[Yes, a very, very, very YEARS late post again. I’m trying so, so hard. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there, but I will be trying!]
As you may know if you’ve been around the blog a while, I try to do “52 in 52” projects in a way that in every calendar year I’m starting one or ending one. I hadn’t done one in a while, so starting in late 2019, it was time to get on it before the year was over!
[And sorry that we’re just now, almost a year later, getting to it. Obviously, there’s SO much to catch up on!]
Usually, when I pick these projects, I try to find something I feel I am either lacking in, or at least want more of (if we don’t want to use ‘lacking’, which is a bit of a negative-sounding word).
Anyway, I had gotten in my head about a lot of kind of my own internal-swirling issues around that time. I’d done better for the majority of 2019 about being open and connected.
I know when I got PTSD in 2016, one of my big issues was walling off from other people/getting in my own head/being distracted – that kind of stuff.
I had a lot of trauma therapy, and really did heal. And I got better! So, for most of 2019, I was present and happy, but in the fall, I started having more personal issues come up.
I don’t know if they’re ‘triggering’ from my PTSD. Or, perhaps sometimes people just still go through hard times outside of that. But whatever the reasons, I started being a little more in-my-head/distracted.
And to be perfectly (and embarrassingly) candid about myself, even when things aren’t going wrong, I’m a big talker (clearly). I do think I take up too much of many conversations.
I’m not sure if it’s because I want the speaker to like me, therefore they need to think I’m interesting. Or if I just hate dead air, so I try to fill it. Or maybe I’m just selfish. I dunno.
But I would like to be a more giving and connected person in conversation.
I’ve already done a 52-in-52 charity project. I donate money when I have it. Give blood. All that kind of stuff. So, it’s not that I’m never giving or connected… I guess I feel connected to a community at large, and less so to individuals.
And I’d like to be better at strengthening those individual bonds, being a better conversationalist, and taking a deeper care of those around me.
We’ll talk about what that might look like more tomorrow!