How Blogging has Changed Me

Wow, my hundredth post. Like… wow. It’s insane for me to realize that I’ve been writing on my personal blog, livelifeliberated.com, for almost three years now. And in that time I’ve written a hundred posts! Like what? How? That’s insane! How do I even have that much to say?

I’ve spent this last week rereading my old posts and editing them up a bit… yeah, a lot of spelling mistakes, oops. First off, damn was I certain about my views in the beginning. So for any of you early readers, thank you for putting up with my arrogance. Life is a process.

It’s funny to look back at it because I can fully understand why I came off the way I did. You see three years ago I had my first revolutionary conclusions on the world. For the first time, I had a complete understanding of society, individuals, people, you name it. It was perfect in my mind. Therefore, I knew it was a matter of opinion, but I simply only saw my opinion and no logic could break it so I figured what else could there be.

The learning curve I was missing was that there is much more than just logic in this world. Yes, a logical conclusion is ideal, but at the root of all logic lies an assumption. And that my friend is what I was missing. An assumption is at the heart of everything we define as absolute, and it wasn’t until my next wave of assumptions came in that I saw more realities emerge.

From what I’ve read and understand, this is a natural part of essentially growing up. The process of realizing that your perspective is only one of so many others. No more or less biased than anyone else, I believe that truth is not found with building up our assumptions and perspectives to logical heights, but instead maximizing the assumptions and perspectives we have considered in our life. Because it is only at the root of thought that we can begin to see the truth. Haha, or maybe that’s another biased opinion. 😉

The second thing I noticed with going through my old posts is that I used to be so much more serious. Geez, was I on a mission or what? Of course I still look to add helpful knowledge and understanding into the lives of my readers, but wow did I do it in a different way than now. I had direct messages. Direct ideas and views that I intended to address and call into question with each post. In other words, my driving force was to create change in the way that I thought was best, not just change for the sake of change.

Now, as you have probably noticed, I like to write in a looser feel. Besides it being more fun for me, I also hope you as the reader find it more enjoyable. Not just that, but I think this ties with the arrogant old self as well. I have always wanted you to feel and/or be a little better (notice the subjective word choice) with every blog post you read from my site. I used to think that had to be done in a certain way, but now I acknowledge that it’s more complicated than that. It’s unique to each reader. Therefore, I can’t just use the one size fits all model. I have instead resorted to looseness in my posts so that it is more about the message you decide to take away, rather than the message I intended for you to take.

Rolling to my third reflection, I have my views, views that I think could help so many people, but that doesn’t mean they will. Something that took me a while to recognize is that truth is not our driving principle. As a species, I don’t believe that we strive to find the things that are most true. Some of us do, most of us think we do, but as a whole, we do not. I feel that our driving principle is instead to find the things that make us comfortable. The things that reinforce our realities, rather than destroy them.

That was the awkward part for me. I made my blog thinking I would really turn some heads. I didn’t think I knew everything (or maybe I did think that and I just didn’t want to believe it), but I thought I knew enough. Enough to shed light on a subject that others were not. With that glimmer of a light shown, I assumed that would be enough to get the reader thinking on their own. That the kick start is all that would be needed for them to consider it and let me know their thoughts. And together, because that truly is the reason I made these posts public in the first place, we could get to the next step. Together we could consider what neither of us would have on our own.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, there was a silence. Not only did that make me sad, but it confused me for some time. I just didn’t get it. Even if everything I was saying was wrong, just say so. Reach out, break my logic or prove there are other assumptions, something, anything. Yet rarely did anything happen. As I said, a silence.

So, what are my wise words? What masterful insight have I gathered from these one hundred posts? Well, I’d say that it’s okay. It’s okay if things don’t go as you plan. It’s okay if the unexpected eventually becomes expected.

It’s all so confusing you know? Ha, that might be why I love it so much, I don’t know 🙂

There’s my insight. Just smile. Lately, I’ve been ending a lot of my posts with a smile. Why? Well, because there is nothing more perfect than that. From what I’ve gathered, people will listen when they want, and they won’t when they don’t. People will understand you when they want, and they won’t when they don’t. And of course myself not being exempt, we are humans that create our own reality. We define the is and the is not. So to think that I can show you something that you don’t want to see, or tell you a view that you have no intention of listening to is complete stupidity on my part. Therefore, it’s not about the ideas I have to share, but instead the feels. The experiences and moments.

You see, it’s different because a feeling is something that can be shared, while an idea is given. I can’t give you anything that you don’t want, so there’s no need to try. Instead, I have a feeling that I want to share. Mutually felt. And that’s the warmth of a smile. A smile of support. A smile of gratitude. And a smile as a reminder that it’s okay and it always will be.

So yeah, my message then is a smile. This may sound crazy, for insanity is genius without an audience, but nonetheless, my message is a smile. Maybe a thumbs up too, why not? I hope this blog helps or has helped you. But if it hasn’t, that’s okay, nobody is doing anything wrong, we’re just different.

I’ll keep writing, for now, but I just simply wanted to do a nice little recap. I wanted to expose how I’ve changed and understand where I’m headed. Life is a process. One where we may always look back and cringe at our previous decisions. But isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t that mean we are growing? I hope so.

As for my promised final message, I present to you a world-famous selfie with a thumbs-up:

I hope you have a good day 🙂