There's Trying Too Hard, and There's Just Being Yourself...
It struck me of late, sometimes a guy can reach a little...can stretch too far to get a decent grip on a fleeting thing. There's just being yourself, and then there's constructing something else. I don't need a hard hat to get to work on building a cool life, or an Instagram collection of those so-called cooler moments. I need to be happy, and I need to be me. That's it.
In a lot of ways I'm no different than a fifteen year old version of myself...I still want to be something other than what I am sometimes...I still look at things and think, "wow, that's cool"...and sometimes I discard things that help to define me in search of things that I think I might want to define me more. We all do it. Well, most of us do it. These days it strikes me as stupid. I am who I am, and I do whatever it is that I do, value whatever it is that I value, chase whatever it is that I chase, and it doesn't need a status update or a tumblr following. I blog, here, but as much for myself and the need to express a half dozen emotions a day, than for any approval or attention. The blog has twelve people that subscribe to updates...twelve, in nearly five years. I'm not soliciting a lot of attention. The photos aren't tagged on random Tumblr sites...the posts aren't Google + fodder, at least, not all that often, and I hope that I'm honest here. In this lovely place I hope there isn't any trying to be, there's just being. Yeah, I said lovely, 'cause it is.
It's a fine line, you know, 'cause sometimes the whole "trying too hard" thing is exactly what someone's personality is, and they could no more avoid that than be someone else...but I'd like to think that somewhere along this path that we travel through a life much too rapidly receding in the rear view, there's a point we pass where we say, "I don't know, I kinda just like being this way. That other stuff is exhausting." I like to think that a point like that on our own personal timelines exists. I guess for some of us it doesn't, and yet for others, who remain remarkably unique and inspiringly genuine, I suspect that there was never a point outside of adolescence where they were ever trying too hard. They just are. I think immediately of my friends, Andrew and Ally and Heather, and I'm inspired by the notion that sometimes just being yourself is all a person needs to do.
What inspired such early morning pre-shower introspection? Nothing crazy...just a few days of forty-something year old Instagram inspired Tom Foolery and posturing, mixed up in a bowl with a mild narcissism, and then baked at 350 degrees with the oven light on and far too many people watching those cupcakes rise. There's trying too hard, and there's just being yourself. Sometimes, I'm quite sure, some of us aren't all that certain who we even are. Kind of makes authenticity a little illusive.
Someone promise me that you'll tell me if I ever I stray too far from something genuine.
In a lot of ways I'm no different than a fifteen year old version of myself...I still want to be something other than what I am sometimes...I still look at things and think, "wow, that's cool"...and sometimes I discard things that help to define me in search of things that I think I might want to define me more. We all do it. Well, most of us do it. These days it strikes me as stupid. I am who I am, and I do whatever it is that I do, value whatever it is that I value, chase whatever it is that I chase, and it doesn't need a status update or a tumblr following. I blog, here, but as much for myself and the need to express a half dozen emotions a day, than for any approval or attention. The blog has twelve people that subscribe to updates...twelve, in nearly five years. I'm not soliciting a lot of attention. The photos aren't tagged on random Tumblr sites...the posts aren't Google + fodder, at least, not all that often, and I hope that I'm honest here. In this lovely place I hope there isn't any trying to be, there's just being. Yeah, I said lovely, 'cause it is.
It's a fine line, you know, 'cause sometimes the whole "trying too hard" thing is exactly what someone's personality is, and they could no more avoid that than be someone else...but I'd like to think that somewhere along this path that we travel through a life much too rapidly receding in the rear view, there's a point we pass where we say, "I don't know, I kinda just like being this way. That other stuff is exhausting." I like to think that a point like that on our own personal timelines exists. I guess for some of us it doesn't, and yet for others, who remain remarkably unique and inspiringly genuine, I suspect that there was never a point outside of adolescence where they were ever trying too hard. They just are. I think immediately of my friends, Andrew and Ally and Heather, and I'm inspired by the notion that sometimes just being yourself is all a person needs to do.
What inspired such early morning pre-shower introspection? Nothing crazy...just a few days of forty-something year old Instagram inspired Tom Foolery and posturing, mixed up in a bowl with a mild narcissism, and then baked at 350 degrees with the oven light on and far too many people watching those cupcakes rise. There's trying too hard, and there's just being yourself. Sometimes, I'm quite sure, some of us aren't all that certain who we even are. Kind of makes authenticity a little illusive.
Someone promise me that you'll tell me if I ever I stray too far from something genuine.
posted by Unknown at
6:56 AM
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