Warning: I’m rushing a bit on this one because I want to get it posted before I go on vacation. I have typos and stuff at the best of times and this is not those times, so bear with me.

I generally only post on my Tangent Girl Facebook page when I have a new blog post to let people know about. So lately I’ve been getting all these messages about how I haven’t engaged my audience in X many days and how many followers I could get if I did X. And all that’s reminding me that it’s been awhile since I’ve made a post. And that shit stresses me the fuck out. In the meantime I’ve also been connected through friends and Twitter buddies to a few people who do a good job of mentoring and advising people on how to grow their blog via more followers, sponsors etc. And I don’t do any of that either and reading everything I’m “supposed” to be doing gives me palpitations.

So this has all had me thinking: why am I doing this blog? What is it I’m hoping to get out of it? I’m not doing any of these things they talk about and I don’t really even want to. Does that mean I’m a failure? Does that mean I’m a fraud?

So I decided post a blog post about posting on my blog.

In the beginning…

After I got out of the hospital from my suicide attempt I started writing a book inspired by some interactions I had with a couple of podcasters, David & Kevin. After working on the book for about a month, which is very blog / memoir style, or as I like to say a “blog-moire,” I came to a conclusion. If I didn’t find a way to introduce myself and what I was talking about and establish an audience interested in, well me, before I tried to publish this book, then I was deader in the water than I probably already was. So I started this blog as a way to build an audience that might eventually be readers of my book.

But then, not too long after..

I sat down with my husband and I talked about it. And through his wisdom and guidance and support I realized two things.

The first is that I occupy a position to potentially help and support others. I am not going to try and pretend to be unique, or special in any way. But every story, every experience, every person who puts out there what they’re going through, that others can identify with and feel like, “my gosh it’s not just me,” is a good thing. And I think a lot of times people like me who are by every societal definition successful: have the good job, are valued, have a wonderful SO and children and friends… We have the hardest time facing that we are just as vulnerable to mental health issues as everybody else. And I hope through laying my soul bare in front of people that it might help those who think they can’t or shouldn’t do anything to address their mental health issues to change their mind and get treatment. I hope I can help other people see how wrong I was in believing that mental health and addressing that mental health is a weakness. I hope I can help them see it as a strength, and from a very practical perspective it helps us be more productive and more successful.

Also, hubby and I realized that one of the major contributors to my downward spiral into the absolute pit of darkness was that I didn’t talk about things. I bottled everything up in my brain and didn’t say anything that I thought would upset people or anything that I thought would make people feel less of me. So while this blog started as a “hey come get to know me, wouldn’t you like to know more? Buy the book!” it quickly became something different. It became a promise to myself that I would always blog about what I was feeling, thinking, experiencing, and I would not allow myself to censor what I was going through. This would be my own form of self-healing and release and a stopgap against spiraling back into the darkness.

This has had its ups and downs. Overall I feel it’s been positive; I’ve been able to work through some really tough shit just by writing it out and sharing it with others. It’s especially helpful when I get comments from people that help me find direction and clarity and feel less alone. At the same time, when situations involve specific people, even if I don’t name them, if they read the blog they’ve been upset, feeling like I’m violating their privacy or some kind of unwritten rule of what you talk about in public versus what you don’t. That’s been really, really hard for me. As my best friend Rachel likes to say, I’m a “pleaser.” Doing anything that doesn’t please people, or worse upsets them, sends me into an immediate state of anxiety and self-doubt. I tend to shy away from doing what I need to do for myself, or not doing something that is going to just drain my resources, because I get so anxious about standing up for myself. I mean, I’m the person who won’t send a meal back in a restaurant unless it’s going to poison me because I’m afraid of annoying the waitperson. (#neurotic) So it’s been difficult not to retreat back into my shell and only post about fluffy things that have no meaning and won’t offend anyone. But in my rational moments of clarity I know I can’t do that, and that promise I made to myself was the right one to make, and it will keep me healthier and saner.

So back to that whole Facebook guilting me into writing and blogging more frequently… This has been a major issue for me. When I see that I haven’t put up a post in weeks or even months I feel like a failure. I feel it’s proof that I’m not good enough to do this or good enough to be followed or good enough to have people interested in me because I can’t even provide them with regular content. And that’s what’s had me thinking about the reasons I decided to do this. Because sure, I may be failing on the reason why I started this blog, but I’m still staying true to the promise that I made to myself to always talk about what was important to me.

Day-to-day life isn’t always eventful. Sometimes I just don’t have things to say or things to talk about and so I don’t have things to blog about. And I’m having to come to terms with the fact that it’s okay for it to be that way. That creating this isn’t some sort of obligation. That the people who enjoy it, while they may be sad they don’t always see more of it, will appreciate it more if I’m not just trying to make stuff up to talk about or forcing topics that have no real depth or meaning. The whole point of this is about laying myself out there completely, naked and unfiltered and vulnerable. So if a post isn’t personal to me, be it serious or funny, I have to remind myself that as uncomfortable as it may be sometimes there’s no point in writing something just to write.

So ultimately I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope you’ll bear with me. I hope you will take away from this my intent for this blog. I hope it will be interesting to you. I hope to goodness that sometimes it might be helpful to you. And I hope it’s really true what they say, that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

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Like what you read here? Well there’s plenty more where that came from!! Go check out the many other posts about syringe lickers and bunny assassins and surviving if not always thriving with depression & anxiety and deranged Christmas shoppers and more!

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