I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stared at myself in the mirror and wondered if the person staring back at me was really me.
I don’t mean because I had some weird face deformity and didn’t recognise my reflection, more that I wasn’t sure who I was on the inside, and who I was trying to be.
Most of us go through life trying to figure it out. It’s a constant journey and one we often wonder if we’ll ever truly ‘succeed’ in. We want to know what our purpose is, where we’re going to end up, whether we’ll ever get to honeymoon on an exotic island, what job we’ll end up doing and what our family will look like.
And honesty, we don’t have an idea if anything we imagine will be accurate.
I first started this website (or one incarnation of it) in 2011, when I was living in Italy. It looked nothing like it does now and offered my readers (few though they were) a completely different version of me to the one you see on these pages today.
Undeniably, I have changed as a person since then, but equally I’ve become more comfortable and confident showing myself more to the world.
Want to know what’s weirdly awesome?
The more of myself I show, the more vulnerable I become, the more I find people who resonate with me, people who tell me how great it is to find a kindred spirit, people who tell me they love my message and want to work with me people who’ve been searching for someone to put in to words what they were feeling but didn’t know how to express.
These aren’t just new people either, I’ve had old friends and people who I haven’t spoken to in years find me again and tell me how much my message has touched them. In my being completely honest, I’ve opened up a conversation between us, about the ‘real’ us, that never would have happened without it.
Trust that there are others as weird as you out there. You’re not alone. We are all weird in our own way, only most of us are too afraid to show our weird to the world. When you do, you’ll be surprised at who thinks you’re awesome.
Photo credit: Andrei Porfireanu
I couldn’t agree more, Emma! It’s been the same experience for me. I started blogging years ago just to get out there. It’s been a long, slow process to find my blogging identity, partly because I had to just ignore a lot of the bloggy advice that was out there, but I’m just so thrilled to be where I am. Embracing my weird every day. 😉
Yey Julie! I definitely think there is always a bigger picture and it takes time so when you get ‘there’ you know how to handle and appreciate it fully and can be of best service to others because of your experiences.