I am free to be

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.-Ralph Waldo Emerson


I read somewhere on someone's blog, article or similar that Facebook kills creativity. I dropped my personal profile recently for this reason and more. I dropped it cold turkey because I am awesome at quitting things and horrible at moderation. 

I am an efficiency junky and am very attuned to new technology for making professional and personal life easier. This will come across as paranoid and maybe a little conspiracy-theory-esque, but I feel that the overuse of social networking has contributed to the clouding of my thought process. Every Facebook status update, leads to another key word likeness. A page that 50 other friends like, is suggested to me. If I mention frequent words, like relationships and love, in walks the engagement ring and wedding planning ads on a side bar. So many flags and banners. Advertisements online are smarter than I am and I don't like it. I spend a good four to five hours commuting on a bus each day to work. Until my recent Facebook liberation, my entire commute, both ways would consist of me reviewing news feeds of friends and pages I followed. Liking pages, making witty responses or status updates, mobile uploading photos or changing my profile photo for the 5th time that day. As we all have experienced, read, or scanned somewhere in a news feed, the way we receive information now is completely different. In college, when I had to write a research paper, sources had to be found in periodicals like trade publications, books or journals. We were encouraged  to think critically. Not everything was dumped all over us in the projectile avalanche way that it is in the 2010s. Take from it what you can because it's impossible to process it all; there' s just too much information coming in from too many angles.

The constant saturation of information from time-killing social networking sites like Facebook, leave me bored and irritated. Like a dying fluorescent  light with the penetrating glare and accompanying buzz that gives me a headache.

I cannot focus with all that buzzing! I have never been one to succumb to trends and what's popular now. Facebook activities make me feel like a puppy being lead by a short leash. I am not that person, nor do I ever want to be so devoid of original thoughts that I need to regurgitate what is trending now. Kill me before I become a thoughtless and mechanical poser!

A crutch is something we hold onto that prevents us from getting to where we want to be. Whether we admit that we create our own crutches or not is dependent on how honest we are with ourselves. Fear brings us to procrastination and distraction. Being the self-proclaimed wise 30 something that I am today, I have realized that removing crutches and distractions from my life have proven successful as far as personal well being and overall happiness are concerned. 

I used to smoke cigarettes. I really loved to smoke. But near the end of my smoking phase, I was smoking close to 2 packs a day. My addiction to cigarettes cost me a fortune in cash, but also made it very hard to exercise in the way that I liked. Of course there was  the whole thing where it would likely kill me too if I kept it up.

I love to see friends and old acquaintances doing well. Part of the draw to Facebook for me has been the feeling of community amongst people I know.  Facebook is never a true representation of who we are though. It isn't real. We are all putting on our best face there. Staying in touch via Facebook has become an excuse for me to not pick up the phone or connect directly with someone. I am horrible at staying in touch with people. Even before the Facebook craze, I never called friends and family and  I have never been one for sending sweet "I miss you" cards. It's time to put an effort into the people I care most about, and leave the ads and the bullshit static behind in as many ways possible. It's time to take back the control of what information I need and don't need. Although multi-tasking was once a trait that I valued in myself, I want to step it back and start paying more attention to things and people - live and in-person. There's no better way.

Being a natural all-or-nothing, out-of-the-box thinker, staying focused has always been hard for me.  I find the challenge of quitting Facebook is really an exercise in moderation and simplification for me. I am not willing to toss out technology and the internet all together but eliminating what has been the biggest time eater will be - and already has been- beneficial. 

I am willing to throw anything (or anyone) to the curb that compromises my primary values of staying true and hinders my own productivity.

I have plenty of time to work on being mindful during my commute each day. Starting by putting my smartphone away and taking in the beautiful New England views from the bus, reading actual books or simply closing my eyes. 

Re-simplifying....

"Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now."
-Denis Waitley

As a child and teenager, I remember how little it took for me to relax and step into the most vivid of imaginary worlds. Pretending with such abandonment. I suppose we all wish we could truly be as creative and free spirited as we were as  kids. I recall moments in my childhood where I could be swept away in an instant. I had an imaginary friend. I made up pretend lands. I pretended to be a horse and would gallop around on my hands and knees like a thoroughbred. Each morning was automatically wiped clean and all I did was think in the moment. It was natural! I am fortunate that I lived a healthy childhood and was well loved. The hardest part of my life back then was finishing my homework in between social activities and trying to fit in with the other kids.

I have a birthday coming up next week and I am feeling older than ever. Yes, I  am literally older than I've ever been. But this particular impending mile marker feels rough. Nostalgia gets ignited from my being constantly immersed in social media and the news feeds from the glorified self-presentations of all of my same-aged friends. I don't easily relax or get whisked away into my own world anymore. I certainly don't gallop around on my hands and knees!! I don't even sleep well, and haven't in years. I find that this stuff called stress, takes over me at times. I keep it all physically in my back and chest and when it's at its limit, the tension is like a top ready to spin off into a tornado like path of destruction. Unlike a real tornado though, I am destructive more to myself than to anyone else in the path.

I have distinct memories from when I was in Drama class in high school. The teacher would begin each class with meditation and relaxation. I owned that. I became a candle, and I flickered out the tense feelings like a flame being put out.  I was an outstanding little teenage actress. I equate it to being a poser and not sure of who I really was yet. It seems like a dream now, feeling that level of relaxation.  But when I really think back about how great it was to be young, I can't let myself get sad over the thought of it. I have to recall the paper I wrote in my senior year of high school about how nostalgia was a form of depression for society and individual. That time was one of true innocence and precocity for me.  Naive and reckless with a lot of fun stories left behind. I was always needing to push the envelope to the limit.  I made a lot of bad choices then in the name of social acceptance. It was nothing short of a miracle that I made it out of my teens and 20s alive. Nostalgia is a healthy thing, but its not a place anyone should be spending a lot of time in. Life is too short. And it would be a shame to waste the rest of it on recalling the past.

Since freshman year of college, I have overcome some serious, life altering situations. I got my degree.  I suffered some losses. I was ill. I fell in and out of love a bunch. I lost and  gained new friendships. 

I have been exposed to very good and also very deceitful people. Being wise was something that I wished for and thought I was since I was 15 years old. Never did I understand that life experience is what brings wisdom. Being naive was the loss that I never thought I'd miss until it was gone. It is a stressful burden knowing now how precious life is  and that in an instant, all that I have and love could be gone.

 I care much less about what my friends think now.  This alone is a liberating thing. Now that I'm in my 30s, I want so much to simplify my life. After spending my teens and 20s progressively and to my own credit, unknowingly complicating my life, I have spent my 30s getting back to basics.  It definitely ain't easy! There  are so many strings to this puppet of life. I have rid myself of many self imposed obstacles that were blocking me from being the person I want to be.  I left an unethical job where my boss treated me unfair.  I adopted a healthy lifestyle, which includes omitting alcohol, drugs and cigarettes. Having a true soul mate and the love of my life with me now has been a definite catalyst for these important self-improving lifestyle enhancers. My recent found faith in God guides me. My eyes are wide open and I feel more optimistic than I have in years. I am a happy girl, but have always been super-sensitive, so it makes it hard to let loose. Or let it roll off my back. 

I am intense, but have learned the importance of picking battles and letting some things go. Experiencing rejection, tragedy and loss has built walls of fear in me. I am vulnerable to my own mortality now. This fear builds a home right inside of my chest with the stress  and I believe it wants to exit out my back. But I won't let it all go. Some of it does, but it is a war inside of me.  Letting it go requires this high level of bravery. This is what I mean by complicating my life. If it doesn't feel good, why do I keep it?

I know that my nostalgic peace and love view of my past often leaves out the fact that living in the moment back then, meant that I had very little patience or fortitude. If everything couldn't happen in an instant, it wasn't worth the time. The wiser me understands that as hard as it is, things worth having in life take time, patience and hard work to acquire. I will never stop trying to be the person I want to be. I am blessed with firm values. I have inner strength. I have a supportive family and a lasting love. These are the greatest tools (absolute blessings, really) anyone could ever hope for. The rest is up to me. I strive for a beautiful balance. I aim to keep at it; acknowledging my personal accomplishments of the past and continue to grow while learning how to let the stress and fear flow right through me. Life is journey as they say. I miss the days of reckless abandonment, but when I really think about my life, it is pretty damn awesome now. There is just no going back.

Validating My Need to Blog

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will
ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without
caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine
times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. "
CS Lewis
--
I always felt like I would be submitting to some cliche of a lonely, desperate-to find-myself idealist if I had a blog. But as much as I find myself trying to avoid the cultural norms of the day, the more that I feel like I semi-consciously submit to the masses. The quote above from C.S. Lewis hits it on the head. A struggle I have always faced was how important it is for me to stay original. If I go the easy way, am I becoming the predictable poser that overwhelmingly seems to exist among my peers?

The answer is, who really cares or notices but me? I am who I am at this stage of the game. So maybe I've started a blog. Maybe I get sucked into the (sometimes) wicked world of social media from time to time. But in addition to craving individualism, I also crave community, which social media can alleviate.
The truth is that of the many realizations and lessons that I have learned from the novice soft rock of fragility that was my 20s -- I am authentic. I stick to my principles, even when it hurts. It has not always been evident as to how essential staying true to myself is relative to living the healthy minded life that I want to live. But if it hasn't happened already, then no force is going to break through my solid rock of ethics and values now.
So whether or not I am succumbing to the masses or not, is really irrelevant. Adapting never made anyone a fraud. My originality runs far deeper than  any appropriately placed hashtag.