You really can't give all the fucks...

I'm taking a social media break, trying to sort out how I use social media and what value it gives back  to me.  I've struggled with a love/hate relationship with Facebook for years.  Recently, I just couldn't take it anymore.  Every time I opened my phone I was opening my own personal gateway to hell - Mark Manson, my new writer crush, calls this "the feedback loop from hell".  It was so wonderful to be able to attach words to my frustration and unsettledness. It really is the feedback loop from hell!! Thank you dude!!

It's not just the politics (although it's a lot of the politics right now) it's the other bullshit too that I give a lane on the superhighway right into my life, my mind, my subconscious. I realized that I couldn't just remain neutral.  All of it one way or another moved my needle, and that became exhausting.   Maybe it was that we haven't seen the sun in Michigan in a fucking month, or that it's assumed currently that if you don't subscribe to one popular set of beliefs it's because you are acting without thought (that one really angers me.  In fact I'm going to sit and overthink about how much that one bugs me) or maybe it's all the finger pointing and blaming or the mindless dribble from pop culture, but I was getting bitter and I don't like bitter.

Men's Health writes an article, "How to tell if your heading towards a sexless marriage" I'm bored, scrolling through Facebook so I take the click bait - and there it is, in black and white - words telling that that because we sleep on opposite sides of the bed, routinely, we are heading towards a vanilla marriage where no one gets laid and everyone acts like an asshole.  Fuck! No asterisk for me that says *unless your snore like a 300 pound frat boy (yeah, that's me.), then award your husband the metal of honor for sleeping in the same room, night after night, and don't worry about the sex - you have two babies under 3.  That shit will iron itself out.  So I do that thing that husbands love - I start a fight about nothing because I got some bullshit in my head and I let it get the best of me...THAT is his favorite of my crazy traits.  That usually doesn't do much to help the sex either.

Some parenting journal or blogger writes some shit about how kids shouldn't be made to share.  Ironically moms share that article on Facebook like chronic at a music festival: "here, hit this! It's great!"  So I read this garbage that 5 billion people liked and I think "what the fuck is wrong with me, I kind of think learning to share is a big deal.  No one likes an asshole" and now I'm questioning all of my parenting techniques.  Which you know as a parent really means you're just questioning yourself.

Last summer after I posted "A prayer for my children" I had one of the biggest fights with a friend I've ever had.  I typically don't fight with friends - it was super foreign and deeply upsetting to me.  When we got past the trigger that the post was in poor timing (for personal events in our lives), she told me that she just thought it was mean, the idea, the words -she found them mean and unsympathetic.  I valued her opinion as a close friend.  So what did I do? I obsessed for DAYS - was I cruel? Did I hurt someone? Was my idea that "life is going to suck at times, that this will remain constant throughout your life, so make some peace with it" cold or insensitive? Eventually I added a disclaimer to the post.  You know, just in case you don't see the world the way I do and you believe I'm trying to pass this all off as truth...and this bothered me for a long time.  I don't ever attempt to be mean, quite the opposite, I enjoy making people feel empowered, helping people to feel good about exactly who they are right now.  But I held on to this, I held onto the words when she told me that if I'm going to put my opinions out there, I have to be prepared to defend them.  I suppose that has (in my mind) some half truth to it.  I'm happy to discuss my opinions, elaborate further but since I do not believe my opinions are fact, defending them as if they are fact, defending myself for having an opinion you disagree with - not really something I'm interested in doing.

Also, you're (not just one person, the global "you" here) YOU are welcome to just say; "I disagree, now I'll move along."

I got caught in the feedback loop from hell.

After that I began to question everything I wrote: Is this kind? Will I offend someone? Is my belief wrong? Then politics happened and now I'm seeing things daily that are personally attacking good people that I know and love.  Not their political position, but the actual person.  Their character, their morality, their level of perceived kindness or goodness.  It upsets me and I'm not hardwired for being quietly upset without a release.  I'd be a horrible stonewaller.  I'd last seconds. 

The kicker last week was seeing the status of a "friend" that read: I'm done being polite - if you're not mad as hell we don't want you in our fucking lives right now! And it got like 200 hearts.  My take away was: if you don't subscribe to exactly what I feel and believe then fuck you, go away, I'd like to sit and listen only to people who parrot back exactly what I say - the rest of you hold no value to me.   And 200 people supported that with passion.  I couldn't deal.  The fucking feedback loop from hell, so fuck it.  I finally took a much needed break, because this superhighway of feedback is unhealthy, unproductive and it keeps me from actually engaging in my own life.

In all of this shit I was taking in, the static and white noise, the ridiculous desire to write without offending anyone - I forgot the most important thing: A blog (or my Facebook page) are my words. And it SHOULD be for me.  Once it stops being that, it's all shit.  My new favorite author reminded me of that.

I was stuck trying to give all the fucks. 

I do not write with an intention to piss people off, and I do not write with an intention to make people agree with me.  I write for me.  It's that simple.

How I imagine I look giving no fucks

You do not have to agree with me.  You don't have to think I'm right. I am okay with that...well now I am.  I do not need to be corrected or enlightened and I don't need to be validaded - my thoughts are well thought out, whether you like them or not. You may choose to find my words mean or insensitive or thoughtless or ignorant - I don't give one teeny, tiny fuck.  I don't give a teeny tiny fuck because I'm indifferent or I'm out to hurt you, I don't give a teeny tiny fuck because I know that's not my intention.  I cannot write from a completely vulnerable or honest place while simultaniously worrying about how it will be interpreted or if the reader walks away with something other than my original intent.  It would drive me mad.  How you digest what I'm tossing out there, whether you even pay attention to it,  that's up to you.  When I sit down to write I am expelling all the bullshit that's been swimming around in my brain, being picked over and disected and over analyzed.  I write when the only way to purge my brain and find relief is to put pen to paper.  I not so secretly hope that you connect with my words, but I enjoy emotional intimacy so I eat that shit up like candy.   At the end of it all it's really up to you, not me. These are words from my brain based on my experiences and how I sort through them and make sense out of life.   You get to have your own place.  I support that!!   So you can have all the opinions you desire about me but respectfully I no longer wish to know of them all.  Some of them get to be just yours.  I know of only one truth and that is that these words are MY truth and that's all that matters. To me. You choose what matters to you.

To the 3 people that read this blog, if you haven't read Mark Manson's work I recommend it.  Per usual I was late to the party, but when all the cool kids were listening to 2 Pac I was rocking out to Joni Mitchell so I've grown accustomed to my late arrivals.