Happy Face
2 years ago, I retired from being MileNerd.
It was a big part of my life for almost a decade. I stumbled out of bed every morning to an inbox overflowing with questions, comments, and contributions. Almost all of them made me smile in some way. There was an endless back and forth with readers – a constant stream of chatter about miles and points. And then at night, I wrote.
Year after year…life continued that way.
I didn’t make any attempts to “grow” or really even mention the blog – so how did people show up? What were they looking for? Also…why the hell was I living like that? But there was no time for analysis. I had to keep chugging along.
Well, it’s been two chug-free years now. The ride has long since come to an end. And there’s one HUGE difference in my post-retirement life…
All of the quiet space that had been filled with sound for so long.
Almost like I used to live in a Buffalo Wild Wings and then relocated to a local knitting club.
Or like I walked straight from a Star Wars screening into a ballet.
Have you ever been jammed under one roof with your entire crazy family for the holidays? If so, you probably know about that last day when it’s all over and the madness suddenly ends.
It gets quiet, right?
Well, this craziness was 8 years long. And the silence was deafening for a while. Logically, I know there are more of you reading than ever. But it wasn’t about any of that. A ride did come to an end. My miles and points blogging life lasted for a long time. So, yeah, it was tough at first. As you may have heard…change is hard.
I missed (and sometimes still miss) those days.
For years, there was a hard-to-describe feeling…the daily connection to thousands of “friends.” Plus the 100+ emails each morning that felt like an ongoing conversation. Whether we were actually friends or not, it all felt like friendship. The noise and madness was a regular part of my day.
Until it wasn’t.
What I really want to express in this last post of the year is as follows…
I know a bunch of you are struggling in a variety of ways right now. No question about it…2020 has thrown some uppercuts. But you don’t have to lose your job, home, or a loved one to “qualify” for sadness. Sometimes it just comes out of change.
And this year has been anything but routine.
(Shit, I felt sad last January just from typing less on the internet to people I’ve never met)
We hang on to lessons from our youth, don’t we? Like the concept of obsessively trying to “put on a happy face.” Apparently, we were all raised to be circus clowns who need to paint a smile mask on no matter the situation. It sounds ridiculous, right? But newsflash – we humans are often ridiculous. We’re messy. So we cling to old ideas from another time – even when they no longer make sense. As “grownups,” we only deem a handful of emotions to be acceptable. Anger about current events is allowed. But, man, are we perplexed by our own pain. When we become adults, it gets incredibly hard to tell another person, “I feel sad.”
So we bury.
Pretty impressive how well we’ve mastered the art of shoving all that crap inside. Why deal with any pain now when we can let it seep out in a variety of unhealthy ways later – Ulcer? Insomnia? Booze? All acceptable. But just looking another human in the eye and saying you feel unhappy? That’s crazy town.
Unless life completely falls apart, real men and women know that it’s shameful to admit sadness.
In fact, we are required by law to let it fester and grow into something worse inside us.
Guys, 2020 was a motherfucker. Even for those who are still healthy and employed. So maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to allow yourself to feel sad sometimes. And to…gasp…actually allow other humans in to see it. Because here’s the simple reality…
If your “compassion” doesn’t extend to yourself, then you haven’t actually figured out what compassion is.
It’s not like you could smash yourself out of anxiety with brute force even if you tried. That’s not how we’re wired. We have to feel it to get through it. So don’t judge yourself for being human right now. Acknowledge the feelings and let them pass through you.
What’s the worst that could happen…
…someone might actually see past your mask?
