Moving Toward Fear
October 26, 2012 § Leave a comment
I ventured outside of my comfort zone today and attended a political event where Vice President Joe Biden was supposed to be the speaker. A friend of mine invited me and because I enjoy the company of said friend and would like to have more of it, I jumped at the chance. (Perhaps more on that later.) It wasn’t because I was too terribly interested in the Veep rambling on about Big Bird and binders full of women and horses and bayonets. No, I can get that kind of rhetoric sitting in front of my laptop licking the Cheeto dust from my fingers and downing half a two-liter of Orange Crush. I decided to go because life isn’t going to wait. If I want to really experience life then I need to get out and live it, not passively sit back and hope it’s going to call me over and make me the captain of its kickball team. I love my life and all of my achievements and intelligence notwithstanding, I lack a certain level of confidence to put myself out there and make things happen. Lots of people have said to me, you seem to have it all together, you’re so confident and you make it look so easy. Making it look easy is extremely hard. And I am by far my worst critic, as most of us are. It doesn’t stop me from pushing forward. And I will continue to seek out people and events and experiences that buoy that confidence. What’s important is to begin with a solid foundation of self-worth. The power of belief is critical. Believe in who you are and others will believe too. No one else can make that happen, and I wouldn’t want them to. Don’t look down and shuffle your feet in the dirt. Move toward the fear. Trust yourself.
Redux
October 25, 2012 § Leave a comment
I started my original personal blog in 2002 and to my surprise it had a pretty faithful following among the seven people that visited. I wrote fairly consistently about things that were important to me, my life and the observations that came from occasionally falling down and getting back up. Some friends have even recently asked me about it, telling me that they really enjoyed reading and miss it. So have I. I took it down somewhere around 2005 when I started law school because of the intense pressure and amount of work with which I was besieged and have just never been able to recreate those glory days when writing was a joy and it gave me nothing but pleasure to create. Law school ended badly with one devastating Property class and so I moved on to seek my fortune in the lucrative world of Social Services. I recently graduated with my Masters in mental health counseling and now find myself without an outlet to channel all of the stuff that gets stuck in my head due to over analysis. I’ve managed to cobble together a decent living with four part-time jobs so one would think that my time would be even more limited than before when I was in school but self-imposed deadlines lack the urgency of graduate school ones. That being said, I like the fluidity of my life.
Now, I know what you’re thinking…why don’t you just write in private? Why is it necessary to purge your brain and slap it up on the web for it to (very possibly) come back one day and haunt you? An excellent question. And I ask, why is it we always need a satisfactory reason for why we do the things we do? As human beings we are constantly doing dumb things and even in hindsight, reasons for our stupidity continue to elude us. Is this endeavor stupid? Yes and no. Yes because I am a private and sensitive person and sharing doesn’t come easy for me while humiliation does. No because I cannot afford my own therapist. In all seriousness, it’s a feeling of accountability that pushes me to do this. I will suffer the consequences but discover more about myself in the process.
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