I am having a conundrum about this blog. It has to do with what I "should" share here and also who I "should" share the blog with. But it is part of a much bigger conundrum in general, in fact it is probably part of a cultural conundrum. Who makes those rules anyway!?
On the level of the culture as a whole, I think there is a huge push for us to present ourselves always as upbeat and positive regardless of what is going on. There seems to be a great deal of discomfort when someone shares honestly. So many people seem to feel they need to fix things for others; again it is trying to get the person back into the upbeat and positive position. People are uncomfortable with just listening and doing nothing to change the situation.
On the level of me, it may be that the pendulum of vulnerability is
swinging from one extreme over to the other. Maybe that is what it
needs to do before I can find some happy medium. I have upheld and
hidden what is going on for me for most of my life. But that did not
serve me well and it also got me into the pickle I am in now. So now I
am trying to be more vulnerable and exposed. But it feels rocky and
tender. I don't know the landscape or the proper behavior. I feel
very exposed and unprotected.
I want to be able to write about this new territory I am having to traverse due to this head injury. I want to be able to write honestly as I explore this new me as I figure this all out. The injury brings silver linings with it as well as a great deal of change. It also strips away a lot of old junk.
Yes! That is part of what I am trying to say here. I do feel that I am shedding a lot of old crap that I used to cloak myself, to protect myself or to morph myself into someone I thought was more acceptable to "them"; to anyone outside myself. I want that to be gone.
I recently put a link to this site on an email I sent out to a bunch of friends. It was in an email where I also announced that I was looking for house sitting jobs. One friend had a very negative response to the blog. She felt the blog made me sound unrelaible and would turn potential house sitting customers off. (If you are a potential house sitting client let me assure you here and now that I am extremely reliable. You can check my references!)
Her negative response affected me. It made me take another look and assess why I am blogging and what I want to say here. It also made me look at how much I care or don't care what other people think of this blog. It made me evaluate what I am willing to risk.
What I want to do with this blog is to share honestly and openly who I
am in the here and now. I do not want to wrap myself up in some package hoping it is
palatable to some unknown person out there.
I find that I both do and don't care what people think of this blog. I care that people like it because I want to do a good job writing. One of the purposes of this blog is to improve my writing.
But I find that I don't care what people think about it when it comes to judging me as a person. I am so done with trying to be different than I am! The friend who had the negative feedback for me about this blog worked
in PR for most of her life.
This blog is not about PR. This blog is not about selling myself as a house sitter or as anything else. This blog is about me. If a potential house sitting client does not like the me that they see in these pages then that is fine. They probably would not like the me they would meet in person either. We simply are not a good match for each other.
I am going to close this post here for the night becasue it is very late. I may add more within the next couple of days because I do not feel the conversation is complete yet (with myself or with my readers).
