On Having Nothing to Hide (Blog #1093)

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Well shit. The end of this blog is getting real. After tonight, I only have three more posts. Granted, something could happen. I could get sick or die first. But it looks like I’m going to make it. That feels good. At the time time, it’s terrifying. I’ve said it a lot lately, but this blog has been such an anchor for me, the idea of letting go of it feels like cutting all strings. Like I’m about to be drifting at sea. And whereas that’s exciting–I’m free, I can go where the wind blows–it’s like, gosh, I hope I learned how to sail.

I guess that’s it. I’ve gotten into a certain rhythm with this blog, there’s a predictability, a stability in the routine. Granted, it’s not always what I want to be doing, especially when I’m worn out and don’t feel like writing, or when no one pats me on the back for it (I’m big on words of affirmation), but there’s always a comfort, a safety in knowing “I wrote today.” But starting on Tuesday of next week, I won’t have that. Even if I continue writing regularly, I won’t have it in such a public, real-time way. That’s what they say about writing. It’s like telling a joke and having to wait three years to find out if it’s funny. Especially if you’re writing a book, you don’t get that immediate response.

Response is something that’s been on my mind lately. Because although a respectable number of people read my blog every day, Ellen Degeneres still gets more likes when she posts a single picture of a cat than I’ve ever gotten from all my posts combined. Ugh. This is one of the challenges to doing something creative. You can’t compare yourself to others. Well, you can, but it doesn’t do much good. Plus, the truth is that you never know what kind of an impact you’re having on people unless they tell you. And sometimes not even then. The point being that a post that’s read, liked, and taken to heart by one person could do more to change the course of that person’s life for the better than a meme that goes viral.

God works in mysterious way.

One thing I almost never do is plan out my posts. In the beginning I’d think about them all day, looking for that one idea, that one spark. I’d see a mailbox and try to make a life lesson out of it. Eventually all of that went on autopilot. A part of me just knew we needed something to say before the day was over, so it became always on the lookout. Like a radar. But subconsciously. So now it’s to the point where I can almost always sit down, open my laptop, and it–just happens.

All this being said, I have on a number of occasions thought, I really need to talk about THAT before this whole thing is over. Most recently this happened with respect to EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). Since it’s been a big part of my healing, I just wouldn’t have felt right if I’d left it undiscussed. So this week, despite the fact that my therapist says that by this point I’ve put in my dues and could talk about nothing else but farts if I wanted to, I’ve been thinking, What’s left to say? And whereas I have a rough outline for the next three days (sum up what I’ve learned, address my readers, address myself), the only thing I could come up with for tonight was–discuss the process.

The process being what it’s been like to put out and sort through (most) of my baggage in front of others, to talk about where I struggle and what I’m learning in front of God and everybody. Well, it hasn’t been the worst thing. In fact, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. Largely because it’s given me a sense of freedom that I didn’t have before. Not because I feel like I’ve vomited on the internet (sorry about your shoes, but, gosh, do I feel better), but because I feel like I’ve been honest. Like, this is who I am as a person. And when you’re honest and upfront about who you are–warts and all–well, you can walk into anywhere and be comfortable. Because you don’t have to worry about being found out. Because you’ve got nothing to hide. Not that you tell everyone everything, but the charade is finally over.

First on the inside, then on the outside.

I would encourage anyone to do this. Drop the charade. Not that you have to start a blog and spill your guts, since I recognize not everyone is comfortable with the attention that comes with posting on the world wide web. Plus, you don’t have to share your journey with hundreds or thousands in order to to have a successful one. But do share your journey with someone. Because nobody gets through life alone. If they try, they suffer. Lately I’ve really been working on this. Letting others help me, hold me. Taking the weight of the world off my shoulders. Letting the world hold its own weight. Indeed, letting go of this blog is one step in this direction for me. Someone else can write every day. I can turn my attention to other projects.

Or just take a damn nap.

In terms of its reception, this blog has been a good experience for me. Meaning I haven’t caught a lot of flack for it, the way some people do on the internet. Granted, I’ve been told what to wear, what not to wear, what to do in my photos, what to say, and what not to say, but these criticisms have been few and far between. And, I think, largely well-intentioned. Even if they weren’t received as such. Either way, oh well. They haven’t changed me. I regularly get crappy comments on some of my dance videos, and I’m still forever glad they’re out there. (The videos, not the comments.) That I’m out there. When you do something creative, when you share yourself with the world, people are going to have SOMETHING to say about it. Because people ALWAYS have something to say. (It’s what we do.) So this is my encouragement to you–

Let them say whatever the hell they want. Just don’t let them stop you from sharing yourself. Your real self. Because however big, however small, the world needs your voice. Your one unique voice that refuses to hide any longer. (Why, Marcus?) Because when one of us stops hiding, it means we all can.

Finally.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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One day a change will come.

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Tits Up (Blog #824)

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Sometime yesterday I (apparently) found the magic probiotic/kimchi combination to heal my sinus infection. Last night after I blogged, my energy level kicked up, and I couldn’t fall asleep. Oh well, I’ll take being tired over being sick any day. Tired–that’s what I’ve been today, since I got up early to teach a dance lesson. Again, I’m fine with this. It’s nice to be employed. Did you hear that, Universe? I’m grateful for both feeling better and having work to do.

So please let’s keep this up.

Currently it’s one-forty-two in the afternoon, and I’m blogging now because I have a doctor’s appointment shortly and then the short-story writing class I’ve been attending for the last month. Earlier today, after my dance lesson, I went to Kinko’s and printed off a dozen copies of the story I finished yesterday, so everyone in the class can have one to either criticize or praise. Or both. Or remain silent.

I’m preparing myself for all reactions.

During this morning’s dance lesson, the wedding couple I’ve been working with practiced one of their stunts. You know that little moment at the end of Dirty Dancing when Patrick Swayze lifts Jennifer Grey over his head, like, no big deal. Well, it’s been going–um–okay, but today it just wasn’t happening. The groom’s arms were tired. His knees hurt (because another part of the dance requires his spinning on his knees). The bride was nervous. Ugh. It’s a big deal to trust someone else to hold you above their frickin’ head. There’s a part of the lift that requires the girl to push off the guy’s shoulders and immediately go into that “light as a feather” pose, and she kept hanging on.

Girl, I get it.

It’s hard to let go.

Earlier at Kinko’s I forgot to hit the “collate” option, and my pages printed like this–page 1, page 1, page 1–page 2, page 2, page 2. Anyway, I had to sort them myself by hand on an empty counter–page 1, page 2, page 3–page 1, page 2, page 3–and when the manager came over to see if I needed any staples or paper clips, I imagined that he saw the first page of my short story, then I got embarrassed because–What will he think? What will anyone think? Maybe it’s a bit of what I felt like when I started this blog. Here I am world, this is me.

In the Netflix serious The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the main character is a standup comedian, and her manager–a real dude of a lady–always has the same encouragement for her client before she goes on stage–“Tits up.” This has become “a thing” with me and some of my friends, and I’ve started using it with my dance students, even though they haven’t seen the series. It means–stand up straight, lift your head (don’t look at the ground!), and BE PROUD. In all areas of my life, I’m working on this, on not shrinking or shying away or feeling ashamed, but rather being comfortable and confident in my skin and in my work, however much I weigh, however I happen to feel, and regardless of what others think.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Some things simply take time and often more than one trip to the hardware store.

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My Emotional Oil Can (#547)

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It’s six in the evening, and I’ve been working–like, honest to god working–since eight this morning. Y’all, this is manual labor–for the national tour of The Wizard of Oz–unloading boxes, painting sets, whatever they want (that’s what I do). I didn’t even know this was a thing, working backstage for a touring musical. But apparently this show hires three or four dozen locals wherever they go. I got involved because I have a friend who runs the performing arts center here in Alma, where the show will go on next weekend.

As I understand it, a show will often “load in” the day before or even the day of a performance and “load out” the day after. However, the crew and all their equipment came in a full week early in order to touch up sets and run rehearsals for anyone new on staff. So this is my full-time job for the next ten days, including today. Anywhere from 8 to 12 hours a day, with union-mandated breaks for lunch and dinner. I’m currently on my dinner break–in my car–blogging.

I’ve got an hour to finish writing. And eat something. I should probably eat something.

This morning I helped unload boxes full of god knows what from three semis. I guess the show has four semis, but one isn’t here yet. Then I stood around for a good while doing really not a damn thing. As someone who’s used to being productive every minute of every damn day, this was a challenge for me–to wait. I mean, I’m being paid and WANT to be useful, helpful. But I guess that’s part of the deal–you work when someone asks you to work–which someone did eventually ask me to do. “Can you pick up donuts for everyone?” my friend said.

“Gladly,” I said.

Y’all, I don’t know if this donut thing is going to happen every day, but I personally think god has a sick sense of humor–asking a man who’s trying to lose weight to be the donut runner. Can you believe that I picked up 120 donuts and a dozen bagels for everyone here and didn’t eat a single one of them? Instead, I ate a protein bar.

We’ll see how long my resolve lasts.

At lunch I ran home to grab a change of clothes, as I was assigned to the prop mistress, and she said we’d be painting sets. I think that’s the right term, prop mistress. Regardless, I’m this girl’s bitch, and I’ve even been given an official title–prop head. That means that the other three or four prop people will be my bitches–I think. (I’m trying to not let it go to my head.) Anyway, back to the painting. I thought I gave that up when I quit remodeling houses, but no. I’ve spent the entire afternoon working on Dorothy’s house (that goes through the tornado and lands on the Wicked Witch of the East), the scarecrow’s post/cornfield, and–I think–Aunt Em’s chicken coop.

This process, I hate to admit, has been more stressful than I anticipated. As one of the boards on Dorothy’s house was damaged, I had to start with a blank piece of plywood and mix layer of paint with layer of paint until it looked like old, rickety wood. What’s more, it had to match–or blend–with the rest of the house. Of course, I’ve had to do all this to someone else’s specifications, which has been a humbling lesson for me. I’m so used to being in charge, especially in charge of all my creative endeavors. But today I’ve been the student, “the help.” When critiqued, my ego has hated it. When praised, it’s soared.

Criticism and praise. Two sides of the same coin. Either way, same pay.

It’s fascinating being on this side of a musical, all the little details you’d never think of sitting in your seat watching the show, the lights and cords you never see–the hidden doors and hinges. It all matters. As I’ve agonized over every brush stroke, I’ve thought, The better this is, the more magic it creates for the audience. On the back of the Tin Man’s set, there’s a note that says, “Did you remember the oil can?” This clearly has to do with the show, but I started thinking about the Tin Man and how he represents a person’s heart, and how a person’s heart can freeze up or get rusty if they don’t take care of it with their emotional oil can. Personally, I keep thinking, Am I finding reasons to complain, or to be grateful? Am I taking things personally, or giving grace to others and myself? Am I freezing up, or keeping my heart open?

Am I remembering my emotional oil can?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Getting comfortable in your own skin takes time.

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Dents in My Sheetrock (Blog #348)

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Currently I’m in my room, propped up in bed with a bunch of pillows. The overhead light is off, and the lamp beside my bed illuminates my makeshift workstation, another pillow. Across the room are two closet doors, both of which open up to the same closet. In between the doors there’s a small section of sheetrock about eight inches wide, painted brown like the rest of the room. Several days ago while stretching on the floor, I noticed that there were dozens of dents in that small section of the wall, little pea-sized holes, kind of low to the ground. At first perplexed by these dents in my sheetrock, I then remembered how they got there.

When I was a kid, maybe eight, maybe nine, I had a dart board. The board itself was made of plastic and was rather like a hairbrush–it had these round pegs that stuck out in order to “catch” the darts, which were also made of plastic but had a round, metal tip on the end of each one. As I recall, I would hang the board on one of my closet doorknobs, scoot back as far as I could, and throw the darts toward the board. Well, I guess I wasn’t a very good marksman, as evidenced by the pockmarks still in the sheetrock.

Noticing the dents in the wall several days ago, the perfectionist in me wanted to fill them in with spackle and repaint the wall. But then I thought better to leave them, since covering them up would be a lot of work and they remind me of my childhood. What’s more, they remind me that I once played darts not be perfect and hit the mark every time, but simply to play. They remind me that if for only a brief time in my life, it was enough to try.

Recently I read that when you’re working on personal growth, a lot of changes take place when you’re unconscious or dreaming. You do whatever you do during the day–going to therapy, meditating, or reading self-help books–then everything gets processed or “downloaded” at night. According to this theory, positive and fundamental changes in one’s character or personality happen often slowly and over time, but they do happen. Because they happen while one is sleeping, these changes, when manifested during the day as different attitudes, moods, and behaviors, can come as a surprise. Like maybe after years of accepting someone’s inappropriate behavior, one day you find yourself looking them squarely in the eyes and saying, “Get your hands off my ass.” Later you think, “I don’t know what got into me. I NEVER would have done that before.”

Of course, that’s exactly the point. The old you wouldn’t have.

This idea has been on my mind lately because of online criticism. I’ll explain. When I owned the dance studio I used to upload class-review videos to YouTube. This went on for a number of years, and even as my technique improved, I left all the old videos (with my less-than-perfect technique) online. Looking back at them, I sometimes cringe, either at the way I looked or the way I danced. I think, I should have been better than that. Still, I leave the videos because, much like the dents in my sheetrock, they tell a story. Watching them, I see someone who was doing the best he could at the time. Also, I see how much progress that person has made.

Sometimes people bitch.

Added together, the videos on my YouTube channel have been watched over five-and-a-half million times. Occasionally, maybe once every week or two, I get a notification that someone has commented on one of them. Usually, these comments are positive. Someone will say, “Thanks” or “This really helped me out.” But sometimes people bitch. Last week someone said, “You should NEVER teach dance in flip-flops. This isn’t serious.” Just today someone else said, “After you break a move down, DO IT FULL SPEED!”

Criticisms like these used to wear me out. I’d lose sleep over them, call my dance mentor over them. Am I doing something wrong? Should I quit teaching dance because a stranger in Ohio doesn’t like my haircut? Thankfully, at some point, I quit getting bent out of shape by unsolicited bullshit. I’d check the profiles of people who were criticizing my work, and they almost never had their work online, so I started thinking, If you know so much, you do it. Still, afraid of upsetting someone, I never would engage.

But lately I’ve noticed that I’m more inclined to reply to negative feedback. I’m not interested in starting an argument with a total stranger, since we were all on Facebook during the last political season and know how well that typically turns out. And I’m not saying I reply to every ignorant-ass comment that comes my way. But I’m tired of not standing up for myself when someone, for no good reason, takes a swing at me. So in response to the comment about how I should never dance in flip-flops (which I “mostly” agree with, actually), I said, “We all get to make our own choices.” In response to the comment about how I should demonstrate a move at full speed, I said, “Uh–please say please.”

I mean, god, at what point did it become okay to deem yourself the director of someone else’s life just because you own a keyboard?

This is the fundamental character change I mentioned earlier, the one that can happen when you’re not noticing. Four years ago I never would have stood up to a cyberbully or said, “That’s enough, asshole.”

Recently I’ve been writing about the fact (fact) that I’ve been sick. Earlier today a friend said they thought I was looking for sympathy. I’m not exactly sure where this comment came from, but it bothers me. As I’ve said before, I don’t like being sick. I hate it. I’m like, so over it. But let me be crystal clear–I’m not asking for anyone’s pity or sympathy. (Kindness, maybe.) Life is hard for all of us, and I don’t believe that it’s “unfair” for me specifically or that I’ve gotten a raw deal on this planet just because I have chronic sinus problems. In sharing my experiences, my intent isn’t to whine. Rather, even when I’m at my lowest, I think I work my ass off to provide hope, inspiration, and support not only for myself, but also for others.

Despite all my challenges in life, I think I do a pretty good job of refusing to believe that the world is anything but a good place to live.

In reply to the comment about my looking for sympathy, I simply said, “No, I’m honestly sharing my story.” (And I’m not holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to read it, by the way.) As if you need my permission, feel free to disagree. I get that not everyone will interpret my motivations and my story as I do. That’s okay. I think any person who “puts themselves out there” has to ultimately make peace with the responses they get from others, even when those response aren’t asked for, even when those responses are negative, even when those responses seem to be aimed like darts.

Honestly, if I’m looking for anything on this blog or in my life, it’s understanding. My guess is that’s all any of us really want–to be understood. (And maybe to win the lottery would be nice.) But one thing I’d like to be explicit about–the one and only person I want and need to understand me–is me. If anything good and positive and lasting has come out of this writing project, this is it. It’s taught me to love, accept, and support myself in a way I never did before it started. Because of this small miracle, I’m not looking for understanding–or anything–from anyone else. If I have it, great–thank you. We all like praise and crave support. But what I’m saying is that if I woke up tomorrow and a thousand people on YouTube said my dancing was shit, I might have a bad day, but I wouldn’t stop dancing. If everyone stopped reading my blog–if my statistics dropped to zero–I wouldn’t stop writing.

Tonight I noticed a total-word-count feature on my blog for the first time. Since starting the blog almost a year ago, I’ve apparently written over 350,000 words, an average of over 1,000 a day. When I consider these words and when I consider the videos I’ve uploaded to YouTube, I know they aren’t all “perfect.” (If you’d like to find something wrong with any of them, it’ll be easy enough for you to do.) But perhaps these efforts are much like the dents in my sheetrock on the other side of the room, less about being perfect and more about how I’m simply trying to figure things out, just like everyone else is.

Doing what you love is never about gaining acceptance from others.

In my experience, when you put yourself out there and play the game, you have a few hits and just as many misses. And God knows you don’t make everyone else happy. But this is no reason to quit or be discouraged, since doing what you love and feel called to do is never–never–about gaining acceptance from others. Indeed, if the entire world rejected you because of the “dents” they perceived in your life, and yet you utterly loved and accepted yourself, what difference would the entire world make?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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If you want to become who you were meant to be, it's absolutely necessary to shed your old skin. Sure it might be sad to say goodbye--to your old phone, to your old beliefs, anything that helped get you this far--but you've got to let go in order to make room for something new.

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