You ready to drop your drawers? Put it in ink!

I never thought I would really put something out there personal, you know expose yourself and become vulnerable on paper. It’s what people want to read you know. It is in between the lines of words and stories we’ve all read a million times, when the writer can become a risk-taker, strips down naked and lets their reader see every inch of them. Now that’s a good read. I realize there is no salvation and there can not be perfection found in this disrobing. That writer will obviously get positive and negative reception, just like anything else, but I think its what the writer feels after he or she has put it in words and let their pen ink up a plain piece of paper into a lasting impression… whether that impression takes hold of one, two, three or a thousand lives, it really doesn’t matter because what has been written is the most concentrated impression of one human life, and frankly all that really matters is how it made the writer feel, how it was almost definitely: liberating.

So becoming that writer, providing not only a worth-reading text for my reader, but a self-satisfying current for my honest thoughts, this obviously takes complete self-confidence and almost a lack of care for what anyone else thinks and what they may assume or judge of you. This quality, this seriously strong ability to be so self-assured and be as you are, think as you feel, act as you believe and do as you wish…that’s taking a risk. You just dropped your shield and passed “go.” These people are the ones we all look up to, we look to them for advice, they are the trend setters, we wait for them to make their move, we follow, and we shake and nod our heads and reinvent their wheel as our own. We then push along our game pieces carefully watching their every move. So how do you break away from this and drop your drawers, and be that stripped down writer, businessman, young woman, student, man, woman, child, or adult? Heck, you take a chance and be the person you are, and write the truth about yourself that you keep guarded by the other chances you’re dishonestly taking. This chance could hurt someone else, offend someone else, and moreover it is definitely going to shock yourself…but its going to be truth and in due time you’ll be commended for it.

Well, becoming that trendsetter so to speak, ain’t gunna happen with things like Facebook, I’ll tell you that much. I know how I treat my FB Newsfeed like MSNBC or the New York Times; I’m keeping an eye out for all that is going on. As soon as something “taboo” surfaces, we’re all talking about it… more like commenting on photos, updating our status’ about it, liking and disliking it, and dare I even say we are blocking and deleting friends because of it! I know, Facebook is so like what everyone talks about and totally isn’t all we do… but OMG wake up and admit it to yourself… we’re all checking each other out, and then deciding who we’re going to be and what we’re going to do based upon it…WTF! So how can we honestly be ourselves, you know go against the grain and put it out there, when everything is so connected and everyone and anyone can find out about it… moreover being judged for how we do feel and what we do say happens not only quicker, but with a much larger reception… a reception that could cause any courageous spirit to run back under the rock they came from.

Do we want to be who we really are because we are all so exhausted of trying to be like everyone else, or are we trying to be who were are, and be different because we don’t really want to be totally connected to everyone else?

Being comfortable in our own skin to the point we can show it to all those around us, is that what a “connection” is all about? Is this surrendering of inhibitions how we classify a trusting and close relationship? To me its like feeling your jeans rest loosely on your hips, taking a stroll through your favorite park in an outfit that doesn’t match, feeling the cool air hit your makeup-free face, rolling all your windows down and driving nowhere on a cool night, plopping down on a well-worn sofa with a good friend, or a good book, nothing frivolous needed… just a feeling of comfort because you feel good, you feel unrestricted, you feel understood and clear minded- you feel easy (easy like the iconic ‘free and easy,’ but actually inserting that phrase into anything I write is like nails on a chalkboard…and it didn’t seem quite right to let that word cap off my sentence so as to be interpreted as, well…you know).

So I want to put it all out there. Part of me wonders how to put it all out there, and the other part wonders if I can still “put it all out there” by only getting my baby toe wet. Lately I take so much more comfort and find so much more clarity in being who I really am, regardless of what I think someone else is going to think… and sometimes you can weed through all the others and find someone who is doing just what you are doing and just being them. We all have things we keep tied up in perfect little boxes; failures, mistakes, times of pain and times of happiness… love found and love lost… but the chances I am talking about are the chances you take when you open those boxes and let them all bleed onto your own blank piece of paper. I know I’m getting there.