What You Said Mattered to Me

Another journaling friend of mine and I decided to start writing a shared diary last year. Less public than a blog, but also more accountability and shared experience than a diary. 

So much is going on in the world these days, and it's hard to find the acceptable, satisfying place to put my thoughts. I have many. So many that I started to consider blogging again in addition to my shared diary. (What do we call a blog in 2021?) 

Posting on the internet is more high profile, people can find you. It makes me hesitant to share my thoughts - I started this in ...2006? My world was different then. (Save this idea for a retrospective, 'where is she now?' post later.)

Then, I thought about something someone said to me, and it was so true and resonant, that they saw in me something I knew about myself but hadn't ever articulated, or maybe I had taken for granted: 

"I knew you'd have a blog, you have a voice."  And it reminded me that if they know you, the people that matter will find you, and you'll be happy for it.

In my thoughts to the first friend, I wrote that in high school, when I was bored/frustrated/impatient I'd make lists in my notebooks while I waited for my teacher to get control of the class, and get us back on the topic of the Civil War or the impact of the railroad to western expansion of the U.S.

• Things I Hate About Today. 
• Things I’d Rather Be Doing.
• Places I Wish I Could Go That Are NOT Here. 
• Reasons I Am Better Than Everyone In This Room.

And it prompted me to think of lists I'd make in 2021. And then this list (that honors the intention of not just venting and complaining in a diary, but trying to turn the story to something you'd want others to read and learn from later. Here's my list:

Words That You Said That Mattered to Me

"I knew you'd have a blog, you have a voice. You can't NOT write."  Note that this was said by the same high school classmate that spied my discontented lists in history class, read them over my shoulder and said, "Are you really making a list about why you hate today?" Paused and then said with a chuckle of respect, "That's kind of ...cool."

"You know what I like about you, Claire? You're an honest broker."  What followed was a "coaching conversation" at work about how not everyone is prepared to hear the truth. So now, I just use that statement as a preface to telling someone that they are, in more considered words, a meathead.

“Who takes care of the one who takes care of all of us?” written in a card sent around my dorm after my Dad died. (I was the RA that year. I'm not sure how much care I was giving to the residents of my hall, beyond asking them to open a window because their pot smoke was getting in the hallway, and they weren't being a thoughtful member of the dorm community. However, this has become a mantra to remember when I feel run down and need to take care of myself.

"To be ... of service." I was struggling in talking to a confidante to describe how I find it easier to enjoy something that I genuinely like and find relaxing, providing it has a purpose or helps someone else. Sewing is more enjoyable, if it's spent making a gift for a friend, or a mask for my neighbors. Gardening is more fulfilling when I am helping a neighbor, or even if I get an unexpected compliment from a passerby. When my confidante said it, and realized herself that this observation was such a good fit, I feel like if we'd been in a Disney movie, she'd be the fairy godmother touching Cinderella with her wand, and around me swirled a ballgown of sparkling silver fairy dust. Those words being the glass slipper.

I might list so many of the times that someone made an observation that it could be a twitter or blog in and of itself, with others sharing their moments of feeling truly seen. Instead I'll just go back to the friends here. 

(** Like when you take that Buzzfeed survey and realize that not everyone has a name for the night before Halloween. For all the useless noise Buzzfeed puts out, this epiphany paralleled the telegraph and the railroads opening up the West for me. And I was living in the Midwest already. The night before Halloween is called Mischief Night. (In 2021, versus 2006, I've learned that a simple, explanatory sentence like that can possibly drive more traffic to a blog.)  Even less of a societal service than Buzzfeed, because in Philadelphia, it's about kids talking a big game about toilet papering houses, smashing pumpkins, and ...making mischief. But like waiting for a hurricane that shows up onshore as not much more than a drizzle, in our neighborhood the night before Halloween wasn't that big of an event.