The Big One-Way Trip

Posted on December 3, 2025 by admin

Occasionally, I’ll think about how weird time is. One can move in any direction in space yet can only move forward in time. In some cases, that’s wonderful. Spending enough time to learn almost any activity will result in huge improvements over the years, and it’s nice that that progress can’t be easily undone by randomly going backward in time. However, being stuck moving constantly forward in time also has major downsides. I’ll talk about some of those in the remainder of this post.

As a kid, I remember thinking about how a moment in time, once it’s passed, is gone forever. That no two days are exactly the same and that a day that’s already happened will never come back again. I don’t know what exactly got me thinking about that since that was long before I read, watched, or otherwise consumed any major work about humanity’s one-way journey through time. As I’ve looked into more such works and had more experiences I wish would repeat, it’s been increasingly more on my mind. A particularly poignant and painful reminder is this clip from Fred Penner’s Place in which Ernie Coombs sings about every day passing away shortly after his wife died. I have no idea how he got through that song as well as he did in the midst of what must have been an unbelievably painful experience.

There is also the loss of particular skills over time. I’ve lost track of how many skills are either super rusty or nonexistent at this point simply because I don’t practice them anymore. Magic is an excellent example. Since I haven’t practiced magic in over a year, I can remember almost none of the tricks I learned. It’s been interesting to go from easily doing a variety of different tricks to not recalling how to do most of them. Even with skills I’ve kept up with, I’ve noticed changes in my abilities based on how much I practice, how well I practice, and how my body has changed over time. Everyone seems to lose some ability as they age and find it incredibly hard to do certain activities that they found much easier when they were younger. It’s disconcerting to see my skills at juggling decrease in some ways now compared to how they were at my peak. I hope that regular practice at least keeps them from declining any further.

I wish it were possible to move through time as easily and freely as I can move through space. I’d love to go back to places, events, buildings, areas, and activities that are now gone or not worth me going there anymore. Whether they’ve been destroyed or are far worse than they once were, I miss being able to make new memories there. I’m so glad for the memories, pictures, videos, and other mementos I have of those wonderful lost times with some wonderful animals and humans. Most of all, I’d love to revisit the precious moments I had with my dog Sawyer, a few other animal family members, and my grandparents. I miss all of them dearly and sometimes find myself physically aching over the fact that I won’t get to visit them again for the rest of my Earthly life. I so wish we’d had more time together, that I’d been more present with the time we had, and that I could check in with them once in a while. I hope to learn from my past mistakes in this area by making good use of my remaining time.

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The Value of Little Projects

Posted on November 26, 2025 by admin

Life can easily become overly complicated, big, and scary. Whenever that happens, I find myself focusing in on much smaller matters. That’s why I’d like to talk a bit about the value of little projects in this post.

I’m talking about low-stakes creative projects that I find fun, useful, and satisfying. They may pertain to something I already enjoy, or they could be something new to me. Unlike anything involving work, school, or some other obligation, I decide what projects I undertake, to what extent, in what ways, and for how long. That prevents me from feeling pressured to do them in a certain way or for anybody else’s approval; whatever happens, I’ve only got to please myself with the results, and that is tremendously freeing.

These are especially beneficial when I feel stressed about some bigger issues in my life and need something easy and lighthearted to reduce stress and give me a small victory. That seems to be when I take on more such projects than usual. Sometimes they occupy more of my time than the bigger issues hanging over my head as the smaller projects are much easier to handle. That feeling of accomplishment can lift my spirits and remind me what I can do enough to get me through the larger, more stressful issues at hand. Even doing the laundry can check all those boxes. Laundry is a particularly good example since the washer and dryer do most of the work, it’s easy and fairly quick, there’s less of a mess after doing laundry, and I then have more clean clothes to wear when the laundry is done.

I felt inspired to write about this after starting my current project of removing rust from parts of my giraffe unicycle and a few other things. Much to my delight, the Evapo-Rust I tried worked wonderfully! Beyond that, it’s been fun to look into this stuff that I had hardly any interest in until the last few weeks. While there’s still much more that I don’t know about it, I now know far more than I did before I started this journey.

Another example is the cardboard shirt folder I made last December based on this YouTube tutorial. I had a lot of fun making it, about as much fun using it, and love seeing the end results, which are much better than I can get when I fold shirts by hand. It was a nice little project to work on while still feeling upset over my grandmother’s death a few months earlier.

I’ve taken on lots of small projects since my dog Sawyer died. A recent realization is that the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly routines I’ve developed to keep Sawyer’s memory alive are small projects of sorts. I always feel better after completing them, I often look forward to doing them again, and my doing them has little to no impact on anybody else. Also, and along with the other small projects I’ve undertaken, they help ground me, give me something nice to focus on in a world that seems to relish obsessing over negativity, and make my life better overall. I love them and look forward to continuing them.

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The Importance of Quitting

Posted on November 19, 2025 by admin

Two concepts often talked about in the business world are continuous improvement and creative destruction. Continuous improvement looks to see where progress can be made with existing systems, routines, services, products, and so on. There has been a lot of work at making things increasingly more efficient over time. In contrast, creative destruction is about pivoting from one thing to another as needed. This could look like making a different product that seems to now be in demand even if doing so requires one to quit making an existing product that’s selling well. Someone I know once described continuous improvement as constantly working to make a better widget while creative destruction is knowing when to quit making a better widget and start making the doohickey. While I do find value in continuous improvement, creative destruction fits in better with this post, which is about the importance of quitting.

Some folks say that quitting is one of the worst, if not the worst, things you can do. They have tons of motivational pep talks about never giving up, continuing to move forward, and persevering through anything and everything. Nope. By focusing so much on diving headfirst through obstacles, they neglect to see if there are easier ways to get around those obstacles, or if there are other ways to get where they want to go that have few, if any, obstacles. Sometimes, they might even choose a needlessly difficult path so they can satisfy their pride by bragging about intentionally going the hard way.

Beyond that, there are countless stories of people having great success and even totally transforming their lives after they quit one or more things. So many have improved their health by quitting eating junk food and living sedentary lives. Others have made things much better for themselves and their loved ones by quitting one or more toxic relationships. Rather than figure out how to manage their counterproductive habits, they quit them and then prospered. The sooner you quit something bad and start doing something good, the better. Habits can take a long time to change, so the longer you go down the wrong path, the longer it’ll take and the harder it’ll be to get onto a good path.

Some of the things I’ve quit include suppressing my emotions, letting others walk all over me (mostly), bad jobs, toxic relationships, and letting the negative opinions of others stop me from doing what’s good for me. That last point is easiest to see with my healing journey after my dog Sawyer’s death. Some might think I’m wallowing in misery or find it insane that I still talk and sing to Sawyer by his grave. They can think that all they want. I know that those and other activities and routines I’ve developed since losing Sawyer have reduced the overwhelming pain that was drowning me for over a year to nearly nothing. What I’m doing is helping me heal, and I’ll keep it up regardless of whether or not anyone else understands or approves of it.

Over time, I’ve gotten better at sticking with the things that work well for me and quitting those that work badly. In many cases, I’ve benefited more from stopping quitting something bad than starting two or more good things. Getting rid of that which does more harm than good makes room for more of the good in relationships, business, and life overall. That’s why I’m glad to have quit so much in my life and why I’ll never quit quitting.

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Tribute to Pal

Posted on November 12, 2025 by admin

When I first got you over a decade ago

I couldn’t have guessed how close we’d grow

Though some see you as just a car

I see you for what you truly are

You are a bridge to fine folks and things that I’ve found

Many of them, sadly, no longer around

Remembering how you drove around Sawyer and me

Always cheers me up and fills me with glee

We’ve journeyed together on countless road trips

And you’ve kept in confidence the words from my lips

As well as the moisture from my many tears

That fell due to so many pains through the years

I named you Pal because you’ve always been one

And you’ll continue until our days together are done

It’s always so hard to drive another car

When you’re in the shop, so near and yet so far

Fixing you up always reminds me of how

I’ve lost oh so much over many years now

There are so many folks I’ve lost whom I miss

And I don’t want to add your name to that list

I’ll do what I can to keep you around

With the help of the best car mechanics in town

And if someday we must finally part

I’ll always hold onto you deep in my heart

I hope this poem will let everyone see

How special and valuable you are to me

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Go Easy on Easygoing Folks

Posted on November 5, 2025 by admin

There is a disturbing tendency to treat laidback folks badly because they won’t make a scene or act upset. It’s common to pressure them to give up something they want, always put others before themselves, or make last minute changes to plans they made long ago. Here’s my take on this.

While some folks who appear easygoing truly are, other times it’s one or more trauma responses in play. In my case, the fawn trauma response has often prevented me from sticking up for myself, doing what’s best for me, and putting my needs above the wants of others. As a result, I’ve agreed to many things that I didn’t want to do, backed away from many things that I wanted to do, said things that others wanted to hear, and avoided saying things that I wanted to say. All out of fear of what others might do to me if I sufficiently displeased them (a fear that was based on what many DID do to me as a little kid when I said or did something they disliked).

Another issue this caused me was being made to support others emotionally when my own emotions were a mess. In some cases, this was done by people who only ever reached out to me when they wanted me to support them. When things were going well for them, I never heard from them. Yet whenever they wanted a shoulder to cry on or an ear to talk off, they contacted me. Of course, when I needed support, they were either absent or just talked more about their own problems instead of hearing me out and giving me the same kind of support I had so often given them. It’s no exaggeration to say that drowning in misery and still being expected to rescue someone else, especially when that person was in a lifeboat while I was barely treading water, were some of the worst experiences I’ve ever had. It blows my mind that anybody can be that selfish.

Despite the personal development progress I’ve made, I still find it difficult to deal with those who think that my seemingly easygoing personality makes it ok to always put me last. On the rare occasions in which I have strongly stood up for myself, I’ve received one of two responses. The more common response is for one or more folks to double down and try (often successfully) to intimidate me into backing down and going along with whatever they want. The much rarer and much nicer response is for everyone to back off and respect my wishes. Fortunately, since I put a bully in his place last month, I have far less fear of standing up for myself. Even if that doesn’t work out, I am much quicker at this point to avoid those who try to push me around and won’t take no for an answer.

Sometimes it helps to remember my dog Sawyer’s approach to boundaries. Similarly to other dogs, Sawyer was quite docile and friendly in everyday life while still letting everyone know where he drew the line. He primarily set his boundaries through light growls or moving away from an activity he didn’t want to do and only escalated if those approaches failed. Among the many wonderful things Sawyer taught me, being kind while still setting and maintaining boundaries is one of his most valuable lessons.

Still, I wish that everyone would go easy on easygoing folks. It wears me out to push back against those who think my concerns, interests, and plans don’t matter. Given how many people have done this to me and continue to do so unless I stick up for myself, that’s one of the biggest reasons that I prefer being by myself more often than not. Even if nobody else does, I will respect my own wishes, give myself what I need, and avoid treating myself as disposable. To end this, I’ll say thank you to anyone who is kind to the easygoing folks they know. For anyone who pushes them around and acts as if their interests don’t matter, do better.

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Recent Successes and Struggles

Posted on October 29, 2025 by admin

October has been a weird month for me. Among other things, I dealt with some more car trouble. Oddly, while that would normally stress me out more than anything else, it was actually the least stressful thing for me this month. The remainder of this post will talk a bit about the car issues and will mostly focus on other, more stressful things October has brought me thus far.

I got my car’s interior cleaned, disinfected, and detailed last month after a dead mouse created a huge mess on the front passenger floor. Earlier this month, I noticed a bad smell when I drove, especially on hot days. That turned out to be algae blocking the ac drain hose. Shortly after getting that sorted out, I had the thermostat, coolant, hoses, and a few other things replaced. Fortunately, all of that was easily affordable for me, and my car runs well now. While it was stressful to go through all that, I’m glad it all got worked out fairly quickly and for far less money than I feared it would cost.

The most stressful part of October for me was standing up to a bully early last week. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have the option to not be around each other. I hope that will happen someday, and sooner rather than later. Fortunately, despite fears that standing up to him would end badly, it actually turned out wonderfully. To my surprise, the exchanges we had stayed at the level of words without escalating to violence, I had the support of everybody else around us, we’ve hardly interacted at all since that day, and he’s stopped bullying me! That has never happened to me before, so I feel relieved and excited that it went as well as it did, both that day and all the days since.

However, I’ve been wondering if the increased confidence I’ve had since standing up for myself will turn out badly. While those with true confidence don’t need to put others down to make themselves feel better by comparison, pride can easily masquerade as confidence and result in those with lots of pride behaving badly. To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, I hope that my newfound ability to stand up to bullies won’t turn me into a bully.

Putting that bully in his place and some kind words from a dear friend have got me rethinking a few of my ideas, some of which I talked about in this post last year. I don’t believe as much as I used to in the approach of having no enemies by turning them all into friends. While that is certainly ideal, and I tip my hat to anyone who can do it, it either doesn’t always seem possible or at least desirable to me. Hence my current focus on doing my best to communicate well and be kind while still setting and maintaining boundaries. Since I’ve gotten better at working through my emotions, I suppose I could work through the guilt of standing up for myself and not using the top communication tools I know all the time, especially when a boundary would work better.

I hope that this recent increase in courage and confidence won’t turn into pride, egotism, and bullying on my part. The fact that I even have that concern in the first place makes me think that it won’t. That’d be wonderful as I’ve struggled my whole life with either walking all over others or letting them walk all over me rather than finding that higher middle way of having boundaries without being a jerk. Since I no longer have my dog Sawyer to help me recover from the tough times and remind me of the importance of love in a world in which humans have steadily gotten meaner, the fear of becoming like those I can’t stand has grown larger since his death. I hope that the animal and human loved ones I still have will celebrate my successes, gently get me back on track if I lose my way, and help me become all I can be.

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Concern vs Control

Posted on October 22, 2025 by admin

Former hostage negotiator Chris Voss says to never accept advice from somebody you wouldn’t trade places with. That has made me reconsider who to accept advice from and also stop paying attention to what most other folks want me to do, whether I know them in person or have heard their advice through various self-help platforms. There are countless people trying to fix the whole world when they can’t even fix their own lives. They have huge personal problems that they can’t seem to solve and yet they think they have the solutions to nearly every problem under the sun. Along with this, they spend so much time talking about their ideas and so little time actually doing anything with them. Most of what they do is to ask or demand that those in positions of power solve problems rather than seeing what they can directly do to help themselves, those close to them, and maybe even those far away from them. As a result, nothing gets done, their frustration mounts, and they have a lot less energy and other resources to spend fixing the problems in their own backyards.

The odd thing is that if more people would focus on the things in their own lives that they can actually control, they would quickly see improvements for themselves and their families. Over time, the improvements would spread throughout their neighborhoods, cities, countries, and, ultimately, the world. By ignoring what they can control and focusing so much on what they can’t control, their lives either stay the same or, more likely, get worse. Just as planting a garden and letting butterflies arrive on their own is much more likely to succeed than chasing butterflies, this is a case of getting what you want by going for something else and not getting it if you go straight at it.

Realizing how much trouble I have with keeping my own life in check has made me back way away from giving advice. Some exceptions to this are when someone asks me for help with something I know well (such as juggling and related activities or personal struggles I’ve overcome) and sharing what’s worked well for me through this blog. Outside of that, I almost never give advice at this point. Even when I do, I’ll wait until someone asks me rather than give my unsolicited opinions, and I’ll always add a caveat when I’m unsure or have trouble explaining what’s helped me.

Instead of giving advice, I’m much more focused now on using practical tools to improve my own life. Whether I’ve found a particular tool myself or learned it from someone else, the stuff that’s worked has really worked. At least when I’ve applied it to problems that are within my control. I’d rather solve one small problem this way than fail to solve ten big problems that are beyond my control. So far, so good.

This is exactly what Stephen Covey talks about in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with regard to focusing on one’s circles of influence and control rather than spending all of one’s time in the circle of concern. Focusing just on what I can control has greatly reduced my stress, allowed me to recover almost completely from my dog Sawyer’s death, and kept me out of a lot of trouble by preventing me from getting mixed up with individuals or organizations that claim to want to do good things while their actions actually end up making the world worse. Deep down, I wish everyone would do this so that we could all benefit from the much better world that would follow and stop being hurt by the awful things that happen when people try to influence things over which they have no control. Since I have no control over that, though, I’ve given up trying to make it happen. As long as things keep moving in good directions for me and those close to me, I’ll feel satisfied.

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Stress During Peaceful Times

Posted on October 15, 2025 by admin

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed something odd about emotional work. Sometimes when I focus on letting go of negative emotions, I have a hard time doing so. In other situations when I’m not focused on emotions, negative emotions will come up without any effort. They can come up in stressful situations, naturally, and they also tend to come up during peaceful times, such as weekends or on trips. Here’s my take on this.

I used to hate this every time it happened as I didn’t want any negativity to ruin the peaceful times. Most of the time now, I see it as signs that I’m feeling good enough to let negativity come up without overwhelming me and use it as an opportunity to release pain so that it no longer haunts me in good or bad times. That lets me enjoy the good times even more when more of the bad is gone, makes the remaining bad easier to handle when it comes up elsewhere in life, and makes the bad less likely to linger indefinitely.

I got pretty comfortable doing this in sensory deprivation floats several years ago. With all the craziness that I’ve experienced since then and how little free time I have at this point, it’s gotten harder to use peaceful times to work through painful emotions. I’d rather let those times just be peaceful since I have so much stress on a regular basis. That makes it extra challenging to let pain come up when I’m trying to relax and enjoy some downtime. I still do my best to do so, though, as it allows me to more easily enjoy lovely moments even after something upsetting happens. For example, when I felt extremely upset at the Magic Kingdom earlier this year, I was able to welcome the emotions effectively enough to feel much better and enjoy the remainder of my trip there that afternoon. Crying, having ice cream, meeting several of the characters, and experiencing more fun attractions turned what could easily have been a disastrous trip into one that was still wonderful despite the upsets.

As you’ll know if you’ve read most of my other posts over the last 3 and a half years, this is what has allowed me to enjoy life even after my dog Sawyer and other loved ones have died. In contrast, trying to force myself to smile, act as if I feel good, and everything else that ignores the pain has only ever made me feel worse. It saddens me that pretending the pain isn’t there has become the norm, whether for oneself or with others. Just as in Inside Out how Sadness successfully comforted Bing Bong by listening and responding compassionately to his pain while Joy failed by trying to make him ignore his pain, so, too, in real life does healing come from feeling.

The progress I’ve made lately has given me hope that it’ll become easier to let negative feelings come up in good times. My general mood has been much higher than usual, I’ve gotten over upsetting things much more quickly, and I’m better able to completely forget about work when I’m at home later in the day. I sincerely hope that this is the start of my new normal rather than just a temporary increase in peace. Time will tell, and practice will make it more likely to become permanent.

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Reflections on My Healing Journey

Posted on October 8, 2025 by admin

I started my self-improvement journey in 2017. That journey went to the next level in late 2020 when I started practicing the letting go technique that I first learned from reading Letting Go by David Hawkins in 2019. While 2020 and most of the years since have been incredibly painful, I have healed enough to reflect on how it’s gone. Let’s explore some of those reflections together in this post.

Over time, my journey has gone from self-improvement to healing. There is a lot that I added to my life in the first few years of taking this stuff seriously. In contrast, the last 5 years have been more focused on removing things, mostly various kinds of emotional pain from different points in my life. By far the greatest pain I’ve dealt with in my life is the death of my dog Sawyer in April 2022. Nothing has made me cry longer and harder or depleted me so much. Thanks to using the letting go technique every day since that dreadful day, most of the pain around Sawyer’s death is now gone, thank goodness. As such, I often forget how bad that pain was until I look back at things I wrote or reflect on things I did to cope with the pain while it was still overwhelming. Just as David Hawkins wrote in Letting Go, once all the emotions around a particular situation have been surrendered, the memory of that situation and all its pain tends to go away. It’s been incredible to verify that for myself.

The fact that I’ve released so much of the pain of Sawyer’s death allows me to focus more on other kinds of pain, especially deep-seated pain from early in my life that has never been healed. In a way, the pain around Sawyer was easier to heal than the early life pain. The Sawyer pain was much fresher, easier to experience, and so overwhelming that I had to work through it. In contrast, the early life pain has been suppressed for so many decades at this point that it’s extremely difficult to reach, let alone work through, especially since I’m so used to it by now. Additionally, all of the healing work I’ve done has always been easier when I can focus more on the feelings than whatever thoughts arise out of those feelings, and I have decades’ worth of thoughts built up around the early life pain. That’s another major obstacle to healing that particular pain.

There are several things helping me with the deeper pain. One of them is focusing on just one emotion at a time. With this particular pain, I often feel a combination of fear, anger, sadness, disappointment, shock, and several other emotions. That can be quite overwhelming. By tuning in to whichever emotion is strongest at any given moment, I can let that run its course more easily than if I try to release them all at the same time. That also prevents an onslaught of thoughts that distract me and take me away from the healing work.

Another huge help is remembering the successful healing work I’ve already done. A big pain that I healed toward the end of 2020 is especially useful for that. I got quite creative with how I addressed that and went at it from all kinds of different angles. The final piece of that puzzle was realizing that I didn’t have to try to bear anyone else’s pain in that situation. Once I let go of that expectation, the deed was done and I was free. I have a feeling that a similar approach will also help me work through this lifelong pain.

Working through the pain from 2020 felt like walking a long road, and healing the pain from Sawyer’s death was like swimming a long way to shore after a shipwreck. Working through the early life pain is more like chipping away at a mountain. Given enough time, I’ll have worked through it all. The only question is, will I have enough time over the remainder of my Earthly life to make that happen? The 2020 pain was easier and faster to work through since I was still floating in sensory deprivation tanks at least once a week, and I made working through the Sawyer pain my main focus for almost two years because I had almost no obligations during that time. Now that my day job takes up so much of my time during the week and my hobbies and interests take up so much of my time on weekends, I often wonder if that leaves me enough time for the major healing work that has gotten me through some of the darkest times in my life. My healing progress seems minimal at this point and sometimes I even seem to regress. That’s always disheartening.

My focus as of late has been to let go as best as I can, wherever I can. While I prefer to let go while sitting or lying down with my eyes closed for 15 minutes at a time, I’ll take whatever I can get at this point. That might mean lying down to let go for just a few minutes, feeling through some emotions while driving, or letting old issues run out in the background while engaged in another activity. Slow progress is better than no progress and far better than regression. I hope that continuing to do this while also getting in some longer letting go sessions when I can will take me back to the wonderful place of peace that I glimpsed years ago and finally let me live there for the rest of my days.

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Let Me Not Explain

Posted on October 1, 2025 by admin

Explanations are a weird thing for me. In some cases, I enjoy talking at length about particular things. In other cases, however, I hate doing that very thing. Here’s what I mean.

I can talk all day about things I enjoy. Juggling is a perfect example. At the juggling meetings I host twice a month, I often get to introduce people to or remind them of different patterns, techniques, variations, and so on. Although plenty of people know more about juggling than I do, I’ve absorbed quite a bit in the twenty years that I’ve been juggling, so I have a lot to share with others. I love explaining different things in juggling and seeing the lightbulb turn on over someone’s head when they’ve learned something new or thought about something in a different way.

The kind of explanations I hate giving are about my personal issues. There are multiple reasons for that. One of them is how I fear the other person will respond. When I talk about my concerns, I don’t want judgment, someone else’s opinions or experiences, criticism, condemnation, etc. I just want love, understanding, and compassion. Unfortunately, I so often receive that which I hate and so seldom receive that which I want. Even when I say what I want, others still often ignore my wishes and say whatever they want instead. If that’s going to happen more often than not, I’d rather just stay quiet and keep my concerns to myself.

The other kind of explanations I hate giving are ones where there is nothing to explain. Sometimes nothing will be happening and yet someone will still ask, “What?” (or asks that after I sigh or make any small movement) instead of just sharing a quiet moment with me. I then feel pressured to give an explanation for something that doesn’t need explaining. Just the act of striving to think of how to explain the inexplicable tires me out and attempting to do so is even more draining. That leads nicely into my next point.

Talking is generally tiring to me, and it’s occasionally downright exhausting. That’s even more the case when I’m explaining at length something that I don’t even want to talk about. When that happens, it seems that the more tired I feel, the more others want me to keep talking. Or they’ll take over at some point and talk my ear off. Listening to lengthy explanations is exhausting for me as well, especially when I’m trying to understand all the disjointed, random points and subject changes somebody is making while talking almost faster than I can hear. How does anyone enjoy an exchange in which the other person contributes little to nothing and doesn’t care about what the person talking has to say?

On far too many occasions, I’ve spent an enormous number of words (either typed out or spoken) explaining a perspective or tendency of mine only for the other person to instantly dismiss it as soon as I’m finished. That always hurts and makes it seem as if they care so much about making sure I know what they think that they won’t take even a moment to think about what I’ve said before waving it away. The worst time this happens is whenever someone gets on a soapbox about my dog Sawyer’s death. It’s exhausting to hear and respond to questions or demands about getting another animal friend, explaining why I haven’t and don’t plan to, what others think I “should” do to heal from his death, etc. I always appreciate those who don’t do any of that and who’d rather hear stories about Sawyer, see pictures of him, and other similarly wholesome things.

On many other occasions, I’ll explain why I will or won’t do something to somebody and they then try to find a foothold to get what they want. For example, I can say I’m not going to an event because I have a gig that day and they ask what time my gig is, as if I can go either before or after the gig. Similarly, I can say I’m not going somewhere because I have work that day and, after finding out what time I get off work, they’ll say I can just go after work. In any kind of situation like that, I’d rather they just accept my “no” without trying to pressure me into changing my mind or demanding an explanation. “No is a complete sentence” is one of my favorite boundary statements, and I’m enjoying getting better at saying no without adding anything onto it.

Something else I’ve realized is that explanations are extremely close to defensiveness. When someone challenges me to explain something, especially if they do so in an intense way, I feel a combination of fear and anger come up. As if what I’ve said or done isn’t good enough and I need their permission or forgiveness for it. Most defensiveness I’ve seen and experienced seems to come from insecurity. When I feel secure about something, I feel no need to defend it; it can stand on its own with no support from me. Additionally, the more I explain or defend something, the more others seem to attack it. If I simply let it be without trying to shape another person’s opinion of it, they’re far more likely to leave it alone. I always appreciate whenever that happens.

No more needless explanations from me. If somebody lacks the commitment to understand what I’m saying (or worse, is committed to *misunderstanding* what I’m saying), then I won’t waste my breath explaining anything to them. Similarly, if I don’t want to explain something or there is nothing to explain, I won’t. I’ll continue describing my inner world on this blog, and anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of what makes me tick can easily obtain that by reading the many posts I’ve put up here over the years. In conversation, however, I’ll continue explaining only that which I wish to explain and keep using the various tools I’ve found helpful for doing so (such as saying, “Because,” “No,” “Nope,” “I’d rather not say,” and “I don’t like talking about ______,” asking questions about the other person to take the focus off of me, and simply staying quiet). Remembering that it’s ok for me to set and maintain boundaries in conversation, giving myself permission to practice it, and finding ways to make it happen have already made me feel more at ease around others. I’m sure I’ll feel even more comfortable as I continue finding and using my voice. Or not using it as the case may be.

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