"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference"
Sound familiar? Well, it's often used for addicts who are in recovery (I'm not one of those but I have friends in recovery, which is where I heard this). But it's kinda appropriate here since I recently decided to try and change some of the things I don't like about myself. Maybe it's the raging stubborn Taurus in me, but I think I could change all of them if I really applied myself. (What's that you say? I have yet to find that whole wisdom thing? Yeah, probably. But I'm mere months away from that number I shall not mention so maybe wisdom will make an appearance then). I loathe change. Lemme try that again with more emphasis - I loathe change. If I could underline that statement, I would. But, unlike when I was a younger lad, I now realize that change is an integral part of life so there's little use in fighting it when it happens. Do I still try to fight? Hell yeah. But not as valiantly as I did before. I still don't know exactly when to wave the white flag but I'm learning and, even more importantly, I'm teaching my daughter how to accept change. (Girl is like my carbon copy in a lot of ways, so she'll probably wrestle with change quite a bit too).
I've decided the first thing I wanna try and tackle is this defense mechanism of deflecting questions/comments that I don't like. I can be the king of deflection when I wanna be and I always knew it was a problem but I didn't realize how much it affected things. I've been trying this taking-my-walls-down thing for, oh, about 14 hours now. What have I learned so far? Vulnerability sucks. Vulnerability sucks more than I sucked in my last post. And I knew it would suck cuz I've obviously had moments of intense vulnerability at certain points in my life. But I didn't realize how wildly uncomfortable I would feel in taking down my walls. I've found myself literally squirming A LOT in these past 14 hours. Everyone says this intense discomfort will go away as I get deeper into the process but...yeah...I'll believe that when it happens. But I am proud of myself for not slamming those walls back up yet. I've considered it and put up mini walls a couple of times but hey, nobody's perfect. So I'm gonna try and charge ahead with this new and uncomfortable project and hope it takes. I'm gonny try and be open and straight up about as many things as possible. And I'm gonna say what I think and feel without over thinking or over feeling it first. Curious to see how that goes.
