As you can guess from the above, it’s an understatement to say that I am an emotional being. I wear emotions all over my sleeve, my face, anywhere I can thrust them out of my brain and into somewhere else.
When I don’t let my emotions out, they gnaw me away from the inside. The same obsessions I share that are just quirky or funny become hideously self-destructive. It’s great to be able to have a laser-like focus on work or other external problems, but when I turn that on myself I can easily burn myself away.
The reason I share all this madness here is because I can get everything out and I can skew it however suits my fancy. I try to find humor in my quirks and my flaws and give everyone else a laugh. I might not be happy, and let’s face it, there’s a lot in my life that I’m not happy with, but it makes me smile to know that I can bring a chuckle to the complete strangers who stumble here.
Still, I worry a lot about what I write here and on Twitter. With statuses like the above one, it can come as no surprise why. I have the “THIS IS ALL PERSONAL” disclaimer, but the internet has a memory that doesn’t care about those things. The internet is a tool, and people use that tool as they see fit, and I fear that my tweets or blog posts written in a flurry of emotion will come back to whack me over the head.
That fear makes it hard to write honestly online. It’s not that I have to lie, I just have to leave out a lot of the story I want to tell. And me, being that person who shows each emotion, gets even more frustrated that I can’t talk about my frustrations openly. Then, I worry because I thrust the anxiety and rage on the same few friends over and over, who listen to the same stories of what is making me boil over. Then, I start to write it all out because I get sick of that cycle and think about posting it here.
But this is where Jack steps in.
Jack is my ideal reader. He’s the one member of the audience I’m writing for. If he “gets” what I’m writing, then I’m happy. He usually only sees bits and pieces of nearly everything posted here, but I need that filter. I don’t entirely trust myself in this space. He keeps my awful typing in line and makes sure I finish what I am writing. Most of all, he tells me what needs to be held back.
This blog post started a week ago, on a night where I was burned out, enraged, and ready to go up in arms. I had been wronged, and I was determined to take steps to escape the reality I made around myself, and step one was going to be post here with the above image. A lot of those feelings still exist, and I do need to take more significant action on them, but I’m able to approach them with more sanity and logic thanks to Jack. (Note: Read this paragraph, and then go back to the one about being honest online. See what I mean?)
At the end of the day, I may be kicked to the curb, pissed on, and ready to go to war, but I’m grateful to have Jack to keep my writing from undermining myself, and to keep pushing me to strive for better with each post. I’m leaving the dark place where this tweet came from and I will start changing the world, my world, into the place I want it to be.
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