something i’ve noticed over the first week of blogging every day…
i’ve recently been of the mind that i really don’t care what other people think i should be doing. but in writing these posts, something that keeps coming up is that i don’t feel like i am “allowed” to do or enjoy certain things.
on who’s authority? i ask myself. at this point, it can only be my own.
i find this to be a really valuable result of this exercise (which, since i’ve only said it on social media and not here, is that i have challenged myself to post one blog post every day for 100 days. today is day 8/100.). it is data. typing up whatever’s on my mind every day and hitting publish is helping me find threads through my belief system that i wasn’t able to locate before.
when i find these threads that don’t resonate with the others, it allows me to interrogate them. where did they come from? why are they still here?
carl jung, of who i am sure you are familiar, said “until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.” i am almost embarrassed to realize how often this is true for me.
for this particular thread, i think it is the ghost of all of the inner authority that i outsourced to others. it is the result of high-masking autism not being diagnosed until i was nearly 30.
it is also very scary to take responsibility for all of my own decisions. if they don’t pan out… that means it really was my fault, and i don’t have anyone else i can blame it on. if i am simply following orders (from society, bosses, friends, trends, gurus, whoever) then it’s easy to have someone to point to and say “oh, it didn’t work because of THEM. there is nothing wrong with ME.”
parts of me still have certain beliefs or values outsourced to someone else’s authority, and finding these piece by piece as i write these posts is how i am finding and reclaiming responsibility for them.
like a shepherd, maybe. finding all members of my flock, tending to them, asking where they’ve been if i haven’t seen them in awhile? who dyed you blue?
sometimes as i write i worry that i’ll look back and regret sharing some of this. or that i’ll be embarrassed of putting so much of myself on public display in 3 months, once this exercise has ended.
maybe i’ll have such a strong love for writing like this, though? maybe i’ll keep going? i’m not sure yet, you know, i’m only a week into this.
my hope is that by sharing my process, i can inspire someone else to find themselves in a similar way. set an example, you know? be uncomfortable on purpose.
if i’m not expanding my comfort zone, what am i even doing? i need to be doing something that pushes me right to the edge. there, that spot, is where i get the most information that i can put into practice. find what works, find what blows up in my face.
like, fuck around and find out. all of the most important lessons i’ve learned have been gained through burning my hands. getting zapped. that feeling of almost falling backwards when i lean back in my chair too far.
it only takes a few times before a scab becomes a lesson, a reminder of where i have been.
by putting all my wounds on the world wide web, i show people that they aren’t the only ones who have been gouges. they aren’t alone in their weird darkest thoughts. i’m here too, and i’m here with you.
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