Tag Archives: knowing yourself

The Power to Own It

I began a new blog today.
There’s an area of my life I don’t feel like writing about here or anywhere else too obviously just yet, so I figure a new blog is a good way to do it.
But I don’t want true anonymity, I don’t want to write for just myself, because what I’m going through is something that’s a universal experience, and it’s painful for us all.
I believe I know something about sharing pain. I believe I know something about sharing the dark inner-workings of some life experiences that many don’t have the guts to put a voice behind.
I believe my obligation as a writer is to share that with my audience. I believe I owe it to myself, and to anyone else hurting in that same place I’m going through, to put my emotions and hurts into words so that there’s some kind of community behind the feeling.
I don’t think I was given the talent of writing so I could fill paper for-my-eyes-only journals that get stuffed in a drawer and contribute fuck all to the way the world spins. I believe each of us was given whatever skills and talents we have with the obligation of using them in a way that builds into the human condition.
We owe it to each other to own our experiences and share them. We underestimate the power of identity and community, but we truly don’t fathom how important both are to the fullness of our lives.
So why am I writing the blog a little bit incognito?
Because it’s not just my story to tell right now, and to put my fully-public stamp upon the work would be difficult for others.
I don’t do secrets well. I keep confidences beautifully, but I can’t keep secrets about myself from others. I don’t care to, it’s not my style. I’m honest to a fault. I’m absolutely fucking CERTAIN I’m not the only person who thinks the irreverent things I do, who gets pissed about the things I do, or hurts in the ways I hurt.
I know I’m not alone. That knowledge emboldens me. I want to share. I want to stand up and shout THIS IS HOW IT FEELS!
So, if you look hard enough, you might find me.
And I’m fine with that.
But here, now, this place, given my audience, I can’t begin to define for you the scope of these feelings I have, because, well, it gives everything away. To my whole audience.
It’s hard, too, though. It’s hard to hide this, but it’s also hard to put it out there, because putting it out there means I can’t pretend it’s not real or that it’s not happening to me.
I don’t want to own these feelings. These are truths I could well do to avoid. Which is all the problem, and is why I’ve opened that can of worms.
That’s when writers need to write: When it’s the very last thing in the world they wish to write about.
When’s the last time you told the truth about your biggest fears? When’s the last time you owned up to your most regrettable failings and accepted that you’ve not paid the price for them or atoned in any way? When’s the last time you said you were all that and more, but that you could confidently say that that didn’t mean you were a bad person, just a normal human?
Because we should all do that a little more. We should all acknowledge we could be closer to that person we have a vision of being, and accept that our ethics and morality may stand room for improvement.
If you’re the perfect vision of who you’ve always dreamed to be, then congratulations, you’re in the rare 1%.
Me, I’m far, far, far from that woman. Today, I’ve taken another step in possibly trying to write/right some of the wrongs that are the crevasse separating me from who I’ve been and who I’d like to still be.
It’s a good way to end a week, and a bittersweet moment of satisfaction. I know there’s no happy ending for me here. But there’s a better ending than the one I currently see unfolding, and I know that it’s in my power to change.
And somewhere on the web I still get to have a voice and share that common human experience, if only a little incognito.
What a beautiful world technology gives us the opportunity to have…
If only we’d all try to use this technology to create real community rather than just more commodity.

Lightning Crashes… Or Something

There is a world of difference between saying what needs to be said and saying what you want to say. Words get taken the wrong way and intentions are often lost in the mix.
Hi, I’m Steff. I’m a compulsive foot-in-mouthist, and thinking before speaking is a lifelong fantasy I’ve yet to make true.
And you know what? Honestly, I just hope I keep on failing.
It’s so goddamned much fun when I get to actually say what I think. I do curtail it day to day, but not as much as you might think. I’m not one of these secret-other-self type bloggers who has a total alter ego they only bring out to play on a CPU. I don’t have to hit the bong or scarf a tab or guzzle a 2-4 in order to tap into that inner self. I just have to bite my fucking tongue sometimes so I can yield to convention. But, trust me, most people I know have known me to say incredibly crass things sometimes, and I’ve no qualms about playing a fool.
If there’s anything I miss about my old job, it’s that they’d long ago labelled me as “flippant” and knew me to be an absolute yutz at times, and, in fact, they embraced those moments of utter irrelevance. I miss that, and I miss the fact that I’m not feeling as comfortable being myself as I once was. I chalk it up to the oddities of the recent past: the lack of sex drive, the in-orbit levels of estrogen, the sub-terranean depths of depression, and all that shit. But I feel it coming back to me now. I’m waiting, like a lover in the night, I’m waiting for my own arrival, naked yet comfortable.
And that’s the thing, man. Being yourself. It ain’t just about saying what you’re thinking, it’s about feeling comfortable in your own skin and knowing, without a doubt, that the things you’re doing and thinking are all about who you are. It’s far easier said than done, and far harder to actualize than any of those fucking self-help gurus would have you believe.
Why’s that? Well, ‘cos we live in a shrink-wrapped society that thinks image is everything. Hell, it’s apologies-on-demand in our day and age. (I wrote a little ranty thing about just that on the other bloggie-poo of mine earlier today.)
Y’know, there’s two ways I write best: One, with music driving the cadence of everything I tap out, and two, like I am now, seated in unnatural (to you) silence — my little hearing aids turned off, or not even inserted in my ears. I find that if, one way or the other, I drown out the world, that all that’s left is the rat-tatty-tat of my heart and my fingers on the keyboard. Gone is the judgment, the cynicism, the self-doubt, the angst, the bafflement, the groan’n’drone of the world beyond my far too thin windowpanes. I can give in to autolatry and isolation, and, for once, being myself is just a little easier.
I have the misfortune of working at a company with nice people, but with extreme political aspects to them. And with politics comes correctness, and with correctness comes a realization that I might not ever fit in as I’d like to. But, then, I haven’t been there long, and it took me more than a year to gain the unequivocal fondness of my last employers. (But I was in a bad, bad place when I started that job — borderline alcoholic and drug addict, really.) I suspect I’ll beat the living shit out of that time-lapse this time around, but OHMIGOD does it feel like forever.
And I’ve been thinking about this for a little bit today, how weird it all is when we lose touch with ourselves. It’s like trying to dial up a friend and stoke an old relationship. It ain’t gonna be all love’n’kisses as soon as that cup’o’joe settles on the table between you, you know. Takes a little massagin’ of egos and checking in and tuning up and all, don’t you find? Yet we think that because we’re all of a sudden aware of the distance between who we are and who we’re being that there’s some kinda mental Band-aid we can slap on that gaping psychic wound and suddenly be our uber-ally self all over again. Not gonna fuckin’ happen, sweetcheeks — try though you might.
So, that’s where I am. I know who I am but I know who I’m seeming to be, and who I’m seeming to be’s just gotten her eviction notice and I want her ass on outta here, but I know there’s a holding period before that’s gonna happen. Meanwhile, just call me Marcellus Wallace, ‘cos I’m about due to get medieval on that waste-ass tenant if she ain’ packin’ in a friggin’ hurry, baby.
I’m trying to remember when in the hell it all shifted for me. When was it I lost touch with all the little bitty bits o’ Steff that make me grin when I’m alone? At some point during my recently RIP’d relationship, to be sure, and no, I’m not about to blame the ex for causing me to go AWOL. Sure as shit weren’t his fault, not one iota. He liked the chick I am, not the chick I became, and that’s fact that I don’t doubt. The problem was never him, the problem was that I, like most chicks have a tendency to do, managed to fall into that trap of being what I thought was the right thing to be in a relationship, and somehow, that coupled with the estrogen depression and the prevalence of strife and upheaval in my oh-so-tumultuous little dramatic life somehow sent this kick-ass, fun to be with, always witty, always snappy chick somewhere way the hell out into the stratosphere.
And, dude, it sucked!
There’s nothing (NOTHING!!!) worse than waking up with the side of you that you just don’t like. There’s nothing (NOTHING!!!) cooler than waking up with a grin on your face ‘cos nothing turns you on better than liking who you are at 6:53 am, all right?
And you don’t get to be that person if all you’re ever doing is kow-towing to convention and appeasing all the little perfect (read: no fun, dry, unenviable) people around you. You get to be that person when you say things that catch yourself and others off-guard and you bring a grin to their face. You get to be that person when that gleam in your eye sparkles and you find yourself walking down the street with an unwarranted grin.
Ah, well, I don’t know why I’m writing this, and I don’t give a fuck about it, either. I just felt like it. That’s reason enough, no? I wish like nothing else I had Live’s Lightning Crashes somewhere on this harddrive, but no. I do not. If you read this in the next couple of hours, (say, before 2am PST) perhaps you could email me the song and I can rock-the-fuck-out before work in the morning. Not that I’m condoning piracy. Okay, fuck it. I’m condoning piracy. Sign me up, matey, and watch me rock and roll on the pitch of those waves.