Unabridged Me

In a couple of days it will be one year since I started blogging.

This blog. Different website. Different hosting platform. Different me, but same blog.

I’ve abandoned my original style, my original model, my original plan. Starting the blog was an impulse, and as usual I did it trial and error. Having learned from my errors, I’ve changed websites and platforms. Now I’m moving over blogs I want to keep, reading as I move.

Reading posts I wrote seven months ago is … odd.

About seven months ago I completely changed my life. Joined social media, quit my job, started a business, and have lost my sense of reality no less than three times. No necessarily in that order. And not necessarily cause and effect.

And the blog has archived the change. My thinking then versus now. Me then and me now.

My writing style has changed. For the better. Probably due to Twitter. Being exposed to concise writers. Getting back into the habit of writing. Or maybe writing regularly has meant finding my voice. Getting away from academia.

Which I admit made my writing verbose and complicated. Not my professors, the things I read. Basic cannon, which included all the old British greats. Jane Austen as a major author. You can see how that might influence grammar choices.

Put it bluntly, my older posts are long winded.

Yet they show an interesting shift in a major part of my life. I chose to 180 my life experience. I walked to the edge. Which I’m prone to do, apparently needing some element of chaos. But instead of walking away and settling, I jumped.

Hoping I didn’t break every bone in my body on the way down.

I can’t take credit for the courage entirely. I owe my eldest sister her due. I watched her move through her own process. Her results gave me courage.

June 2016, about one year before my life change, we went to Panama. Just long enough for me to think I don’t want to come back. Then again, I’ve always been one to want to be anywhere but where I am.

Despite my lifetime urge, I haven’t moved from the state and country in which I was born. Walk to the edge to peek over, only to turn around and try to buy into reality one more time.

So it was not surprising I felt the urge to become an ex-pat in Panama. We stayed in Casco Viejo, full of history and art and an energy that cannot be found at home. I think most of my friends would have felt claustrophobic walking the old streets. I found myself suffering agoraphobia upon our return.

Took me two weeks to feel like things weren’t too far apart, too open, too big.

While there I observed my sister as she processed through a life realization. My sister is a researcher by nature, yet found herself in tenure track at a university. Focusing on classes and curriculum, in a school she wasn’t aligned with, put immense pressure on her.

And I watched as she processed job security versus doing what she enjoys. Paying bills versus being true to her nature.

At the time I just watched. I had just gone through a period of hating my job, but I was on an upswing. I was implementing a new system, doing more IT work than HR work, creating and building and learning.

Yet observing her, and her ultimate choice to go out on her own, influenced me when it was my time. When I inevitably walked to the edge. And stared down. Granted, life circumstances pushed me. But instead of creeping back and trying to settle my unhappy mind, I jumped.

Actually, I might have backed up and taken a running leap off the edge. I’m sure it appeared that way to anyone watching.

And I haven’t landed yet. My business model completely changed, now resting entirely on writing. Trial and error. Pretty happy my writing is a paying gig. As a family, our net monthly budget is almost zero again. Stressful, but manageable.

But I find I’m not done changing, at all. Every day I learn something new about myself. Think about something differently. See my personality show up in new and astonishing ways.

I’m learning my strengths and weaknesses. Especially in writing. Unleashing my imagination for my own writing is still a block. But I’m learning how to work around them. How to put myself in situations that force my weaknesses to step aside.

I’m learning parts of me I can’t let go. Like intellectual reading and discussion. Social interaction despite my introverted nature. A routine, regardless how minimal.

And I’m learning parts of me I couldn’t wait to shed.

Interesting thing about making drastic life changes. Other things start looking different, too. Even a tree looks different from the other side. Reality falling from the cliff looks different than from atop the cliff.

Reality has shifted, and everything is affected.

This can be a good thing. It can be a bad thing. I reserve judgement until the choices are in front of me. But I have noticed one immutable fact in my psyche. Fear is often the one thing holding me back. And once I swallow down fear, my impulsive and creative nature rarely falters.

In this case, I jumped off one of the largest cliffs imaginable. My fear has been silenced. My natural inclination might become cliff jumping.