Reverb13 Day Five: Risk
What was the greatest risk you took in 2013? What was the outcome?
Even as an introvert I need and want friends and a certain level of social contact. I’ve felt for a while it was time to inject new personalities into my life. But the general ways of doing so were not applicable to me. I don’t do bars, clubs, “night life” groups, or other such things. Any social connections I’ve made in the past have generally been made in settings and during activities where I felt most comfortable, and I needed to find something like that.
It came as no surprise that there were no groups online that were both local and catered to people who, like myself, prefer casual, quiet, conversational social activities. Things that don’t require yelling or stepping outside of one’s comfort zone just to meet people. (I believe stepping outside of one’s comfort zone is, in most daily activities, overrated anyway.) It’s an extroverted world, and MeetUp.com and other such places reflect that.
So, I took what I consider to be my biggest risk of 2013; I started an introverts social group. I have talked about it many times here on the blog. It was and is a risk because as I have also mentioned several times before, my endeavors do not have a great track record.
Projects, groups, activities, events that I spearhead almost never succeed. Like I said in yesterday’s post, I have pretty close to no social support for what I try to do in my own home area. Each time I begin something with excitement, and go through the steps of talking it up, sharing about it, spreading the word about it, and showing how committed I am, it goes nowhere, due to very few people showing any interest in me or my project. Each time this happens, the anger, pain, and humiliation of yet something else not catching fire makes it even less likely that I will attempt something else. If I do, it will be at longer and longer intervals.
I suppose this summer the circle came around again, and I decided to launch my own group. The need for appropriate local social connection for people like me outweighed the history of failure to launch projects, and I went for it. (Though not without some apprehension.)
The outcome? In truth, it is probably still too early to assess. I admit that I am frustrated that the membership keeps climbing, while engagement does not. But in the broad picture, I don’t think enough time has gone by to declare an outcome. Maybe in a few months I can truly determine the success of the endeavor.
But whatever the ultimate outcome, I’ve met a few interesting people through what is probably the biggest risk I took in 2013.
Reverb13 Day Four: What Is Lost
What have you lost, what are you grieving?
It’s not as devastating as some losses are. Nor is it confined to 2013. In fact, much of it has happened consistently over the course of several years, though there was an episode or two of it this year as well. I don’t know that I would go so far as to say I am grieving, but I may have been doing so back when such things began happening, I’m not sure. By now, though I am still effected negatively by it, I am also, sadly, getting somewhat used to it.
I have lost my standing in what little community I have had over the last few years. Friends have stopped talking to me, support for projects has been withdrawn or denied outright, interest in endeavors has decreased. All this, despite my best attempts to be engaged in what others are doing and trying to accomplish.
It is of course possible that my standing with certain “friends” or within certain communities was simply never as strong as I thought it was years ago. I’ve considered that possibility many times. But whether by perception or in actual fact, I have lost something from certain elements of people around me that I at one point felt secure in.
Certain things are underway that may, if not rebuild what I have lost, at least help me to build something new. Possibly. On a lesser scale than that which I have lost over the years, but hopefully a more solid foundation then that previous status. (Or perceived status.) But it has taken quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth at first, and introspection and analysis later on to fully deal with this disconnection. (Or in some cases, total abandonment.)
Several people I know like to mention that people come in and out of our lives all of the time, and that when they serve their purpose, they leave. (Not through death, in this case.) Nobody will remain close to us, ergo we should never be surprised when people turns their backs and walk away.
As well meaning as such adherents to that philosophy may be, I kind of call bullshit, if for no other reason that they themselves have an obvious cadre of folks that remain in their lives regardless. It is sometimes, I think, easier to admonish someone for being upset about something which one has not fully experienced oneself.
Besides, I like to think I have at least a handful of people who are always or shall always be there for me. But, I confess, I’ve thought that about most of the people that I have since “lost” for reasons I do not understand.
I guess I’m getting better at accepting it though. Problem is, is it because I am becoming a deeper person, or a person more numb to pain of having almost nobody?
Time will tell. I assume.
Reverb13 Day Three: The Heart Speaks
Today’s prompt was based on an exercise designed to ask one’s heart what it needs today. What does your heart have to tell you?
I’m not adept at getting messages directly from my heart in the short term, though. When I examine my heart at any given time, what gets reflected back at me is often vague. Vague to the point of either being obvious, (“my heart needs happiness and contentment”) or it is indicative of my not being especially well connected to my heart in the first place.
Part of the problem might be that I don’t know exactly how to define “heart” in such a context. Sometimes it gets conflated with my mind, I think, and my mind tells me that what I am, and what is expected of me is directly related to mostly outside factors: a job, esteem from the community, demonstrable physical productivity. Under such an auspices as this it becomes at times easy for me to conclude that my heart’s desires are not especially relevant. And when they are deemed, even by only a part of me, as irrelevant, it’s only natural that it would be difficult to tune into my heart’s voice.
Given time, however, a long time of asking similar questions of myself, and doing my best to fight back the onslaught of expectations that are thrust upon me by sources that shouldn’t hold that much power over me, a few concepts emerge.
-More honest companionship.
-More quiet, both in terms of contemplation and in terms of freedom from fear and anxiety.
-More curiosity, whimsy and magic.
-Respect for it’s true nature, from others and myself.
-In terms of more concrete requirements, it also needs more of a chance to move people with stories and words, such as this blog post as well as my novels and short fiction. Also with other people’s words, as if the case in theater. Not telling stories for their own sake, but telling them so that they are consumed by people who are moved by them. People who find something of themselves in the stories I tell. My heart wants more of that than I have.
Knowing what the heart desires would be among the easiest things to determine, one might think. Those desires may or may not be feasible at any given moment, but knowing what they are would seem to be easy enough to know. But not with me. It has taken years to know what my heart really longs for, and even now I am not always certain.
But it’s worth asking the question often enough, because some sort of answer tends to emerge eventually, as it would appear it has with me.
Reverb13 Day Two: Nourishment
What made your soul feel most nourished this year?
I’m probably guilty of not putting as much specific effort and thought into nourishing my soul as I should.
Part of it is due to a general anxiety that in the end, I wouldn’t be as successful as I’d like to be at such an endeavor, so I don’t engage it in as much as wisdom would dictate. Another reason for this sometime shirking of my spiritual nourishing is the difficult-to-shake societal pressure that such things are not monetarily productive and hence should be avoided as wastes of time. (This view is, thankfully, losing its grip upon me as I get older.)
Even if I committed every day to soul nourishment, without shame or fear of failure, I’d still be faced with the dilemma of not knowing which approach to take in accomplishing that task on any given day. Some things that are nourishing once never are again, (or at least are not again for a considerable amount of time.) I have tried various forms of such nourishment over the years, and not many have have a consistent effect.
On the other side of this frustrating coin, those successful nourishing activities that have been rather consistent in the past have over the last few years either become unavailable due to lack of resources/opportunity, or have succumbed to a weakened potency. (Or I have become weaker in some regard as their potency remains unchanged.)
So while I believe in and practice nourishment of the soul as best I can, it is a practice with which I still face difficulty.
I’ll say, however, that I have taken a few steps that have trended in the right direction in 2013. At least so far. Examples:
-I have set aside more time to read. A writer must read, of course, and I have always done so. But having a specific time wherein I say, “I’m going to read for an hour” and such is a relatively new concept for me. Generally when I find an empty block of time that will allow me to read whatever is on my cue, (and it’s a ponderous cue at this point) I take some time to do so. Sometimes while something else is going on. This year I made an effort more often to set aside the time, and make sure I was doing nothing else, shut off the phone, and sit and read. I don’t know if it has served as the entire meal for my soul, but it has certainly been a nice cold drink for it throughout the year at times. I even feel less anxious after I read once in a while, and anything that accomplishes that is a plus.
-I have tried, with spotty success, to begin a regular meditation regime. That’s a work in progress, but it has helped a bit here and there.
-Concentrating even more on my writing.
-I started that meetup group for introverts. It’s still in its infancy, but hopefully the company I keep from that will nourish my soul in certain ways eventually. Like company is valuable.
So there are a few things. What are yours?
Reverb13 Day One
Two posts in one day?? I know, rare. But necessary, as I wanted to close out Nanowrimo, and once again begin the Reverb daily blog project for the month of December. As with last year, there are multiple sources for the prompts, and I will probably go back and forth between two of them, just to keep it interesting.
The prompt for day one is: How do you feel, on this first day, in your mind? In your body? In your heart? In your soul?
My mind feels a bit tired, but excited as well, because for the first time, I completed an entire novel for Nanowrimo. Took some doing, but I got it done. I just need to recover for a few days (or more) from writing fiction, but I’ll be okay, and I think my mind is, in the end, better off for it.
Also, I don’t know if this goes under mind or heart. I guess technically mind. But I am anxious, as I have been generally for the last few years. I keep trying to find the right professional to assess the situation, to see if perhaps something can be done about it. But the last person I tried last month was a total quack. I have someone else in mind, but I have to build up the patience to make the appointment.
In body, I feel a bit off. Generally I am more tired than I like to be as a default, and I am still above the weight I want to be at, despite trying things all year.
In my heart, I feel pleased with some of my accomplishments lately. (See above.) But I also feel more lonely than average. I don’t feel I am connecting with enough new people of my kind, or connecting as well with people I’ve known for years that seem to be changing.
How I feel in my soul is the most difficult to answer, because I don’t know which feelings or observation lie within the realm of the soul as opposed to the heart. What is the essential difference between the two? I don’t have definitive answer, so I’ll just say that a soul is more permanent, and deals more with the basic essence of why I exist on earth, as opposed to how I’m interpreting or reacting to any given day.
Under this definition I’d say my soul, (which would transcend the problems with my mind, I guess) is in decent shape, but longs for more space. More exercise. More opportunity to engage in the things for which it seems to have been designed. In soul, I am perhaps stuck somewhat in neutral in certain ways.
If I were to combine all aspects of my existence and come up with one overall well being number, I guess I’d give myself about a 6 out of a possible 10. Not miserable, but not fulfilled as often as I should be, probably.
Ty Unglebower 