What made me stop posting on my blog?
I noticed that I got an intake of viewers when Kalyn Nicholson featured my blog post “Hey Google! How do I get off the hamster wheel?”. I did not expect that outcome as I only sent it to her as an interesting read she could maybe benefit from. It made me feelinspired to continue to write and create things to continue posting onto my blog. I just keep putting high expectations of myself when it comes to other areas, so I don’t want it to take over on that part of my life as well. I am not sure if that made sense, but it makes sense in my mind. I don’t want to put an expectation of “writing x amount of days a week” or the quality of the writing period. I have a tendency of noticing when I become obsessed with creating perfection, and I have learned the negative consequences of constantly chasing perfection; Plot twist, it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as perfection, as what is considered to be perfect to someone varies from person to person. I have ran on that hamster wheel and I would prefer to exclude myself from that narrative.
This year I took time to focus on Me. Yes, Me is capitalized because it is a person, and it is Me. I am Me. I am trying to learn who Me is. Kasey has too much baggage that comes with it. It may be strange, but it works in helping me to create this new level of myself where I actually know who I am and what I want versus Kasey who continues to shape and mold herself to be perfect for everyone, but continues to also neglect herself in the process. Talking about myself in the third-person makes me feel crazy, but it’s the only way I can express what I am doing in my life to make these changes. The first has been to learn who I am authentically and without any outside influence; which is very difficult to type out onto a post and hope that the reader will understand.
So… that’s my answer to why I stopped posting.
What made me stop journaling?
This year was very hard for me to journal as consistent as I wanted to. However, I think that was kind of a good thing despite the amount of shit I am giving myself about not journaling every day. Did you identify that perfectionistic demand of being better instead of giving grace to the fact that life happens and things get in the way of achieving that perfect goal I had? It is insane that I give myself so much agony and despair because I am so hard on myself. It is both a blessing and a curse to have a mind like mine.
Taylor says it best, “Long story short, I survived.”. This year was a rough year to even want to get out of bed, let alone meet the perfectionistic demands that constantly swim in my mind. This year has been a long year of working through past traumas, experiencing new traumas, healing my inner child, practicing mindfulness, and really digging deep into the extremely bruised heart that I have from experiencing prolonged trauma and stress throughout my childhood and adolescence. I haven’t even begun to work through the trauma I have experienced during my young adult years. I am not looking forward to that. Starting trauma therapy was the best and worst thing to happen to me this year. I have learned a lot about Me and have begun to look at ways that I can be myself and still exist on this planet.
I was in a serious relationship that ended this year, but somehow continued to rot my brain, heart, and soul for six more months. More on that later.
I started grad school this year. So far, I love it. I am going into my second semester in the new year, so looking forward to seeing how that pans out. I really enjoyed my first semester in the Clinical Mental Health Master’s program. There were a lot of ups and down throughout the semester, but hey it’s part of the college experience. I did well this semester as far as grades and the knowledge I have obtained. I even made some friends. I practiced being my authentic self with strangers and learned that I actually like parts of Me, and others do too! This came to a shock to me because the entire semester I kept telling myself “Stop being so weird!” or “Stop being so annoying!”, when the reality was that other people actually enjoyed spending time with me and genuinely enjoyed my weirdness.
Because of all these changes in my life, expectations of myself have changed. Such as not expecting myself to journal every day, but to try to journal at least every week. I was trying to spend more time in the present and enjoy the moments this year. This year was all about self-compassion. I will try better next year.
“’tis the damn season” – Taylor Swift