Own Your Victimization
“Repeat after me, ‘I am not a victim,”.
I would hear this from a bitchy ex-girlfriend of mine quite often when I would mention how unfairly I had been treated, or how it is sometimes near impossible to overcome the inertia of multiple large setbacks which I have faced all of my life.
I’d repeat it, to shut her up. (Not that she ever took her own advice.) But I don’t think I ever once believed it. Still don’t.
In all fairness though, she is not the only person I have encountered that made use of this mantra, either for their own good, or against me and my world perceptions. And while I may complain about certain things less now than I have in the past, one thing I haven’t changed my mind on is how ineffective this “I am not a victim” stance is for me.
The fact is, I am a victim.
That’s right, I said it.
I understand that in theory not seeing one’s self as a victim is supposed to establish what psychologists call the internal locus of control. It’s the perception that we have within ourselves the power to change our negative circumstances. We make things happen, as opposed to them happening to us. No outside force is responsible for the situations in which we find ourselves.
Clearly, those that came up with this concept never had to deal with some of the things that I, and others that are Too XYZ have had to deal with, through little to no fault of their own.
I’ve suffered more set backs then I care to remember. I have been poor all of my life. More then once I have had my stability shaken when circumstances I had come to rely on were destroyed. I have had zero career mentors, stumbled on virtually no lucky breaks, possess almost no network, failed at several creative endeavors, never held down a true full time job of my choosing, and outside of my recent freelance writing endeavors have never once been given a chance to be paid to make use of my true talents.
Through it all many of my friends have been either apathetic or disloyal. I have had almost no sounding board for any of my ideas or fears. I get no visitors. Few phone calls. So I often must assimilate my life struggles alone.
All of that despite my best efforts to the contrary. As a result I sometimes battle bitterness, fatigue, depression, (not clinical), hopelessness and loneliness.
Yet I am supposed to state with conviction, “I am not a victim,”?
Do I know of what I am a victim? Not with any certainty. Are there those in the world that have been victims of worse things than myself. Of course. But that doesn’t stop me from owning my own victimization. You should own yours as well.
For you see by owning it, we can fight against it. We can acknowledge that for whatever damned reason we are struggling more than the average person. We have been put through more than our fair share of discouragement. We have not succeeded the way we thought we would. The way we were told we would. The way we know in our hearts we are equipped to, if only given a chance.
If we immerse ourselves in trying to accept the ever so important internal locus of control when dealing with lives that have been a little Too XYZ, we are forced to conclude there is something wrong with us. That who we are is not good enough and must be changed. That we are lesser people.
To me, that is the one way in which I choose to not be a victim. I won’t be told by people who usually have no idea what it has been like to struggle as I do that I am to blame for everything that has happened. I tried it before, and you know what? It made me feel terrible about who I am. It made me feel like damaged goods because I haven’t found a niche of success where most people have. Because I haven’t chosen to do exactly what people tell me to do in every aspect of life just for the chance to gamble at possible success. (No guarantees of course.)
It’s ok to call yourself a victim, so long as you are doing your best to escape from it. If you are anything like me you’ll think you have escaped it many times over, only to be thrown back down into even further victimization. Blame something, if you need to, but don’t blame it on your own unworthiness. If you are fighting hard in the only ways you can, you are worthy. Sometimes it really just isn’t your fault.
Repeat after me, “Sometimes, by God, I am a victim. But not forever.”
Come Follow Follow Follow Follow Follow Follow Follow Me?
(Believe me, it’s a song.)
But the point being made here is that as a blogger I like for people to follow what I write. Both officially and unofficially. And I certainly hope the unofficial numbers are higher than the official ones, as I have only two official followers.
I have lately tried finding blogs that I want to follow more and comment on. I feel when someone puts effort into a blog, the best way to repay the effort is to make educated comments on their posts. It is what I seek as well as what I try to provide. In the near future I will be putting links to some of my most frequently visited blogs on the main page of this one.
But my question to you is, in this era of Twitter, and scratching one another’s back and networking, is there not a limit to the number of blogs one can follow with any degree of sincerity? One cannot possibly on a regular basis keep track of all blogs they are likely to come across, can they? It seems just the ones written by those within one’s network would be too numerous to enjoy much.
We want to connect, make friends, and network. We want to gain influence and attention to our own blogs. But there is a limit, I would dare say.
So let me know…how many blogs do you follow faithfully? Be honest here, and don’t conflate the numbers. Just tell me how many blogs you read carefully most days and comment on, say, at least twice a week. I want to hear from you on this one, folks!
When Should Rules Rule?
The temptation among many creative types is to say, “Ignore the rules. Make your own rules. DOWN WITH ALL RULES! We are Too XYZ for stinking rules!”
Indeed if you are caught following a rule or a convention, you are not an artist, writer, filmmaker. You become a sell out.
Take it easy. Let’s back up a bit.
I tend to think that breaking a rule simply for the sake of breaking it is not only foolish, but a tad boring. Refusing to conform to the rules 100% of the time in every circumstance is just being obnoxious, and to an ironic extent, conformist. Rules should never be broken for their own sake. Not because they are sacrosanct, (though there will be consequences for breaking them, like it or not.) But because to break rules indiscriminately doesn’t challenge you. Your decision at every step is easy; “Break the rule!”
But truly knowing yourself and understanding where you want to go and who you want to be requires better discernment than that. It requires effort. It requires a true understanding of what rules are, and why a specific rule is threatening who you want to be, and how you want to proceed in life.
The great visionaries of the world were almost exclusively rule breakers. But they didn’t sit in a room one day before they were renowned and say, “Whatever is expected of me, I am going to do the opposite of it. Just so I can be hip.”
No. Rule breakers that we admire became so because they were aware of what their hearts told them. They lived by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s edict, “Don’t die with your music still in you.” And if following their music meant that boundaries were crossed or rules were broken, then so be it.
But the key is that they knew themselves well enough to understand the reasons for their rejection of the rules. Some visionaries did end up breaking almost all of the rules within their sphere. Some broke a few. Some actually only broke one single rule, but did so at a crucial time in history. A time when a confluence of personal passion, cultural readiness, and contemporary like-minded people brought about a paradigm shift.
None of which would have happened if their actual goal had merely been to “break all the rules, all the time.”
Learn from the entirety of their example. Make sure you observe when they followed the rules, and what rules they followed, and why, in addition to when and how they broke the rules. Find out which rules help you be true to yourself, and which ones hinder it. And if doing something in the conventional way speaks to you the most, by all means follow convention! It will not be the end of your creativity and your power. Indeed, it will be the beginning of your honesty with yourself about how you work. And that will be the very first step toward your greatest potential.
When you reach that point, no rule can stop you.
Some Fine Tips From Another Who May Be Too XYZ?
I came across this post, and I wanted to share it with readers of this blog, because I think it sums up perfectly how to keep a positive outlook when one finds that life has not turned out in a way that society would call successful.
I have not met Maggie, though I left a comment on her Brazen Careerist page about this blog post.
I have been in a similar frustrating situation, but for several years longer. However, if I had been able to assert as positive an attitude as Maggie only two years out of college, I would perhaps be in a different place today. But what matters, I suppose, is that I have begun to reach more positive, constructive places in my life now.
All of the ideas she presents are good ones, and I have attempted each of them to some degree. As I have said to other bloggers in the recent past, however, the volunteering thing hasn’t quite panned out for the good for me. I just haven’t found a good organization yet. One that will appreciate me for what I do, and won’t burn me. I will be posting about my views on volunteerism in another post in the near future.
Another thing that Maggie has going for her is a network within her community on which she can rely. One that she is continuing to build. One of my biggest weaknesses over the years has been a lack of a network. I know nobody in the town in which I live, and have no immediate prospects for meeting anyone. Too XYZ and all of that. But had I reached out as early and as often as Maggie had, I am sure I would be in a different place now.
I am not beating myself here. I did what I could. But she provides a prime example of the importance of local relationships both when things are bad, and as things improve. (More on that from me as time goes on as well.)
The Potential Disaster of Living for Potential Employers
I randomly came across this interesting blog post.
I agree with the blogger. I think as time goes on we are sacrificing too much of our privacy. When a few clicks can solve the problem, why not do so?
I mentioned to this blogger in another forum that there are those who see the use of privacy settings to be problematic, because then employers will ask,
“What are they hiding?”
So people I know keep their Facebooks totally open, and then delete my comments because “potential employers may look me up, and I don’t want them to know about that.”
This is just another example of why I think I have failed to embrace the traditional job search. (And failed to succeed at it.)
We are told that potential employers will judge us by our resume. But also the format of the resume. And the font. And we shouldn’t use any other color paper but white because that is not professional.
Employers will get a first impression of us based on our clothes. (Assuming we get the interview, which I usually do not.) Don’t wear colors that are too loud. Be conservative or the employer will be nervous about hiring you.
The same is true of you wear you favorite cologne or perfume. Do not wear it to your interview, because the hiring manager or his secretary may be offended by, or allergic to the fragrance. And unlike anywhere else in the world, during the interview process nobody is expected to deal with someone’s personal style. There would be no way to hire someone with perfume that makes you sneeze, and simply request politely that when they start work, they don’t wear it, and explain the problem. Nobody gets hired if someone sneezes after all.
Answer questions during an interview, but ask your own. You don’t want to seem like you haven’t spent four months researching the company. But not too many questions or you will seem pushy, or the manager will think you appear smarter than he does, and we cannot have that. Chat it up with the first person who opens the door for you while you wait. They may be the gatekeeper. Or not.
Before getting to an interview stage, never have any kind of debt at all, because if you can’t get your student loans paid off quickly, or can’t cover your credit card bill this month, how can you be expected to be a trustworthy employee? And of course, managers will check your credit before hiring you.
Never let yourself be tagged in Facebook pictures you wouldn’t want your boss or potential boss to see. Monitor the comments people leave on your Facebook, in case your boss or future boss decide to look you up online and see what you are up to. And now…
“Don’t use privacy settings because your boss or potential boss will wonder what you are hiding?” Where does it end??
Being professional, polite and able to demonstrate your ability to do the job are one thing. But when did we suddenly feel the need in this world to censor every moment of our lives for the sake of an employer or potential employer? How did it come to pass that we have to eradicate any record of our so called sins, in order to be worth hiring, even at the local cafe? Sins that everyone commits…such as being in stupid pictures, going to parties, having a few too many once in a while, going into debt. Or simply not having a resume on paper that does our intellect and our experiences justice. (Like me.)
I have goofy pictures of myself on Facebook. I post notes to my friends about really weird stuff sometimes. I make wry or off color jokes to people I have known for half of my life. And I have all my settings on private. (One reason I do not use my Facebook to network with employers.) If that makes me unmarketable, it can line up next to my “significant full time employment gap”, my less than impressive “networking abilities”, my lack of “demonstrable increased salary and responsibility” on my resume, and 40 other things that have kept me from landing a full time job. But a line has to be drawn somewhere. I will not pretend to be something I am not for people that only might give me a job. I guess I am Too XYZ for that.
I don’t know if the three people in the last seven years that granted me an interview, (that’s right, only three) bothered to look into my Facebook, my blog, my letters to the editor, my cologne choice, my shoe laces, and all sort of other things. But if that is why I have never gotten any of those jobs, I think I’d rather not have them.
They can make me learn more skills. (I have been trying to do that.) But they can’t make me fake my way into a personality that is not my own.
Ty Unglebower 