All right, T'man, this is really happening!!

According to husband-and-wife friends of mine, an old roommate of theirs -we'll call him "Tim" - used to often coach himself into his mornings in a volume that the whole house could hear.  It would sound something like this:  "All right, T-man, welcome to your day!  This is really happening!  Let's do this!"  I've hung out with him a few times, and he's a really nice guy, but he's one of those people who always seems to talk a few notches louder than is necessary and clunk around the house with a little less body-control than is normal for an average adult in their late 30's.  Anyway, when he would give himself his morning pep talk phrases, he seemed oblivious to the fact that he wasn't in the house alone, or that there might be some judgements or eyeball-rolling from his fellow housemates, who knew quite well how often his enthusiasm for attacking the day (perhaps even his dirty dishes piled high in the sink! ohpleaseohplease) was complicated by an almost-nonexistent attention span and seemingly a total lack of organized planning.  "You've got this, T-man!  Let's do this!  Welcome to your life!"  Enthusiasm counts for something, doesn't it?

The really cool thing about his self-pep talk phrases is that I have now adopted them as a regular part of my routine, applicable in any situation that requires an extra level of energy to push through stasis or fear or discomfort.  I say them out loud or in my head, and YES, I continue to call myself T-man, in homage and to magnify the superhero effect.  The situations include:

• getting out of bed (of course)
• peeling my eyeballs off of any electronic device
• putting on exercise clothes (and boldly walking toward rather than away from whatever activity requires those clothes)
• dialing the phone number of any person who I know will within the conversation sap more energy from me than what they give back
• Starting this blog...

"C'mon, T-man, you've got this!  This is what you want!  This is really happening!  Welcome to your blog!"

I've daydreamed about writing a personal blog for a while now.  I've gotten TOTALLY sucked into the endless possibilities of what I could add to it.  It's been so pretty, this daydream blog of mine, constantly tweaked with whatever content I feel most inspired to create (musings on music and books, responses to events in my personal life and my community, poetry and freeform essays, links to others' published words or videos that get me excited like a 5-year old...). My blog, until now, hosted as it has been in the cloud-that-is-my-mind, has of course brought a sense of shared humanity to a small collection of readers, and has provided respite and relief to other self-truth-seekers.  My dreamy cloud-blog certainly has not had any critics, because anyone who has stumbled across it has intuitively understood that I am jut an honest and fallible human being trying to form a piece of a conversation or a small kindling fire from a tiny idea, that I am still learning, and therefore should not be berated or name-called or picked apart sentence by naive sentence.  My blog-in-the-head-cloud hasn't needed bandwith or monetary support or regular maintenance.  It has roared to life when I've felt inspired, and has dissolved away when I've hit periods of self-doubt, wondering how a 31-year-old womangirlperson with a lack of self-discipline, an ongoing sugar addiction-battle, a predisposition toward feeling unceremoniously shoved around by the world, and a tendency to withdraw to the safety of my familiar thought patterns can contribute with any insight or grace to the gorgeous community of personal blogs that already exists.

I am thin-skinned when it comes to criticism and I can be neurotically avoidant of activities I think I might "fail" at, so writing personal thoughts and experiences on the internet seems like a pretty good opportunity to crawl out of my skin.  But right alongside the who-do-you-think-you-are nature of self-doubt, which I have come to realize will always appear hovering over my shoulder when I try ANYTHING that's new + creative + personal, is this growing need that I feel to write.  I am not a great wordsmith or particularly well-informed, but I want to write (1) to honor the fact that I am learning something, SOMETHING, in this messy and bittersweet experience of being a human and (2) to perhaps offer other humans out there on the interweb something, SOMETHING, that feels like recognition or support or wisdom or joy or strength. 

I'm an expert on nothing.  Most, if not all, of the wisdom I hold onto was given to me by others - my loved ones, professional colleagues, acquaintances, writers I've read, speakers I've listened to, random people on the street.  I find it both breathtaking and unsurprising that any person who has ever offered me advice has given me something really important to ponder.  I am a student of my fellow humans, albeit one that regularly avoids my homework, checks my phone, oversleeps, or gives myself over to festivity or distress rather than giving my full and reverent attention to the lessons that are being taught all around me.

Recent events in my life seem to be pushing me to write.  Perhaps all of the constructing and movement and stirring of future-visions and apprehensions and past what-if's and why-didn't-I's and if-only's, perhaps all of this has finally gotten me to the point that several of my life-teachers have talked about, the point where I simply must.  I must.  I'm not even quite sure what it is I simply must do, but it has something to do with writing and people and connection and you-are-not-alone.  The tower is leaning and this keyboard is the closest thing to catch its shadow.  I must push this weight into something or I may explode.  I am hungry to take up space in my own life, to build my own structure and decorate it with my own values and passions and meaning.  

So I'm giving myself a little pep talk right now, warming up, stretching, talking a few deep breaths, ready to get dirty ...

"C'mon, T-man, you've got this!  This is what you want!  This is really happening!  Welcome to your blog!"