You "Like" Me, You Really, Really "Like" Me

Song of the Day: What Do You Hear in These Sounds?--Dar Williams

And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think / That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink / But, oh, how I loved everybody else / When I finally got to talk so much about myself

Whenever I think of restarting this whole blog thing, I almost immediately decide against it. There is just so much effort involved in creating something that will most likely only be read by, well, me. Who the hell am I writing this for anyway? What. Is. The point?

When I initially started it 4 years ago (holy shit!), I was looking for some sort of outlet. I had some stuff I wanted to say but I wasn't really sure how to share it. I didn't even understand what a blog was at the time but when I figured it out, I was totally on board. And it was FREE. And I could make it really pretty with colors and pictures and whatnot. Sign me up! But, at the same time, I really wasn't too sure about who my audience would be. It has since occurred to me in the past week that I really don't care who my audience is. Honestly, I'm not even sure if I have an audience. (No offense to anybody who might be reading this. Hello! You're wonderful!) But my point is, if I'm doing this mostly for me, why should it make a difference if anyone else actually sees it? Even better, why should it matter if anyone approves?

I know, I know, it sounds a little self-centered. But I like to write. And so I do. It helps me get one more thing off my chest and regardless of if it goes onto a piece of paper or out into cyberspace, it makes me feel better. And isn't that really why we should do anything? Because we enjoy it?

The social media movement is so obsessed with friends, comments and "likes" that it's a little disturbing. I'm guilty of it myself. I have often felt that when my facebook status didn't get ONE single comment, that it was a failure. Really? As a perfectionist with a fear of failing, is that really what I need to deal with on a daily basis? I'm realizing that not everything I do needs approval or a comment or a retweet. I'm sure many people already know this but I wasn't so lucky. I was raised to be a "pleaser." Do the right thing, follow the rules, make as many people happy as you possibly can because then they'll like you and that will get you everywhere. Hmmm...turns out where it gets you is quite similar to where a doormat ends up. I'll have you know, doormats don't have that much fun. Strange but true. But, as they say, live and learn. And what I've learned is that, unless I'm doing at least one thing for myself because it makes me happy, very little else will go well. Selfishness has definitely gotten a bad rap. It makes it sound like a 5-year-old who hasn't quite figured out how to share. But in reality, you're much more likely to be selfless if you are selfish with your own happiness and well-being first. Otherwise, well, you're kind of fucked. Enter: The Doormat. You start to get used to pleasing other people first and you tend to forget about your own state of mind. And while it is noble and humble and modest (and all that other crap they feed you) to cater to someone else's needs first, you end up doing yourself a great disservice. I'm not saying you need to be a total asshole but if you're nice to yourself initially, you'll feel awesome which leads you to want others to feel awesome too. In that scenario, everyone wins and you don't feel left out. It's like the video on the plane about the oxygen masks: you put yours on first to make it easier to help others with theirs. It just makes good sense.

So that's why I blog. And perhaps you should too, non-existent reader that I am not writing this for because everything I do revolves around me now. (That was a joke. The second part, not the first part. You should totally blog. And then invite me to read it. I'll totally comment on every post.)

The Flip Side

Song of the Day: Lack of Color -- Death Cab For Cutie

And when I see you, I really see you upside down / But my brain knows better, it picks you up and turns you around.

I remember being in middle school science class learning about the human eye and how it works: the cones and rods, cornea and retina, tear ducts, blah, blah, blah. I couldn't, at this point in my life, tell you which part does what or attempt to label a diagram of the eye but I distinctly recall being taught that your eye flips everything that you see upside down. This baffled the shit out of me. I'm going to admit to you right here on blogger that I actually thought for a small portion of my life that the entire world was upside down but we saw it right side up. I felt like I lived in some kind of Wrinkle in Time universe that had a bizarre dimension which allowed me to walk on the ceiling but made it seem as though I was walking on the floor. I panicked for a while thinking, "why didn't my parents tell me this?" How could I not realize something was off from the very beginning? I thought I was smarter than that. Was my life really like the video of "Dancing on the Ceiling" by Lionel Richie?

It was upsetting, to say the least. The concept that what I knew as up was really down made me question everything.

As it turns out, roughly twenty years later, I'm dealing with essentially the same issue. My up is down, my right is left, easy is growing difficult, longtime friends are becoming acquaintances,  people I once thought were secure are showing their insecurities. Everything I thought was right is wrong and my patience is slowly turning into frustration.

Now, I am not a high maintenance person but I do enjoy sensing a feeling of order in my life, both inward and outward. I prefer routines. I appreciate that everything is in the proper place. These are the things that calm me down. At the moment, however, my insides and outsides are utter chaos. The only routine I have revolves around a job that is slowly eating me alive. It pays and I am grateful to be employed but there is absolutely no order and even when I try to create it, it dissolves within days, sometimes hours. I tried going with the flow but that concept is much harder to maintain when you are supposed to be the one creating the flow. It also doesn't help that I have no flow-creating experience other than the insanity that has been the past 21 months of this unbalanced job.

This is not the first time I have not loved my job but there was always a landing spot, a comfort zone I gravitated towards that would take me in and make me remember the age-old saying: it's just a job. It was a rock that grounded me and gave me perspective in a crazy world. As of July 17, 2011, that comfort zone disappeared. My rock got up and walked away, perhaps proving that maybe it wasn't a very good rock to begin with. But it had been there for more than half of my life and now that it's missing, I can't quite figure out what to do. I didn't realize how much I depended on that friendship until there were limits set upon it. Now I feel like I've walked into my house and someone has changed the location of all the light switches and rearranged the furniture. Everything is basically the same but it's completely different. And I don't know how to deal. Yet.

Clearly, I wasn't paying attention to the remainder of the science class where they informed me that my brain flips the images my eyes produce back to normal, that my eyes were just step one in a two step process, that my reality hadn't shifted at all and that everything was going to be okay. I hope the same holds true for me now.