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To The Core

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So much is going on in our social and political climate today that is matched with public commentary from all sides. I struggle to voice my opinion on these matters for several reasons.

I made two major decisions as I matured from adolescence into adulthood. One, I would stop being fake and hiding behind a mask. And two, I would not share or dispute my core values and beliefs with the world at large.

These may seem like contradicting rules of behavior. I think they are actually complementary. What I gain from vulnerability in being open to those that want to see the real me is actually empathy and tolerance for those that differ from me.

This is not a perfect science. Occasionally, I find myself in a discussion that lends to “opening a can of worms” in terms of debating controversial topics. I do have to remind myself restraint is more in line with my core and I pull back to sharing my experience rather than my opinion.

That is the key I think.

What we need more of is sharing our personal experiences and less of arguing our personal opinions. When you can truly understand a person’s journey in life, the core beliefs take shape without even voicing them.

And it leaves the door open to drawing conclusions about your own life. I have held strong to the thought that two people discussing a deep-set value which is opposite from the other person will never be productive in changing either person’s mind. Debate of controversial topics will only further ingrain the existing opinion of each person. It serves no purpose.

But when we share our experiences with no agenda, we unleash a new world where people find similarities and differences can exist, and both sides can coexist.

The battle within me to stand up for the things I care about is not an easy thing in this realm of blogging. I don’t want to be silent. I don’t want to let the intolerance of the world and comparison game to hold me back.

So I will not back down from sharing who I am, through life experiences. And I will never impose my beliefs on anyone who reads my blog. My hope is anyone who reads my writing will be influenced positively, even to the core.

To The Core

Keep Going

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A friend of mine said to me yesterday, “I may have misunderstood your blog post but does this mean you are not writing your book anymore? Please don’t stop! You have to keep going.” I thought now that I have established a few things like a separate blog Facebook page and structure of the blog, it is about time to clarify a little of what I am doing.

I definitely have not given up on the dream of becoming a published author of a memoir and possibly more books in my lifetime. I have learned an important thing about myself, that sometimes I just have to take one step back to see where my journey is actually taking me instead of pushing through what seems to be the impossible.

This blog is here to help me do that. To help me keep my writing alive and fresh and always in the forefront of my mind. There are times in life where we don’t know what to do and we choose to just do nothing and times when we face this situation by just doing something. I choose something this time!

This medium affords me the chance to speak on the things I am most passionate about, hone my writing skills, and build that audience of readers who care and are impacted by my words.

Once the words “keep going” sparked this post, I was quickly reminded of a dear friend of mine from long ago, who shared a t-shirt I could buy in memory of her father whom my family was close to for decades and died from suicide. The shirt simply said those two words, “keep going,” across the front with the ‘i’ being replaced by a semicolon or the symbol for suicide prevention. I still wear this shirt often and hold it dear.

This is the theme of my life I sincerely believe. It is marked permanently on my wrist to “Give it time,” so I never forget how temporary each emotion or thought or season of my life can be. It is what my blog name stands for (you can click on the ‘About Me’ section from the menu to see more of that). My life is a testament that as long as I don’t rob time from my life, my purpose will be realized.

So, yes friends my book will still happen in time. I don’t know what it will be exactly but it will be a piece of me. It will serve to inform, entertain, and influence change in the world. For now, I hope this blog holds the same weight and mission.

Keep Going

Easter Traditions

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Today I reflect on Easter. Growing up, Easter was definitely a holiday but I was reminded by so many yesterday that it wasn’t filled with traditions like most everyone has around me. My Easter holiday was disrupted this year by a rather sick 8-year old girl. It has been a good while since we have had need for wet washcloths, thermometers at the ready, and carefully tucked in blankets. I wasn’t expecting it at all, and it changed a few plans, but in all reality, it only changed what would be a typical Sunday.

When I was a girl, I didn’t really notice that much. I knew a lot of families purchased new outfits for Easter and the attendance at church was a a little more crowded. But, for my family, it meant the same church clothes and pot roast waiting at home and Sunday evening services following an afternoon filled with naps and weekend cleaning. As I got older, I think I held our traditions of having no big celebration in higher esteem. I felt it set us apart that we could treat the most significant religious day as any other Sunday. That we had our heads on straight. And although I face the holiday with more humility than I used to, I still to this day see it as a normal Sunday along with the rest. It was afterall the very thing as a Christian we should be celebrating every day of the week, for it was our ultimate salvation and purpose for living.

This year, I have had a few realizations though. I realized Easter Sunday is a time to recalibrate, to assess whether we are changing and growing or if we are still treating every single day as the next. Both sermons I listened to had one common theme, “Change.” What happened on Resurrection Sunday changed absolutely everything from that moment forward. It changed the life we have before death and it changed the life we have after death and into eternity. It means new life in both spectrums, but it also means adjusting to a new way of communicating to God.

Mary Magdalene wept when she saw Jesus’ body absent from the tomb and she recognized by the calling of her name by Jesus that her “Teacher” had risen. The excitement was quickly quelled, though, as Jesus urged her “Do not cling to me, for I have yet to ascend to my Father in Heaven.” Basically, Jesus was saying “I know I am back, but that doesn’t mean we can go back to the way things were. Don’t cling to the past ways of being close to me. Look for the new way.”

So that is my hope, on a personal level, that I would not hear new lessons and face new trials and quickly revert back to the place that was comfortable. As I completed my local church home membership survey (I consider myself a member to two churches now, local and beachfront), I shared one deep and earnest prayer for my life. I plan to live my life in full expectation of this prayer being answered to the fullest this year. I won’t share what my prayer was, but I will say that it very much embodies the lessons about change this Easter Sunday has brought me.

Disclaimer: My Christian faith is very personal to me, and will from time to time surface in my blog posts like this one. It is not the primary subject of my blog, but definitely a part of me. If you believe differently than I do, that is perfect fine and you can take what parts of these posts you need. If you have questions about my faith or what is written here, please feel free to comment!

Easter Traditions

Type B

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I am starting to think that I was born to write short stories, but not like real short stories that have a beginning , middle, and end.  I was born to write first chapters to novels.  I know this sound ludicrous, but I have done it twice before on paper and millions of times in my head.  I come up with an idea for an excellent novel and it is all written in the recesses of my brain in an instant.  I know the arc of the story, the climax, the plot twists.  I know the mission and the audience.  I pound out the first chapter in minutes on my keyboard, sit back and admire how easily it came to me, and then that’s it. 

The story dies before it even takes one breath.  I feel drawn to be a writer, to be a real author with a weighty book in my hands that I labored over for a year.  There was a time when I was part of a writer’s group and the leader hit me with a truth bomb I never expected.  She was commenting on her methods of writing and how “Type A” she was.  I nodded in agreement, in solidarity of all of us Type A people.  She stepped back with almost a surprised look and said “You aren’t Type A though, right?”  I feebly attempted to say that I was.  She went on to say “No, you are definitely Type B!”

Type B?  What even was Type B?  I looked it up just now, years later.  The characteristics of Type B are as follows: Flexibility, Low stress levels, Relaxed attitude, Adaptability to change, Even-tempered, Laid-back, Tendency to procrastinate, Patience, and Creativity.  I had never in my life been described in this way.  I after all was the right-brained, highly analytical, mathematician who only played sheet music on piano and never by ear because I didn’t have a creative bone in my body.  I was not an artist.  I was not lazy.  And low-stress wasn’t a term I would use to explain how I handled my environment.

But when I take a step back, I can see it.  I have always taken the path of “Everything will be okay and work out” in life.  Whether I truly believe it to be the case often wars within.  But I suppose that is how it is with any personality assessment.  Nothing can truly assess the honest position within ourselves versus what we put out into the world.  I could answer every question on a personality quiz with my true and honest inner feelings, but that isn’t my personality.  My personality is what I construct and what I show the world I am.

At that moment, I felt her comment as an insult, a jab at how long it had taken me to actually write something and submit it for group critique or how I was always talking of my dream of a memoir but never actually producing more than a page or two of content during our writing exercises.  I believed in her eyes I wasn’t a true writer.  And she could have had some sense in all that.  Am I really a writer?  Can a Type B person be a great author?

I was always convinced the thing that held me back from writing was my perfectionism.  Perfectionism aka Type A person.  And there is a sliver of truth there, I believe.  But what is perfectionism, other than fear of failure?  I was never afraid to fail.  It really didn’t cross my mind when it came to writing.  I was only writing for myself after all.  And that is 100% ingrained honesty.  Of course I wanted the world to hear and be changed by my words, but really more than anything I wanted to tell the story for myself.  I wanted to be able to pick up what I had written and see the journey my life had brought me on, the lessons I had learned, and the impact it had made.  So the perfection I sought was only in relaying the honest truth to myself and I hesitate to trust myself in that.

I think one day I will come to accept my Type B personality. Patience, after all, is a characteristic of the personality type I can’t quickly accept. For now, I think I will stick to writing the first chapter of every book I ever dreamed of writing. Maybe one day it will stick.

Type B