My Shoes

Posts will be very light for the next few months.

I'm actually supposed to shut my blog down while I'm on this job, but I was also supposed to have shut the blog down on the last job (US Senate) and I didn't.

Anyway -- this will be temporary, and after it's over, I'll go back to my not posting posting... :)

On my mind right now is what it would be like if I could let folks spend a few days in my shoes.

My most recent choice of employment seems counterintuitive to what I've said. It's actually yet another motif. I'm always saying what I'm not going to do anymore or won't ever do or am not interested in and I end up right in the midst of those things. I've almost learned my lesson to stop talking about what I won't do, but not yet.

In any case, whenever this happens, I shrug my shoulders, chuckle a little and roll with it. Usually it's these situations that lead me to bigger and better things and I've been told for a large portion of my life that I'm "going to do great things..." Since I have no idea what those things are, I suspect I should check every nook and cranny I'm afforded.

However, to people on the outside, I seem like a sell-out in some ways. Others have taken these things that they don't know anything about and used them to judge who I am. They make large and leaping assumptions about who I am as a person and it pisses me off.

I always want to tell these people that they're so sure right now that if they were in my shoes they'd make different decisions, but that the truth is they have no idea what they would do. In fact, they'd probably make the very same choices.

Our lives are not the same, we have different needs and goals and wants. I'm not sure if what I'm doing right now will get me to my end goals, but I know it can't hurt. I know I'm gaining experience most folks wish for, and in that I know that whether they admit it, realize it or accept it or not, those folks with so much to say about what I'm doing know that and are a little jealous. That's understandable.

I tire of people trying to force me in a box. I'm so incredibly tired of it. I want to be allowed to be complex, because I am. I don't fit in boxes and it's a waste of time to try to put me in one.

Fact is, these folks don't know anyone else like me and they've wasted a lot of time they could've spent getting to know me, on trying to find out who they already know just like me.

Ultimately what's bothering me, I think, is that it's taken me almost 24 years to figure out who I am and what I've mostly figured out is that I have a lot yet to learn about myself. But what I do know to be true has taken some time for me to accept and be comfortable with. I'm really close to being to that point completely and as I step out and try to share with those around me who I am, it's defeating to find that they'd rather tell me who I am instead of let me show them. But, I can't be anyone other than me so I suppose I'll keep at it.

Ok. I just needed a mini-vent session. Thank ya kindly.