Day 29: Something most people misunderstand about you.
I AM NOT WRITING ABOUT YOU.
This is the one thing that people misunderstand. I am not writing about you.
I won’t lie and say I have never written about people in my life; Hell, just yesterday I wrote something very personal. I do sometimes write about people and my life. But for the most part, I am not writing about any particular person or thing. Even things that reference my life are usually a series of events, not one particular event and generally high level. Most of the things I write are based on conversations with my close friends (mainly Drew & Dawna) and my own observations of the world around me. I spend a lot of time assessing my surroundings. So that blog about relationships may have been about a couple on the bus, or a composite of the marriages of every single person that I know. That thing about looking into one’s self may be about a friend’s career dissatisfaction (or my own). That random blog about random nothing that seems to come together may just be a bunch of things I was thinking of that turned into mush.
But I have always had people tell me I am writing about them. I am writing about a certain moment, a certain thing and normally they are wrong. Most of the time they are wrong. I don’t like to write about the people in my life very often. I wrote a post last year that EVERY SINGLE PERSON THAT I KNOW assumed was about their relationship. EVERYONE. Actually, it was about a picture I saw on Facebook of a guy I know and his girlfriend with that quote posted as the caption. The photo was sweet and it inspired me. I know people who think everything I’ve written is about them. Truthfully…none of it was about them.
This actually extends further than my writing. People will read the Quotes of the Day or lyrics from my Song of the Day on my Twitter account or my Facebook status and assume it some thinly veiled comment about where I am in my life. In reality, I read something cool and I like the song. I often wonder if social networking has made people vain, needing the validation that people are talking about them.
Every time someone tells me that they think something I write is some thinly veiled message to them, I just want to ask them why they feel that way. Honestly, I’ll start writing a blog post about something and later it will turn into something else based on a song I hear or something I see out the window, or Jeopardy. Truthfully, these people spend more time reading about what I’m supposedly thinking about them than actually thinking about them. It’s like they NEED me to be thinking of them, writing about them. They NEED to know that they are important to my life. Honestly, the more important you are to me, the less you are mentioned in my writing, save for Drew, who is of course part of the team. I’m not a thinly veiled statement sort of person. I’m more of a “long-winded, analytical, over-thinking,” sort of person. If I want you to know something, I will reach out and tell you, get nervous and babble for half an hour, or write it all down on paper and read it to you and it will be five pages long. I wouldn’t waste my time with subtle subtext, because truthfully, I’m not subtle about anything.
I have asked Drew a million times how people see so much of themselves in my useless ramblings. He says I should tell people that if they see themselves in every word I write, then chances are that’s how they feel. If you are taking my useless ramblings and seeing yourself, then chances are you need the lesson, prompting me to laugh at the idea of anyone taking my advice on anything. But he’s right; if you are reading something and you see yourself in it, then chances are it’s what you were thinking all along. Chances are that you see yourself in those words because those are the words that you need to hear to get where you want to be. If you genuinely believe that every little thing that I put out to the universe is about you, then maybe you should question why you are analyzing it all. Maybe that’s what you want, someone to be thinking of you, most likely because you are thinking about them. Drew’s logic is that if you think everything written by one person is about you, then it’s because you are thinking about them so much that you’ll read into things that aren’t there in the hopes that perhaps you are on their mind, which means you are super vain, or you’re projecting your feelings of devotion on to them. Either way, he’s right. If you consistently find something you can apply to your life here, then please apply those lessons and maybe you’ll be a little happier.
***Disclaimer. I am an idiot with a blog. Please do not take anything I say as a helpful life lesson. If you do for whatever reason decide that I actually known what I am talking about and take anything I say here and apply it to your life, then I hope it works out better for you. I would honestly apply more knowledge from Jerry Springer’s final thought than anything I say as wisdom.***
The Misadventures of MHC 