Hey there newcomer! I guess we can leave all courtesies at the landing page, since I took care of that already. So this is the very first entry that I make for my website. I am very excited because here we will all grow together -and yes, including me,- so here is where I share my most personal thoughts.
But why, you might be wondering. Why would someone want to open up about something so personal, so intimate and deep, and make it public for the whole world to see?
I am glad that you asked, because that is perhaps the very first thing that I want to share with you: for a very long time, I bottled up everything that I felt, thought or even imagined. I thought that by doing that, I’d carry around less stress and less burden, by being more private to myself. The problem with this kind of reasoning is that it doesn’t serve at all if what you want is to impact the lives of many people around the world through your learnings, both in failure and in success. Maybe it worked for a short while, and even more so because showing this mysterious side of ourselves makes us feels so special and interesting, because people are trying to figure us out, and that in turn feeds our ego. Ouch, I know right?
Truth be told, sooner or later it also gets old, by trying to be different from the rest of the people around us -who has no problem being more open with anyone,- you’re not taking any steps into improvement nor impacting such lives. It is actually counterintuitive, since you can’t have the results that you want, if you’re willingly sabotaging yourself by doing the very thing that will prevent you from achieving it in the first place.
You’ll see, in one of my Facebook rants (like all of us have some time) I couldn’t help slipping something quite personal. I recall feeling such an urge to delete it… Being myself an Aspie and somewhat introverted, the least thing that you want is to suddenly find yourself naked under the spotlight for all your social circle to see. Or at least that’s how I recall it felt like.
I was expecting people to call me names, mock me or patronize me for my petty, middle-class white problems, or even straight away insult me. But much to my surprise, many people that had read my rant also took some extra minutes of their time to write me something similar along the lines that I had a knack for writing, that it felt compelling for them while they were reading it.
This took away some of the pressure. But before you ask: no, this didn’t straight away give me the confidence that I was lacking or looking for this whole time and all of a sudden I became this unknown and underrated writer, like certain film studio makes us believe in a lot of their pictures of success and romantic stories. I still felt quite self-conscious about doing it again: sharing the most vulnerable side of me again for all to see.
But over time, the need to get the feedback from my peers (which I consider far different and better than seeking the approval) is what ended up motivating me to do it more often. My close ones started to consult me whenever they wanted to write something. And not just text messages, some of them even offered to pay me to help them write essays, homeworks, recommendation letters, serious stuff.
And accepting this side and ability of mine is in fact what what brings us here! I hope you will all enjoy the ride and I want to remind you yet once again that we will all grow together in this! Take care and until next entry,
Healrod.
