I had a moment

Amidst a moment of immense sadness the last week or so, I had a moment of complete clarity. I had one of those "zone out" moments that you see on television or in a movie. You see something that stops you in your tracks and everything, suddenly, makes sense. You don't see or hear anything around you and all of a sudden, you know what it is you have to do.

No, I was not high and no, I was not drunk. I had a genuine "moment," and now it's hard to think of anything else. My moment was amongst a grieving family. My husband's family and now, MY family. A family with an amazing history, with a "name," and with roots.  A family that knows the meaning of the word and what it means to be connected.

I am someone who loves a history, a story. I think the past and people from it are so incredibly interesting. My time, our time, is boring. To look back on people who lived through things we could never imagine, who lived things we find vintage, collectible or rare is so incredibly fascinating. I love tradition. I love a home, a piece of furniture or a photo album that touched the past. I love holidays and the random moments that make up the memories that a family holds onto for a lifetime. Something that shows a moment in time when someone lived who is no longer here, an era that is now gone. I know, deep.

I come from a small family. Well, my mother's side is. My father's side is fairly large, but I rarely see them...long story. It is what it is. My family is loving absolutely, but sometimes my family is "all business." There is a lot of love between us, but sometimes it remains hidden like it's not "OK" to share. My family is weird like that and I can't explain it. I'm not upset, that's just how it is.

My in-laws, all of them, are completely the opposite.  I am absolutely like that. I believe that we should show and tell each other how we feel about each other always. Before it's too late. With my in-laws, family is such a huge deal, good or bad, for better or worse. Everybody hugs and everybody loves and spends hours just visiting and toasting and being together. I want that, forever and always for me and Travis. I want our children to have a history, to have a story and pieces of their family's past to hold onto. I am exactly in the right place :)

So what of my moment? While standing amongst my mother-in-law's family and enjoying the company and neighborhood, I had a vision of us, having a house in a neighborhood just like that. On a quiet cul-de-sac in a nice area, with a view and a sunset, among family from several generations...just seeing my own future played out exactly like that. To have our lineage hanging on the wall, a street named after us and children and grand-children running all over the place in the grass in the sunshine. It all just made sense. This is what life is about. That's all I want. A loving family, spending time together, in a nice home that we pass down through generations, with traditions and love.

It was all so incredibly simple and all incredibly beautiful. A theme that I took from the day, even in a time of such loss, is don't lose sight of the family legacy you have. Stay close to family and don't let it fall apart because that's so easy in this day and age. I want my children to look back and be fascinated with what our family history holds. I do what I can to share this with my family because I don't want us to miss out.  I felt like I missed out on so much of this when my grand-father passed away and all I wanted was to know more of the amazing life he lead...where he came from and what his youth was like. Where I come from.

My goal at this moment, even if it doesn't happen right this moment, is to recreate the family treasures that I so cherish. All I want or wish is to have a career I love, a home I love, I already have the man I love, and hopefully we can find ourselves nestled in a house with a history and a view where we can create our own cherished memories and our own family traditions. What a moment.

The Truth Hurts

Passive. An ugly, ugly word that I would generally never use to describe myself. Unfortunately however, I recently came to the realization that in at least some ways, I am very much a passive person. :( Sad day for me and feeling fairly disappointed in myself. Kind of makes me sick actually and not quite sure what to do about it just yet.

It was my recent research into stress relief techniques that lead me to this revelation and it was a hard slap in the face and wake up call to some things about myself. I came upon a couple of articles that explained the difference between passiveness, aggressiveness and assertiveness and how they are related to stress levels. Passive is not enough=pushover, aggressive is too much=bully and assertive is just right=happy face. Kind of like Goldilocks and the three bears, my porridge is always too cold...

I am not one for confrontation. At all. I look for harmony in all things and hate being put into uncomfortable or tense situations, especially unnecessarily. It pisses me off royally when someone acts shitty and forces me to have to call them shitty or eat shit...so to speak. When I come to conflict with someone, I have a tendency to back off and hope they figure it out and correct themselves before our next meeting. Only now have I realized how stupid of me that is. I hate confrontation so much that rather than calling someone out, I let people continue to piss me off whether they realize it or not.

When I do this, I am literally like a ticking time bomb. I just sit back and tick while someone keeps pissing me off, until my fuse eventually runs out and then...BOOM. <---loud bang, flames, pain. You're sorry. And I have been going about this all the wrong way. Not saying that this is not necessarily wrong of someone to have been shitty to me, but I was unfair to not stop them before I exploded and more importantly, I burned myself along the way. It stresses me incredibly to have people treat me badly and I spend so much time avoiding, manuevering, and being angry at them rather than just nipping it in the bud. Therefore, I cause myself stress.

Here are some excerpts from the links below that I found particularly interesting:

Passive people aim to avoid conflict by avoiding communication about their needs and feelings, but this behavior damages relationships in the long run. They may feel like victims, but continue to avoid confrontation, becoming increasingly angry until, when they finally do say something, it comes out aggressively. The other party doesn’t even know there’s a problem until the formerly passive individual virtually explodes! This leads to hard feelings, weaker relationships, and more passivity.

Passive individuals don’t know how to adequately communicate their feelings and needs to others. They tend to fear conflict so much that they let their needs go unmet and keep their feelings secret in order to ‘keep the peace’. They let others win while they lose out; the problem with this is that everybody involved loses, at least to an extent.

If your style is passive, you may seem to be shy or overly easygoing. Why is that a problem? Because the message you're sending is that your thoughts and feelings aren't as important as those of other people. In essence, when you're too passive, you give others the license to disregard your wants and needs.

Now all of this is not to say that I need to be an asshole from now on because there are also downsides to being too aggressive, but I do need to step it up a notch. The whole part about people thinking that my thoughts and feelings aren't important...so true. I get talked over ALL THE DAMN TIME. When I am speaking, people flat out start talking about something completely off topic while I am in the middle of speaking. RUDE. But I guess that goes to show that since I am not aggressive enough to do that to them or to even tell them they're being an ass, this makes it OK. I always used to think my forehead said bitch, but apparently it says doormat. I've lost my touch.

I also know for certain that I specifically avoid people who are overly aggressive. I do not respect people who treat me like a doormat and I usually want to punch them in the face for either having treated me or someone else like shit.

Here are some facts about aggressive people:

If your style is aggressive, you may come across as a bully who disregards the needs, feelings and opinions of others. You may appear self-righteous or superior. Very aggressive people humiliate and intimidate others, and may even be physically threatening. You may think that being aggressive gets you what you want. However, it comes at a cost. Aggression undercuts trust and mutual respect. Others may come to resent you, leading them to avoid or oppose you.

I don't know about you all, but I don't like treating people this way and I really do resent people who put me in a position to feel this way. Like, FUCK YOU for making me feel like shit around you, making me feel small and forcing me to avoid you because you have no respect and awareness for the way you treat others. Yeah, aggressive people, you do that.

I don't want to stress over other people anymore, especially with my own help. We as people are like puzzles with half the pieces missing. It's hard to figure each other out (or even ourselves for that matter) when we don't quite understand what's going on and don't have all the right pieces. Learning this information was like WHOA for me. Like...whoa. The truth hurts.

I'll leave you with what effective, assertive communication should look like:

Because assertiveness is based on mutual respect, it's an effective and diplomatic communication style. Being assertive shows that you respect yourself, because you're willing to stand up for your interests and express your thoughts and feelings. It also demonstrates that you're aware of the rights of others and are willing to work on resolving conflicts.

Assertiveness affects many areas of life. Assertive people tend to have fewer conflicts in their dealings with others, which translates into much less stress in their lives. They get their needs met (which also means less stressing over unmet needs), and help others get their needs met, too. Having stronger, more supportive relationships virtually guarantees that, in a bind, they have people they can count on, which also helps with stress management, and even leads to a healthier body.


http://stress.about.com/od/relationships/p/profileassertiv.htm

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/assertive/SR00042/?amp&amp&amp;pubDate=June+17,+2011

Fakebook

                      

Fakebook. What Facebook should really be called.

"Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life." Sometimes it does. And sometimes it can also connect people who don't know each other or are in each other's lives at all. People who are complete strangers, acquaintances, creepers and sometimes, people we don't even like.

Facebook and I have a love/hate relationship. I think FB has the potential, and often is, one of the best social inventions ever. It really is the easiest way to communicate and connect with most people these days and it makes it possible to reach out to people you may not have been able to otherwise. It's a fast and easy way to share with people what you want to share, while seeing other people's shares at the same time. On the other hand,  I sometimes believe it is also the root of all evil. It can allow people to open a whole Pandora's box full of drama and allows people to connect and share in ways that they really shouldn't. It can be a medium in which to spread gossip, create drama and it allows us to be lazy. It lets people who have no business being in our business, in our business. <----And that's just bad for business.

I really do love sharing with my friends on FB, but not all people on my FB are my friends. Hear me out. I have a lot of FB  ACQUAINTANCES, and very few actual FRIENDS.

Friend- somebody emotionally close: somebody who trusts and is fond of another

Acquaintance: somebody who thinks well of or is on good terms with somebody else

Huge difference.

Among friends I am a fairly open book. I share my thoughts, feelings, opinions and emotions to friends because I trust them and because I know they care. In public and among acquaintances, I keep a lot to myself, because they probably don't care and I don't feel the need to make my business, their business. Until recently, I had yet to find a way to differentiate sharing between the two on FB. I deleted some people, blocked posts from others, and tried to restrict what I said. As you can imagine there is no way to avoid pissing someone off with any of these options. You delete someone, regardless of the reason or how much you DON'T even speak and they're butt-hurt. You block posts and they question why you're such a bitch as to hide stuff from them. I avoid being myself and saying what I want to say and I'm pissed. Lose-lose situation. But then I got smart. I created a second page. One where I sought out the people I wanted on it and I am not accepting all of the other random requests. Now I can share what I want, with whom I want and not have to worry about a thing. Besides, those people are already friends with me on one page, they shouldn't get greedy.

Facebook in my opinion is almost like a mass text. I IDEALLY use it to share my "status" with people who I know will care and who will not make drama out of it. I feel that I should be able to be myself, say the things that I naturally say, cuss, be happy, be angry, be sad, whenever I damn well please. Real friends wouldn't question, look down or judge me for what I say. They also wouldn't snoop and use my words in negative ways or say nasty things on posts that have nothing to do with them. Some people talk shit about people sharing their personal lives on FB. Yeah, it is stupid, when you do so with people who aren't your real friends. I feel that the people on my FB should be people who care about my personal shit and aren't using it for drama and that I should not even have to think about whether someone will say or do something malicious. The FB problem is that we allow too many people on our pages who have the wrong intentions.

People accept friend requests from just about anyone these days. People you sat next to in college for a couple weeks. People you went to high school with 10 years ago and will NEVER see or speak to again, not even on FB. People you met randomly through someone else. People you work with, but aren't really friends with. We accept people for all of the wrong reasons. I am not a notch in the FB friend belt people. I only want to have people on my FB who I actually engage with in life. People I speak to and see regularly, real friends and family and people who I care about and who care about me. Facebook should be comprised of REAL. I am a quality over quantity girl. I don't care to be the 600th friend whom people scroll over to get to a better post or to get pissy over the things I say and WHO I AM.  If you aren't gonna talk to me and you don't care about what I say, but then secretly read my shit and stock it for ammunition to talk shit about or judge then please locate your nearest UNFRIEND button and GTFO. Nobody HAS to be FB friends. If you wouldn't notice my absence then don't ask in the first place.

If you don't KNOW me, don't request access to a medium that I share who I am on and then judge me.

I don't think that I should feel bad for saying what I want just because people who it's not intended for can read it. I really only need about 20 of my FB peeps to see what I say, my posts are only really meant for them anyway because they are the only ones who really care about the typical day to day of my life. All of the those other people don't notice a damn thing until they think it applies to them or touches on one of their interests. I find out who all of the creepers are who I never thought paid any attention to me when I post something that has anything that THEY THINK has to do with them. They don't actually comment or like things of course, but will then bring it up later.

And please don't get me wrong, I like all of the people on my FB, that's why I ever accepted their "friend request" at all, but I really don't need all of the 150 people on my FB to see what I am saying all the time. And to be honest, a lot of my acquaintances didn't really "know" me before they asked me to be their FB friend. They have probably since discovered that I am a pretty intense individual and maybe don't even like the things that I have to say. I also have professional connections now on FB and it's already bitten me in the ass. This is my PRIVATE page. If you can't understand the distinction then don't be my friend on there. Don't use my private words against me in the professional world. I know, there is something to be said about who a person is in private, but I am not a bad person. Like anyone, there are things you can say and do in private that you cannot say and do everywhere else. Doesn't mean I am a bad person in private, it means that I know the difference between when certain words are appropriate or not and when it's OK to use them. Doesn't mean that I am not a professional.

Bottomline. I don't need numbers, I need my real friends. I haven't lost sight of the fact that FB was created to connect people, GENUINELY. If you regularly interact with me and I with you.  You're safe. If you scroll past me and never comment, like, message or anything, then what's the point? Honestly. I appreciate your extension of warmth, but we could still be acquaintances outside of FB where we can share what we want with who we want.

I've said before that Facebook is like a billboard. A lot of people see it, but most people don't really care about or really get the message. They read and react to it how they want and you as the "poster" have no control over how the message is perceived. Perhaps then the answer is to choose your audience instead of letting your audience have free reign to make what they want of your words. Maybe, just maybe.