Vulnerability

I’ve always been interested in being more myself, I think that’s something that most people would say. But it’s hard, there are things that I feel ashamed of, things that I’m not comfortable sharing, certain things that feel as though they cross lines.

After a heavy night of drinking, I woke up and read this article by Heidi Isern. Takeaways - be vulnerable, make deeper connections with real people. Where do I sign?

I had the aha moment, got up, drank a gallon of water, and sat down to write. Only, it had been so long since my last post, that I no longer knew how to publish articles on my jekyll-powered blog. Some problems with the blog forced me to reverse engineer the entire thing. Annoying. But I did it, here we are.

Now I’m asking myself why I stopped writing months ago. Probably a combination of the wrong motivations and confusion about what I wanted to share. I had written some pretty personal articles, but had never published them. When I look back at the most recent articles on my blog, I feel kind of ashamed of even the ones that I did publish. That’s a weird feeling, and part of me is a little proud of it. It’s good to deal with those feelings, it’s good to say things out loud.

I think some of that comes from my parents divorce when I was only 1 (and cuter than I am now).

My working theory is that being powerless at such a young age created the underlying feeling that people are trying to screw me. I think that accounts for why I feel the need to control situations, and why I sometimes act like an asshole when things don’t go my way.

Back to the point. Something I realized was that my friends and colleagues had actually been reading my writing. I would sit down with an old friend, and start sharing a story. “Yeah, I saw that on your blog.” I didn’t think much of that at the time, but it’s a powerful concept. Writing can help maintain connections, keep you fresh in other people’s minds, and keep you honest. So I’m writing again.