Part One
"Hey! I just wanted to check in by email to see how you were doing, because i can never really tell from your blog."
Oh...shit.
Part Two
I was catching up on my Google Reader the other day, and maybe it was due to the sheer volume of reading I was doing, but does anyone else feel female bloggers trend toward the overly positive in their writing?
Like Cosmo or Glamour...on meth?
I mean, I'm all for positive writing and helping your readers feel good when they're done reading your stuff...but the overly positive tone from many of the top female bloggers is a little...much.
Maybe it's because many of those blogs are evolving to be more like mini-magazines. That's cool, I guess. But I also don't think that all of life's problems can be solved with hey! Believe in yourself more, k?! With these totes adorbs skinnies!
(It's like my beef with people saying to solve relationship problems by communicating more. OK, awesome...so...how exactly do I do that again? A big idea is great, but let's face it, most of us have NO IDEA how to execute.)
Most of it's due to packaging. I know that.
I think I started swinging that way here...that maybe this place was becoming day after day of bulleted quick reads on How To...do something. As if I'm an expert on anything.
What I fear in those little snippets is that I was losing my humanity. It's easy to hide behind a three sub-header post and exude positivism in the formula, even if I'm having a real shitty day.
And therein lies the rub...it's not that i want to broadcast all my shitty days to you verbatim, grumbling and complaining and stomping my feet.
But I do want to be a human being.
I don't want you to think that MY positivity all scrunched up in a checklist means that I am Right and you are somehow Wrong.
Because that is some real bullshit.
Part Three
I've always wanted this to be a place where you get the truth...or at least the truth as I see it, no sugar-coating.
So here's what's really been going on in my life of late:
1. I quit my job to work on my own and I really, really loved parts of it. There were also parts I really, really didn't care for. AND! There were also a few weeks where I was more stressed out than I've ever been in my life, and that includes the time I left my ex-husband and hid that fact from my parents for a few days. What fun!
1a. Figuring out the parts I didn't like about working on my own made me feel Less Than and a lot like a failure. To be honest, it still kind of does. I'm not sure why I just wasn't able to fully embrace the "OMG LIVING THE DREAM FOUR HOUR WORKWEEK MY LAPTOP IN BALI IS AMAZEBALLS!" mentailty. Part of me wonders if that is just a failure of my personality (I could never quite settle into it, and I worried, oh, pretty much all the time)...because don't all the successful entrepreneurs say that you just need to believe...or whatever? (Maybe that's why I didn't make a good Christian either.)
1b. You'd be surprised how incredibly supportive--and unsupportive--people can be about your work and career life. Like, wowza. Hello, opinions!
2. It is hairy buffalo balls crazy to realize how much stock and self-worth one puts into the routine of the 9-5. As much as I was discontent my career path and knew that I wasn't doing what I wanted to be doing, I still found merit in being required to show up somewhere...that it mattered to someone that I was on time or had this or that task completed, or that there were days when I knew for certain I had made someone happy with my work (one of the best compliments? "You rock! Someone should make a Sarah Storer super hero doll!" Which, er, now that I think about it, might be slightly creepy. Rescinded.)
3. These last few months of figuring myself out led to some really cool stuff. I'm dating someone who is the awesome, I am doing work I enjoy, and the changes that have come down the pipeline are exciting. But those changes have also knocked me off balance from the "me" momentum I had going around the end of August. I feel like I've lost a little part of me in there somewhere as I've shifted and changed and whatnot. Somewhere in there I became more guarded, held back a little. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's something I always do this time of year (it is all dark and cold and ugly outside, after all...which is a perfect time to hibernate)...I don't know. But I want back in it...whatever "it" is.
So folks, that's it. All that to say, look out for a return to soul puke on here. Like real, gut-searching, life-is-fucking-weird-and-funny-and-awesome-and-sometimes-really-scary soul puke.
Amidst some of the rest of the noise here on ye olde Interwebs, you deserve a little honesty. I'm not saying I'll be all Debbie Downer, but I'll do my best to not try to convince you that a 5 stepper is the key to solving all your problems.
I will, however, try to convince you that puppy videos can cure the world. LOOK AT THAT FACE!