Be Yourself

I’ve been neglecting this blog and it’s been completely unintentional. The past 6 months has involved a lot of thinking, crying, arguing, negotiating and struggling. It sounds bad. It’s not. I have come out the other side with more clarity about who I am, what I want and how I can go about getting it. I’ve pinpointed the parts of my life that were making me unhappy (which, until recently, I didn’t even realise) and decided how to go about fixing them. Now I am on a completely different path to the one I was and it’s all at once scary, exciting and exhilarating.  It makes me smile, just thinking about it.

I’d like to write more frequently in this blog, even if no one reads it. Lying in bed this morning, I remembered how I used to punch out a LJ post a day, or at least a few per week (sometimes I had to remind myself that it wasn’t necessary to post everyday). My posting schedule was on top of writing a thesis and holding down a part time job. Regardless of how tired I was or what else I had to do, I always had time for LJ, writing and commenting on friends journals. Somehow in the last two years, something that previously brought me a lot of joy has been lost. I’m always too tired or too busy.

Granted, I have found working a full time job to be exhausting. I thought this was natural. It’s not. I hated work and I was lying to myself if I thought my goals were to climb the corporate ladder. I hate that shit. It wasn’t only my job, but the work, the environment, the institution and, at times, my colleagues. All of these factors added up to make me physically and mentally drained at the end of the day. Plus, there was moving in with someone else. I thought the only difficulties we would face would be who’d do the dishes and how often the bin would need taking out. You know, 80s sitcom problems. Turns out there’s more to it than that. Who would’ve thought?

So home life has been exhausting as well and somewhere along the line I stopped being me. I buried my desire to be online, to write and read and discover. At the end of my studies, I was ready for some ‘separate time’ away from a busy writing schedule. I think I could’ve used this time more effectively and sensibly, in a way that provided structure and nurturing of a tired mind, rather than completely rearranging my life. Somehow, I managed to be thrown into the path of good people who have set me on the right track, including a gentle reminder that what I was good at was writing. And the writing has been calling me back for awhile. I’ve only just started to listen.

One of my biggest flaws is to make a decision and throw myself into it, forging ahead until I realise there are many options along the way to consider. I’ve started my new website and I’m attempting to reconcile blog and services. But it’s not clicking and I’m starting to panic as to why not, rather than waiting for the ideas to come and grow organically. Despite the fact that decisions I have made in the past 3 months have all come naturally, in their own time! Sometimes I’m not sure if I can explain the concept of the new site to myself. Sometimes I think I’m trying to do too much. I’m having difficulty writing blog posts for the site. I don’t know why because when I sit down and concentrate, I can write clearly, fluently and concisely about a topic. But I don’t have that burn I used to. Those previous times of ignoring all else and coming home to write on my LJ.

I may be out of practice. It could be any number of issues but because I don’t feel that passion, I am starting to worry. Really what I need is to just calm down and let things evolve as they should and stop trying to ‘fix’ things I perceive as a problem, simply because they’re not part of the plan. They could just as well be an opportunity or development, rather than a problem. Sometimes I worry I quit my job prematurely because I perceived it as a block to concentrating on my writing. Really, the problem was me and my mindset and what I was making time for. Instead of adjusting my new life as a partner and full time worker to who I am, I compromised myself and pushed aside all the little pieces which make up me so I could concentrate on my new life. Still, that’s not enough to make me go crawling back for my job

I suspect I’m still not comfortable or confident enough to use my writing ability to post authoritatively on… well, anything. So I revert back to personal posts and stories. I want to be more versatile in my writing and I believe I can write well journalistically. It may not light a fire under me but it will make me some money now that I’ve quit my job. Perhaps I’m still finding my voice and style and what I need to do is to maintain who I am, rather than trying to ‘fix’ myself to write in a way I think I should. Maybe, the best strategy I could have is to learn from the past and remember to be me and stop compromising myself.