Tag: Epiphany

As I Sit Here…

megHan

My intention was to sit down this morning and write a post looking back at last year and setting my eyes on this, but as I took a look “around the place,” taking stock of where this blog is and what it is, I realized that I needed to face where this blog is and what this blog is first.

I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I sat down and wrote a blog post here. But then again… I guess I can believe it. 2021 was an interesting year, full of ups and downs, for all of us, and in that year, a lot of the things that I loved to do were put aside because I just… didn’t want to. Or maybe I couldn’t. It’s a feeling that I can’t explain, but one that cut me deep every time. Staring at a blank screen, or avoiding that blank screen…

It’s interesting – and I can’t be the only blogger that does – but I have several posts sitting in Draft… not quite finished. Some are just silly, and some are me sharing a part of myself with the strangers in internet world. Before I started this post, I looked over them – and the vast list of ideas I have to write about here – and realized some of the things I want to write about are things I need to deal with personally, and maybe that’s why they are on the list, a way to force me into confronting those demons, or telling my side of the story, or maybe a way of connecting with someone – anyone – who may have been in that situation before. I write these long, drawn-out opuses, and then, upon rereading them (checking for errors, making sure they sound eloquent), I have second thoughts, decide to wait a few days, save it in the Draft folder and move on – not ready to share, but also not ready to delete. So they sit there, waiting, waiting for me to be ready.

I have another list, sitting next to me. A list of all the things I need to “work on.” Some of them are simple – sitting in my garden with a cup of tea every morning when I have a day off, write in my journal every day, spend 30 minutes before bed reading. Others are more complex. Some have to do with some personal changes that I want to work on this year, others are things that I want to work on professionally to make me the best at what I do (I don’t compete with others, only myself, but in both of my chosen careers, I always go the extra mile to make sure that I am the best choice, whether its continuing education, reading books on the subject, learning from other professionals, etc). On that list is to sit my tush down in this chair and write more here. You have to start somewhere…

Questioning Advice from a Friend

megHan

A few months ago, when I was really going through some difficult life things, a friend of mine gave me some great advice:

“Not everyone is going to like you.”

Why? How do they know they’re not going to like me?

Growing up, my father always told me that you can’t dislike someone without knowing them, and that is the way I have lived my life.

You can’t tell by looking at someone what is in their heart, what is in their soul. Without speaking to them, without having an authentic conversation with someone, you don’t know anything about them, can’t learn anything about them, and therefore can’t make an educated decision about whether this person would be a good fit in your life or… whether you like them.

I just read that again. A couple of times. (Funny how writing something down makes you look at it in a new light.) I’ll explain what I figured out in a minute.

He would also tell me that you can’t judge a book by its cover – we’ve all heard that one – but until this moment, I never realized just how much the two pieces of advice go together.

Your outward appearance is your cover. How many times have you read a book based on the cover and found out that the insides were nothing like what you saw (or assumed) from the outside? Looking at someone and judging them on whatever it is you take exception to is judging a person based on the outside, and when you judge that person, deciding immediately you don’t like them because of that, then you never get to see the interior, never get to see what that person holds inside of them. (What’s that saying? “Beauty is but skin deep, ugly lies the bone; beauty dies and fades away, but ugly holds its own.”) Your missing out on true life lessons – and even possible lifelong friendships – because you allow yourself to be and keep yourself blind to who people really are.

So, back to the original two pieces of advice. She’s right – not everyone is going to like me. And he’s right – you can’t like someone without taking the time (and chance) to get to know them. Which makes me realize (epiphany, much?) that their dislike of me, for whatever reason, has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with them. They’ve chosen to dislike someone (and sometimes vocally) that they don’t know anything about, all based on their perceived (mis)conceptions based on (possible) outward appearance or something that is (wrong) in them (i.e. poor confidence, jealousy, etc). Because without knowing the actual person, you can’t make decisions, and when you do, your decision is not based on anything that is wrong with them and everything that is wrong with you.

So it’s not me. It never was. There is nothing wrong with me. Those people that attempted to make me feel less than, who tried to make me feel I needed to change who I was, without actually knowing who I was – they were the problem all along.

I’m going to continue having conversations with people that bring me connections… and going to stop worrying so much about the people that dislike themselves so much that they can’t truly get to know the people around them.

FEAR Causes Me to Do the SAME Thing OVER and OVER

megHan

I keep telling myself that social media is not the place for me, that there’s not enough people listening and too many people talking, that they are not and never really have been my friends, that I’m going to give up screaming in a room full of other people screaming… and yet, in the file pictured above, sit a bunch of blog post ideas (some almost completely written) for here, for the book blog, for the editing website… and I do nothing, but continue trying to be heard over everyone else who is trying to be heard.

The weird thing is that I really don’t care if people hear me, no matter how much I want to be heard.

Wait. Let me rephrase that. I, like lots of other people, WANT to be heard, but I don’t want to be heard by EVERYBODY. Instead, I just want to be heard by my people, people who may be thinking or feeling the same way that I am thinking or feeling. People who are going through the same things and need to know that they are not alone, as I need to know that I am not alone.

In my quest to be heard, by people who need to hear me and people I need to hear, I allow fear (of not being heard, of being judged, of being misunderstood, of being ignored) to make me continue doing the same things over and over again. Daily I go to Facebook in hopes that someone will listen to the words that I have so eloquently written, words that I hope will strike up a conversation, but instead, there is nothing. Crickets. A few likes, maybe, but never the conversation I hope for.

I take this as judgment, and I use that judgment against myself. Was I wrong in what I was feeling? Did the words I use not make sense to people who do not know the full story inside my head? Could I have communicated with more detail and less flowery prose? Am I the only one who feels this way or thinks this way?

And that’s when loneliness sets in. Because really, my strive to be heard is really just a mission to find people who I can relate to, who can relate to me.

I’m not going to find that on social media, and honestly, I feel like I’m backtracking into the days before the internet was something we used every day all day. I miss the “old days” when people wrote letters and talked to each other on the phone. When friendships were real and right in front of you.

I have removed the social media apps from my phone to try and cure myself of this disease, this need to be noticed by people who wouldn’t notice me if we were standing in the same room in real life, and instead, vow to make friends that are true, friendships that are meaningful.

And to write here more. Where I can be heard by my tribe. Rather than try to make people my tribe that aren’t deserving of the place.