confidence | Sleep is for the Weak

Writing Workshop Prompts: Personality Catwalk

Posted by Josie on Jun 20, 2011 in Writing, Writing Prompts, Writing Workshop | 4 comments

I spent a lovely couple of hours yesterday reading all your workshop posts from last week. Thank you so much for joining in and sharing what were such a mix of personal, honest, brave and creative entries. We had personal stories, poems, we had descriptive writing, fiction, we even had an audio reading - it really did make me fall in love with the workshop again and remind me why I do it. I mean it when I say that it was an absolute privilege to get to share your head-space for a while, and while I may not have time to comment on all entries every time, I will do my very best because I do think it’s important you all feel like your writing has been well-read when you put so much of yourselves into it. So thank you – I hope you’ll find this week equally inspiring.

Long-time readers of this blog will know that one of the things that it chronicles most vividly is my journey in trying to figure out who I am, understand better about how I tick, and. harder still, try to like the person I find. More recent readers will know that at this stage of my life I’m probably closest to that as I have ever been, with me finally beginning to feel a sense of real identity and a confidence in it.

Rather weirdly, but perhaps not coincidently, my interest in fashion has echoed this. For a long time I felt too unattractive, too uncomfortable in my skin, too nothing to give much thought to clothes or how I look, but these days the clothes I wear are really starting to be another way in which I express myself and tell the world about who I am. Now… I’m broke, so this means more charity shop scouring and mix-and-matching supermarket sales bargains than anything else, but as my sense of self is growing, so is my sense of style (at least, I’d like to think so!)

Maybe I’m a little late in the game to this one, but I’m beginning to love how a certain pair of shoes, or a hat, or a bag, or an anything can say something about me. And I’m enjoying discovering what I like, and what I don’t like and what suits me and what makes me feel good.

Which leads us on to our Workshop prompts this week…

Yellow Brick Road

Posted by Josie on May 30, 2011 in Me | 11 comments

…it’s the way you think. That’s your purpose. It’s never been about what work you choose, what gifts you develop, or what niche you fill – let these be for your pleasure.

Think as only you can think, which will lead to feelings that only you can feel, from which connections will be made, lives will be changed, and worlds will come tumbling into existence.

- a Note from the Universe, April 2011

There hasn’t been an awful lot of blogging going on here late. In part it’s just because I’ve been bloody knackered – Fibro is officially in relapse (ouch) and Kai is struggling (wail), but that can wait til another time.

One good thing to come from shutting up a bit is that it’s helped give me space to think. So thinking I have been, and knitting, too, as they go well together, helping, as it does, to turn great tangles of thought into something with more order and clarity, row by row. It’s like magic. There is even the beginnings of a something taking shape in my head. I wouldn’t say ‘a plan’, but it’s a something. Something to be incubated, anyway. We’ll see – it’s going to take a bit more knitting, yet, and a heavy dose of courage, too.

Anyway. I have come to realise that the biggest challenge facing me isn’t financial, it isn’t making the ‘right’ choice for a career or a way to make money, it isn’t about ‘making’ myself a future, or being better at anything.

Tripped Up

Posted by Josie on Jan 17, 2011 in Me | 39 comments

I seem to have a habit of unconsciously attaching huge psychological significance to relatively little things. They really mean something to me, connecting in my head into a huge defining structure that helps me make sense of who and where I am and how I feel.

Often I don’t even realise how important something is, or how deep it goes until it really affects me, or if it’s taken away, and then I find myself watching my entire inner world cave in on itself. It’s ridiculous really, but human. After all, it’s where we find our security, in these constructed houses of ideas and plans and dreams and relationships and routines. And can only take a bit of mental woodworm, or old dark water still lingering in the basement, or a brick that comes loose, to bring it all tumbling round around us.

So Kai struggling to settle into nursery becomes tied up with guilt over my marriage ending, and one closed door suddenly represents every other closed door and everything I have ever lost.

Today I went to pay for my life drawing evening class that started tonight. I had been told I had a place, had been sent and filled in my forms, but when I arrived at the college this morning I find out that due to an ‘administrative error’ the class is actually full and I can’t attend. They’re extremely apologetic but there’s nothing they can do, they’re heavily restricted to class sizes and there simply isn’t a place. Funding has been cut so there are few alternative classes, not one within a distance I can travel or within a time I can get a babysitter for Kai.

I am devastated. I haven’t had an easy journey with my artistic ‘talents’ and last year made the big decision to enrol in art school full time to finally give myself a chance to explore that side to myself. I was so excited, full of the possibilities it might open up and the chance for self-expression. But just before the course started, in the midst of my marriage falling apart around my ears and my husband losing his job and moving out, I had to abandon my place. Kai would have had to start going to nursery every day, which in the midst of so much change seemed too much and too cruel, and I was suddenly faced with having to be financially independent and couldn’t survive on a student bursary.

It was a big loss, in the middle of a lot of bigger losses. And it wasn’t the first time I had had to let go of a big dream like that. Years before I had had to give up another place at university when I got so ill, something that took me a long, long time to get over.

If you’ve read this post, which I know a great number of people did, 2000 over a couple of days, you will know I’ve been having a good stab at picking myself back up again after the heartache of last year, and my art class felt significant. It represented an evening out, a chance to meet new people, to try and make myself come out of the self-protective hedgehog ball I so easily revert to these days. It represented reclaiming a bit of the dream I lost last year. It represented being brave and looking down the barrel of self-doubt and low confidence.

And it’s been taken away. Just like that.

I know it is just one course, not the end of the world. Something else will come up, a new door will open, I WILL get back up again.

But it meant a lot to me, and I’m upset today.

Circles of Trust

Posted by Josie on Dec 5, 2009 in Me | 52 comments

Something has been playing on my mind a little lately.

You see, for me, the internet has always been about making connections. I’ve gravitated towards social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter; towards forums and chatrooms. It’s been about finding information, yes, but mostly about making friends. I’m not a overly sociable person by nature, something I’ve talked about on here before, tending to feel shy and clumsy in front of people, and the ability to type rather than talk, to have to time to think about what to say, has always made me feel more confident, witty, and articulate than I feel in real life. I suspect many of you with a similar love for the online world feel the same.

Often I feel too tired for the effort of social interaction in my real life. I don’t get most people, or feel that they get me. I’m not very good at opening up to people, feeling like I have to pretend to be someone ‘acceptable’ the whole time, nor am particularly good at social niceties. I get irritated and bored easily, feel easily overwhelmed, and am very self concious. There are very few people I feel comfortable being truly myself with – my family, Ant and my best friend are the only people I’m not embarrassed to be ‘me’ with.

Online though it is different. I can choose to walk away from a social situation at any time. I can choose what information I reveal and what I choose to keep hidden, what points of view I’d like to share and those discussions I’d rather avoid. I can choose to spend time with the people I connect with, and politely ignore those that I don’t. I get to make the rules, and I love that.

I wonder sometimes what most of you would think of me if you met me in real life. Would you be disappointed? Surprised?

Generally I think I’ve been very honest on here, in fact I find it almost impossible not to be. I’ve revealed things I never would if I met you in real life, the safety of hiding behind my computer screen making me brave and allowing me to open up in a way I usually struggle with. I feel like I always give you an accurate picture of the ‘real’ me, although maybe it is not the me that would be obviously apparent if you were to meet me. In short though, I have been truthful. Always.

I tend to make the automatic assumption that the people I come across on the internet are the same. I assume that when they talk about themselves, they too are being honest and truthful, giving a fair representation of their lives and of themselves. I mean, why would I doubt them? I do believe that the vast majority of the people that use the internet for social networking are genuine, honest people looking, like me, for a little connection. Perhaps, like me, their online persona is more comfortable for them then their real life one but at the end of the day, the people I ‘meet’ are the people that they are.

Generally my experiences have backed this up. I have, in the past, made friendships so strong online that they have carried over into real life too. I have met a number of people that I have previously only known by nicknames, or through an online presence, and meeting them has been an amazing and positive experience – I may have never met these people but I did know them, some of them better than the vast majority of my real life friends. I feel my life is vastly enriched by these online friendships, both those in my past that are now real life friends too, and new friends that I’ve made recently through Twitter and the blog, some of whom I already feel very close to.

However.

Sometimes I do wonder if that is a little naive. There was once an incident in which I person I had befriended wasn’t who she said she was, or at least, the evidence seemed to point that way. I was deeply shocked and hurt, and for a time did become more wary about who I chose to trust. But I don’t like being suspicious of people, more predisposed to trust than I am to mistrust, and once again find myself placing a great amount of confidence in my online world, that it is exactly as it appears to be.

I’m really interested to know what you think about this.

SHOULD we trust the people we meet online? Should we exercise some caution? And how can you do that with out being cagey, paranoid and cynical? How do we protect ourselves yet still allow ourselves to be open enough to really connect with people? Have you generally found people to be truthful? Or have you been let down by people who weren’t who they said they were?