Living Life Out Loud
January 30, 2010
I was almost asleep…
Zap.
And the brain started churning with the thoughts I had most carefully avoided by reading National Geographic and refusing to allow my conscious brain to wander over into ‘real life’ territory.
By ‘real life’ (and I so want to put that in air quotes) I mean the day-to-day events and people who make my brain swirl as I try to put 2 and 2 together and come up with something resembling “4″ rather than just “ick.”
Things like this tend to float around in my subconscious a long time before they suddenly coalesce into a concrete idea. Then suddenly (like now) I find myself getting out of bed to try and put them into words. Have to get it down before I forget and the morning finds the realizations paler and somewhat muddied.
2009 was a challenging year for me on one particular front — I found myself wondering why basically good people could see bad things being done and not speak out.
I’m not speaking of global atrocities or some great conspiracy. I’m just talking about what happens on the every day, personal, small-scale interactions.
You know what I mean
One guy is dishonest in his dealings with everyone. Good people who have reason to know talk amongst themselves as to how awful his behavior is. But they only talk amongst themselves. Only as members of some bizarre club of people who have been taken in by him or who have narrowly avoided it. They don’t speak out against him publicly. A woman is known to show two faces to everyone with whom she deals. The same people speak amongst themselves as to how she is whomever she thinks her audience wants her to be as long as she thinks it will get her ahead. But when her name comes up in ‘non-insider’ conversation those who talk amongst themselves say nothing to those who would most appreciate the warning. A company is clearly scamming its clients – talking a good game but in the end its nothing but talk. Still the clients are paying money thinking that it must be a good company or surely someone would say something. Again, the basically good people who know? Nary a peep.
It just didn’t jibe with my world view.
Why didn’t those people who I knew to be honest, caring, moral people speak up? Especially when they knew that to stay silent was to imply that the liars, swindlers, and dishonest folks were okay, as they were busy churning through the unwary?
Then I looked around more carefully
I realized that there are some folks I know who do speak up. They live out loud. They put their feet forward and say with passion and certainty what they believe. Whether it’s about a person, a company, or an event that has ignited their passion, they speak up.
I have to say that I don’t always agree with my friend Erin Kotecki Vest (aka @QueenofSpain). But damn how I wish I had her courage. I’ve never seen Erin back down from a fight. You want to know if she thinks someone is good people or bad? Ask her. She’ll tell you outright. Then again, you don’t always have to ask. She’s out there putting it black & white for people to read. She doesn’t hide behind a persona. She is who she is. Trust me – the first time I met her in person it was like just finally sharing oxygen with someone I’d known for a long time.
And Micah Baldwin (@micah)… another one of those people who is about as fearless and open as anyone you could imagine. Moreso, actually. Micah puts things out there that consistently blow me away. His fearlessness when it comes to stating what he experiences and believes publicly and standing behind his words is a little terrifying, to be honest. The first time I met him I rather expected him to growl instead of grinning like he did.
So why then are there folks like these two (and believe me, I could start listing more, but they’re extremely good examples!) but also so many who seem so afraid to speak out?
I didn’t get it
Again – my subconscious went quietly (and sometimes noisily) about working on the puzzle. It started breaking things down a little further. There were folks like Erin and Micah who don’t pull the punches. There were folks who were “in the know” about the men, women, and companies that were dishonest but didn’t say anything while personally avoiding working with them. And then there were folks who knew, but still went along as if they didn’t. Working with, being pleasant to, and even tacitly endorsing those ‘bad eggs.’
Suddenly as I lay in my bed thinking that I needed something more distracting than iPhone games to keep my brain from working on this it clicked.
Mostly because I finally examined my own silence.
You see, I figured out that I fall in the “publicly silent but unwilling to endorse the bad guys by pretending they aren’t” group.
Why? Fear mostly. Fear that is based on past experience.
In the past, when I’ve called someone out for dishonesty, disreputable behavior, and being unethical it’s just proven to be something that was used against me. “Oh, well, Lucretia… you know. She can be a problem.” The problem? That I didn’t go along with the charade. The people I thought might appreciate the warning didn’t. Either they convinced themselves that things would be different for them, or they convinced themselves that the problem really lay with me.
The inevitable “wow, I should’ve listened to you” conversation just hasn’t been worth the personal cost of being someone who spoke out. In fact, altogether too often, I had friends who told me I really ought to quit speaking out.
So if it happens that way with me, why not with those others? Of course it does. They don’t risk it either because they know that the potential negative impact to their own reputation isn’t worth trying to ’save’ those who don’t want to be saved… those who want you to be wrong because it benefits them if you are.
Which kind of brings up that last group. Those who know, but are still working with, endorsing, and engaging with the ‘bad eggs’ despite their knowledge.
What motivates them? In a word: money
Okay two words. Money *and* pride. That last group thinks they can dance with the Devil, skirt the danger, and come out unscathed with money in their pockets. They think that they’re smarter, savvier, wiser, and somehow will avoid the fate of everyone else who has been burned by the individuals and companies that are no good.
Yes. There’s money to be had if you deal with the crooks, liars, and cheats. But the thing so many of the last group don’t get is that unless you *are* a crook, liar, and cheat? They’ll always get the better of you. You can’t come out unscathed. You can’t take money from a thief and turn it into honest money. You can’t align yourself with a cheat and not end up cheating someone else.
There is no honor among thieves
So then, back to my friends Erin & Micah and others like them. What makes them so fearless? I don’t know. But I intend to find out. Because I’m tired of being the person who is afraid to point out the Emperor’s lack of clothing lest the rest of the court shun me.
I’d rather be genuine.
I’d rather be moral.
I’d rather live my life out loud.
(p.s. you know, there will be people who read my examples above and assume I’m talking about one particular man/woman/company — the funny part is that those people are ‘in the know’ about someone but think I’m just not saying it again. Truth is? Those are generic examples. If you read it and thought of someone or some company in particular? Ask yourself which group you belong in of the 3 above and which you want to belong in. Because it turns out that you are probably one of those ‘basically good people in the know.’)
Taking My Own Advice
January 26, 2010
Yesterday my daughter turned 7. Today, my niece turned 16.
Despite late nights at extended family birthday dinners and emotionally exhausting (despite satisfying) days for everyone in the GeekFamily, the kidlet and I have had a couple of serious heart-to-hearts right before bedtime in an attempt to process some of the more perplexing parts of behavior of other kids.
It seems my daughter comes honestly by the tendency to process the day’s events not as they happen but in one huge data dump right before sleep just like her mother. While GeekDaddy has a tendency to wish the overly-chatty women could not attempt to discuss every nuance of their days moments before unconsciousness, the kidlet and I are often incapable of achieving sleep if events are not processed to a certain point beforehand.
For me, this has resulted in many a late night sitting in coffee shops with a good friend or on the phone with them trying to work through a flow-chart of “what-ifs” and probabilities. It even led to my blogging habits and my initial Twitter forays – as there’s always *someone* to talk to on the Internet.
But when you’re 7 years old and in first grade, you’re sort of stuck hoping that one or the other of your parents is the sort who will work through things with you or relegating yourself to just not sleeping well a lot.
The really cool thing as her Mother though? Sometimes when I’m helping her work through stuff, I realize how parallel our situations are and how much I need to remember the particular lesson I’m trying to help her work through.
One of tonight’s themes was about caring about the opinions of those you respect or love while learning how not to take to heart negative words from those who fall in neither category.
Easier said than done, isn’t it?
So many of us are equipped with the standard, vulnerable and fragile human ego. We learn early that we’re not supposed to care about the cruel words of bullies, strangers, or the spiteful — all the while secretly wondering if perhaps there’s truth to what they say and if we just can’t trust the people we should trust if they don’t agree.
This makes the average person susceptible to those few who actually are trying to make them insecure or hurt out of some misguided sense of power or revenge. And it leads to a LOT of therapy for insecurities and trust issues and neuroses. And a lot of people who could benefit from the therapy but will never go because secretly they’re sure that their worthlessness will be exposed.
I tend to feel more empowered when I remind myself that the weight of 1,000,000 random strangers telling me I’m not ‘worthy’ holds no candle to the weight of just one person whose opinions I respect, and who has truly taken the time to get to know me, saying ‘yes you are.’
Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Blog Gone
January 25, 2010
As I slog through the 2000+ unread emails in my inbox at 4 a.m. it occurs to me that the emotional well I’ve been falling into for the past two months is much, much deeper than I’ve been admitting to myself.
I’m about 1/3 the way through December and pausing to write this because I need to do it right now or it will simply be another blog post that I’ve thought about and haven’t written.
I haven’t really looked at my inbox since December 1st, 2009.
No, really. From December 1st through today, January 25th, I have let everything in my online life pretty much do the metaphoric equivalent of “Go To Voicemail.” I didn’t even know I was capable of doing that.
What happened?
Oh, I suppose I could say it was a combination of seasonal depression, a series of disappointing revelations about other people and relationships, the feeling that somehow I failed miserably at my last job, and a dozen other issues piled one on top of the other until it just snowballed into me ‘checking out.’
But the end result was pretty much that I hit a level of apathy and depression that let me just walk away.
The thing is – it’s this horrible spiral. You don’t let people know that it’s not just their emails you aren’t answering because you’re not seeing those emails at all. And they start to think there’s something wrong that is specific to them. Then there are repercussions.
Too many things fall through the cracks. You realize even from a huge emotional distance that there are probably things sitting in your inbox that are long past the point of “easy fixes” so you just avoid the inbox with more determination than ever and more things & people fall through the cracks.
I’ve never really experienced this sort of thing before.
I’ve been wired for so many years that it’s second nature to me to open up the computer and close out the rest of the world when I’m withdrawing into myself… In the past, it was phone calls, social events, and in person contact that fell by the wayside. I’ve never just ignored my email for weeks.
Then there’s the blog thing.
Oh, the blog thing.
It’s another “I just can’t face it today, I’ll try again tomorrow” area. Why? In my head, blogging but ignoring email is sort of the same as not showing up for work, not calling, not explaining why – but sitting in the coffee shop in the lobby of the building where you work pretending that there’s nothing out of the ordinary.
How could I write here when there are people who have sent me dozens of emails without so much as a “Lucretia is out of the universe right now, please leave a message at the sound of the beep and she’ll get back to you when she stops spiraling out of control” response?
So no email, no blogging. What else fell into the apathy well?
Twitter. Meaningful interactions online. Work. Projects I’d committed myself to but haven’t even touched. Pretty much everything that had to do with the computer except, oddly, mindless Facebook games. Oddly, if it was something that consisted of repetition without strategy or conversation, I’ve been fanatical about it. Given that I’m usually attracted to the opposite, I’m still trying to figure that one out.
What didn’t fall into the well?
My family. My daughter and my husband – and a number of my extended family. A few good friends. Getting up out of bed, eating, getting through the bits of the day that are really necessary if you’re not going to live in a dark closet.
What a switch that is, I tell you. As far back as I can recall, when I’ve had to drop some of the balls we all juggle in life, work, family and everything else, I’d retreat into either books or my online world. Then again, those were usually much shorter periods of time. A few days, a couple of weeks. Never before has it been quite this extended.
But today I’m unleashing my secret weapon against my own apathy & depression: anxiety.
No really. It turns out that if you let anxiety out of the box you’ve been stuffing it into for so many years you find that a good, solid panic attack can do wonders toward getting you back in the game.
I say this because I’m at 1443 unread and working my way down. I’m deleting outright the things that I know don’t need my time… I’m letting myself know that I have to face the music in a lot of cases and that some of the things that fell through the cracks will be unrecoverable. I’m using fear of what happens if I don’t do it nownownow outweigh the wall of apathy that has let me pretend that I’d “start doing things right tomorrow” only to ignore it again.
I’m not sure what that means for this blog, honestly. I really have a lot of stuff I want to write about – just as soon as I take care of the things that I absolutely must address first. But here? I’m not sure. I’ve clearly got some stuff to work out in my life before this ball can definitely be picked up and put back in the ones that I’m keeping in the air right now.
But at the moment, I have to get back to that inbox. Those 1443 unread emails are not going to magically disappear if I don’t. And I want my online life back. So first things first.
If you’re reading this and you’ve emailed me since December 1st? I apologize – expect to hear from me shortly, part of which will include a personal apology. And thanks for bearing with me long enough to read this despite my resounding silence in the other arena.
If you’re reading this and you want to email me? Can you hold off a bit? I promise not to make you listen to nasty, homogenized, crackly hold music if you can’t – but I’m not promising I won’t hum ‘Girl From Ipanema‘ if you insist on hanging on the line.
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