My third kid has been vacationing away from home for a few days. My other kids have been pawned off on neighborhood friends for the day. I swept, laundered, scrolled, repotted, created, relaxed. Now what? I’m going to do some shitty, dorky, journaling in the hopes that one day, I’ll write something really good and I can sell it. For pool money. Or travel money. Or whatever frivolous, first world thing I want to spend it on. Because my words are mine. I don’t feel like editing, so if you’re here for good punctuation and grammar, errrm, sorry (not sorry).
Whenever my teenage parents’ genes synched up and made me – I got lucky with words. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. My genetic lottery prize: I can put words together in ways that are sometimes funny and often amusing. It would have been great to have bigger boobs or a longer stride. I would have liked to be better at math or have less toe hair, but my gift is writing. Most times, my writing is barely beyond average, but when its better than that, I think it might be good because its relatable.
It’s the end of 2021. I feel like I stepped of the edge of a precipice in the fall of 2020 and I just now figured how to tie a fancy, figure eight knot in the rope I’ll use to pull myself up. I’m still down there in the light-filtered shade chucking tools out of my backpack. I’m learning what I need. I’m figuring out what is useful to me. But it’ll probably take a lifetime to make the full ascent.
My goal lately has been to tell the truth. In cornier, woo-woo terms, my truth. My perspective, the sometimes unpopular, against the grain, way I see the world around me.
People pleasing is so last year. JK. People pleasing has been my unintentional life’s work. It hasn’t paid off. It just made me feel inauthentic and uncomfortable. People pleasing is responsible for a lot of the sticky situations I made myself the middle of.
If you invite me to do something and I know I won’t be able to attend, I don’t just say, “Oh shoot, I have a previously scheduled obligation. Hope I can make it next time.” NOPE. I can’t bear to see a tiny flash of disappointment flicker across your face. Surprise! There is no flickering. The real disappointment comes when I agree and then have to tell you later that no, actually I can’t make it.
People pleasing is great in the moment. I like avoiding upsetting feelings. I like redirecting, agreeing, and I’ll say it, manipulating conversations, so that everyone is having fun. No one feels bad. Sure, there may be no depth, but grownups don’t drown when they can touch the bottom.
There’s more to say about busting out of the people pleasing mode. TONS. I think people go to college for like a bunch of years to help people pleasers like me. I think it starts with words like BOUNDARIES, MANTRAS, SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION, ETC.
Right now, for me, it’s looking more like : I don’t know what I think about that yet. And/or to stop talking.
🛑🙊
Just stop talking. I won’t fill the void with explanations or reasons or blabbering. I’ll just stop talking.
So now,
I’m going stop writing.
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