Diaries of an author: part three

Well, the inevitable lull has hit.

I’m not really feeling it anymore.

I don’t really want to sit down to write.

I feel like I don’t have anything that great or impactful to say or share.

I feel like all these lessons have already been shared.

Who wants to hear my story anyway?

It also occured to me as I sat with some ladies in my neighborhood doing a puzzle night the other day that eventually I will have to tell people I am writing or wrote a book. It will get out. It will become something people know about me.

And honestly? Some of the stuff I’m writing is pretty dang vulnerable so that feels wild.

Do I actually want people I see while I’m walking around my neighborhood to know these things about me?

People at a family party to ask me about it?

Yikes. It’s honestly way harder to do things that people I know will see – post online, write a book, sing, whatever – than it is to do it for strangers. Probably because someone who knows me has an opinion that weighs just a little heavier in my mind than a stranger. It’s hard for me to brush off hate or judgment from anyway but easier with a stranger than someone I know. So I guess, like I wanted, this is good practice for me to get over what people think about me.

And at the same time, why not?

Why not share? Why not just go for it?

It’s the lack of people talking about things like this that has led to me feel so alone at times in my life.

And maybe it will spark connection in a way that wouldn’t have existed before.

This may be a bit triggering, just warning before you read on.

I saw something so wild to me today. This song popped up on my Spotify and I started listening to it and on the video it said someone dies by suicide in the United States alone an average of every eleven minutes. Eleven. That’s heartbreaking.

But my own experience of going through depression makes it less shocking than it would have been to me in the past. It’s actually one of the things I plan to write about.

If that statistic is so high then we need more vulnerability. More people sharing so we feel less alone. So we can make it through without feeling like we’re somehow the odd ball out, the one struggling, the one who can’t hack it – because that statistic tells me we’re not, we’ve just gotten really good at acting.

So maybe I can relax into the vulnerability a bit because, yes, it might lead to some weird looks as I walk around my neighborhood or some awkward dinner party questions, but if it leads to one person feeling less alone, that’s a win.

Vulnerability always leaves me with a hangover, but when I look back, it also has pretty much always been followed by better connection with people.

Even people close to me that I was afraid would judge me.

Because truly? We’re all so similar.

Even though we’re also so different.

Our fears and hang-ups and limiting beliefs are kind of all the same which is funny to me.

Doesn’t matter our differing personalities or life experiences, we all arrive at basically the same blocks we have to overcome.

So, I guess here I go practicing overcoming two of those universal blocks – (a) letting go of caring so much what other people think – which the funny part is also that usually it ends up being more positive than I’m expecting anyway, and (b) doing something even when I don’t feel like it.

Here we go.