I had an interesting conversation yesterday evening with someone I phoned for a bit of advice, who thinks I could do better on here, you know, on the blog. I was hoping he might be able to signpost me towards a techie person who could help me with the subscription widget – I’m two weeks into it being on the blink now, there’s no sign of our friends off-shore breathing life back into it any time soon and I’m nearing the end of my rope.
He couldn’t help, as it happened, however during the course of our conversation it seemed that there were a couple of things, three in fact that he had an opinion on. His opinion was welcome of course, I’m always open to feedback as you know. Thing is, he hasn’t actually read the blog.
I know, right..? That’s what I thought too. A self-proclaimed subject matter expert who doesn’t write a blog himself and hadn’t actually read any of my words. Not his cup of tea at all, as he pointed out…clearly he’s not a middle-aged woman with fat issues. But still, he took the time to point out how I was doing it all wrong because he knows stuff.
When I said it was mainly words and not many pictures, I swear could hear him pulling a face – apparently you lot won’t like that. He wanted to know how many words, and I told him, roughly. It seems I write too many, and again you lot won’t really like that either, hell it seems half of you won’t even bother reading them. It seems I should make it sharp and punchy instead. With lots of pictures, because you’ll like that.
He asked me about my search-engine optimisation build – whatever the chuff that is – and apparently my approach to that is all wrong too. In his humble opinion I should write every post with that in mind or I’ll ‘never get anywhere’. Pepper it with keywords in all the right places. Right then. I did mention that people seemed to be finding me okay but he was having none of it. SEO is where it’s at, in his book.
He totally couldn’t get his head around the fact that I don’t really talk about the diet. I tried to tell him it wasn’t a blog about a diet, it’s more about what goes on in my head whilst I’m on the diet. Reflecting on past mistakes and trying to clear them from the path ahead of me to make the journey easier…clearly that concept was a bit beyond him. Actually by this point I’d cottoned on to the fact that he was a complete tool, but still I tried to explain. Don’t ask me why…I think that’s my fat-girl driver kicking into overdrive, which makes me crave the approval of other people even when their opinion shouldn’t matter.
He left the conversation having dismissed our blog as shit despite never reading a word of it, but here’s the thing…I didn’t. I thought about what he’d said, and the Asshole voice tried to chew my ear but you’d have been proud of me – I just closed it down. The thing is, I love the fact that you lot enjoy dipping in and out and some of the chatter helps you in your own journey but I never ever lose sight of the fact that I’m writing this for me.
I read something very profound once from Steve Jobs, who is one of my heroes. What he said was this:
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Looking back on what I’ve done in the past and talking about it is helping me slowly join the dots. By picking out the patterns which have led to downfall after downfall, I have nowhere to hide going forward, right? If I can see where I went wrong, and I continue to do whatever it is, I’m as good as choosing to do something which I know is going to fail. And you bet your sweet ass that if that’s ever the case, it won’t be a subconscious choice because for the first time I’m not playing at this. I’m the one in control.
It feels to me like I’ve found the balance I need, between a fair amount of soul searching, some insight and self-reflection and a level of honesty with the posse which has been truly liberating. Laughing about stuff isn’t deflecting from the issues, it’s helping me to diffuse the intensity in my own mind. That’s important too, because when it gets too intense I’ve been known to check out and put stuff on the too difficult pile. I don’t even have a too difficult pile this time around, I’m just dealing with stuff as it comes up.
He’d definitely disapprove of this post eh, it’s a monster. But this isn’t the face of a worried woman 🙂
