A Crack at Honesty

It seems that during the past month my desire or need to stay connected with people through the blog and Facebook has dwindled to practically nothing. The realization hit me last week that I don't feel the need to stay connected or validated through my writing. It feels liberating and scary. We go through phases in this life, and I am certainly aware that this is a phase that I am going through. However, the feeling of not looking for approval through writing is a pretty great feeling. That doesn't mean that I have stopped caring what people think of me, unfortunately that nasty habit will die hard. I wouldn't necessarily say that I am on a journey at present, although I suppose we are always on a journey. However, journey implies to me some sort of fun and adventure, and I am not having much fun. I am finding that there is beauty in the darkness and normal does not exist. Perfection is arbitrary. I am not nor have I ever been a model of mental health as much as I may have tried to convince myself of that because seeing the truth of who I am and my flaws was just too painful. So I've spent years finding flaws in others and trying to believe that I really am normal and healthy. I have yet to meet anyone that is normal and yet I have so desperately wanted to be normal and not labeled weird or quirky. I am what I am, whether likable or not. I have spent so much time and energy hiding from myself and the world out of shame and embarrassment. I'm not so interested in coming out of hiding to the world, I just care about being honest and open with myself. I'm not quite sure what that looks like, I just know that the closer that I come to touching it the more I feel myself coming undone. 

My apologies to those blogs that I no longer frequent, I haven't forgotten the writers and I wish them all beautiful things on their journeys.

The Harvard Version of Life

I really appreciate all the support that I received in the comments about my journaling class. To answer some of your questions: I teach journaling and blogging classes at 7:00 pm Thursdays at the Open Mind Center. To register call the center at: 678 243-5074. I don't offer my classes online, however, I have begun to entertain the idea of offering individual online journaling sessions via email. Not quite sure yet how to do that, but I am definitely open to the idea. Also, I recently started offering counseling services at the Open Mind Center, which is pretty exciting as this is a new service that the center is offering.

I recently read an article about the need for life to be challenging so that we don't get bored. The challenges are all there for our growth. Over the past few days I have begun thinking about life as both a game and a school. I had a moment yesterday where I could see it as a game that my husband and I were trying to figure out how to master. When I stepped back and in a sense removed myself from life, my life became fun. The challenges became fun. I was trying to figure out how to play this game. The game is messy, dirty, and heartbreaking at times, but I saw that it was possible for me to lift myself above it all and enjoy the messiness. Because the messy does not define me. I am not the messiness. I am just learning to maneuver the messiness involved in this game.

Life as a school. For the most part I have found adulthood to be one challenge after another; I have not enjoyed meeting those challenges. There has been a lot of struggle. Life hasn't always been easy. Holding the awareness of life as a school I realized that I have not been attending the community college version of life, but more like the Harvard version. I had never really thought of life in terms of easy schools and difficult schools. Maybe the people that are breezing through life are really smart at playing this game, or maybe they are just attending a school with a fairly easy curriculum. I have had some pretty difficult classes, I think that many of them have been AP. I'm pretty sure that I have failed some of them, however, if I was put in an AP class at one of the top schools in the country then there must be an assumption somewhere out there that I am capable of eventually mastering the subject and passing the class. I'm really looking forward to a new semester with new classes and teachers. Some of these classes are really getting old, and some of them I am starting to think I will never pass.