but I am so a like so many people. This is the one place I get to write straight out.

I have been sluggish on my book. I wrote the first twenty-five pages like I had demons in  my fingers. Lately, I have been using every excuse in the book not to write or when I do write it is forced and uncomfortable.  I think it is because I have been writing with my brain so much lately. I have been writing my blog with my brain and the book is all about the brain. I think I needed to write straight out. I needed to write something that wasn’t so controlled by my brain. I need to write on occasion without thinking about the purpose or the structure or the readability. I think I get like a balloon full of pudding. I get so strained from thinking and trying to produce and be and say and do the right thing that I feel like if I hit a corner too hard I am going to pop.

This place means so much to me and my friends who read this mean more to me because they provide me with a place to be everything I am unrestrained and uncensored. Rarely when I write here do I feel not enough or that I need to be different. Here I feel the most like I am the me that my closest friends see. I think every once in awhile the balloon needs to pop. Sometimes my heart needs to take over so I can get back to reveling in the joy of pure creativity and writing with my brain.

My life is a constant struggle for balance, like everyone one else, but I even have to do that different.

 
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