Dancing Geek

paint fragment from Belmont Art Park by other things

Oh, it’s good to be back writing again. Being ill sucks in itself, but when I don’t write for a while the panic demons creep right back in. Fortunately I have some really cool friends who can help. This post is the result of a few different interactions with friends today now that my ear has stopped trying to swell up and crack my head open from the inside (hurrah!)

My prayer to the Internet gods

I’ve had a new suggestion come to me today.

Well, actually, it’s not new at all. I’ve been receiving this piece of advice for months. But today I finally got so fed up with chasing some ‘Life Purpose’ that I wrote a private blog post to the Internet gods (my geek version of prayer?) asking for advice and this post by Jen Louden, Comfort Queen, was sat in my news reader straight after. Thank you, Internet gods!

And the gods answered…

The message that I received was this:

Rather than getting all worked up about some over-arching, all-encompassing, life-justifying, direction-giving, perfect compass that will see me through to happiness for the rest of my life (because, yup, that’s really what it was becoming in my head) I need to learn to ‘let go’. To ‘go with the flow’.

This just feels true and indeed it meets my quick check criteria (simple + difficult = probably true). However, the idea of actually letting go is stomach churningly terrifying!

But fear is my friend now…right?

Well, I happen to have learnt a lot about my fear recently and have some lovely stuff for dealing with panic. So you might be fooled into thinking that I’d be all prepared and ready to face the future, but it turns out that I’m still petrified. From this comes three thoughts:

1. It only slightly helps to realise that this is probably what all these cool people who write about being terrified are on about.
2. It helps a bit more to realise that this fear has always been there but now I’m finally starting to communicate with more and more of my bigger fears rather than ignore them.
3. The rest is about making it work for me by asking for as much support as possible.

Let’s make this one big happy love fest shall we?

So now that they’re out there, how’s about I try and turn those three into happy-smiley-bouncy-ness? Here we go:

1. I’m totally relating to some of the coolest people that I know and look up to!
2. I’m making loads of progress and having big breakthroughs!
3. I get to talk to all my cool friends about what I’m doing and they can help me!

Ahhhhh, yes, I’m glad to be blogging again – muuuuuuuuch better

Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance by origamiwolf

I promised more news when there was some, and here it is. My Shiva Nata (Dance of Shiva) blog is now live at AdventuresOfAShivanaut.com.

If you’re a fellow Shivanaut or are just curious as to what all the fuss is about then please have a look, and let me know what you think!

Cheers,

James

watching d sunset by Gagan Gupta

Tribes eBook

Along with the Tribes book by Seth Godin, there’s a new free eBook going around, written by those who got in early enough to join the triiibes.com website (what is with that – there’s more than one I in tribe, perhaps?)

Anyway, I opened it, I read the first one and had another BAM! moment. BAM! moments are excellent because they help you realise something that you were ignoring before. BAM! moments suck because they bring up all the hurt, fear & shame that where the reason you were ignoring the something in the first place.

BAM! moments are worth writing about…

Worth reading

The first story/post/section in the eBook is called “Tribes You Don’t Want to Belong to” (not to go offtrack, but why the mixed capitalisation? I always find that annoying). It’s written by Jon Morrow and it’s about being disabled. Go read it.

Worth paraphrasing

I’ve picked out the parts that say what I need to say, added or changed parts that I need and removed bits that don’t apply. They ask you not to change it, but I’m not changing the eBook, I’m just writing my own version of one of the stories. I hope that’s ok by the Triiibe.

Tribes You Don’t Want To Belong To

“Sometimes, you don’t get to choose the tribes that you belong to. They choose you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“I’m a member of one of those tribes.”

“But regardless of how we arrived, no one wants to be a member.”

“Some people take it hard. They feel like they’ve been kidnapped from another tribe, the Tribe of Normal People. They feel like everything they were and everything they knew was taken away.

Eventually though, most of us realize that the Tribe of Normal People doesn’t actually exist.”

“It’s strange, but we also tend to stay away from each other, as if being around one another could remind us that we are a member of the tribe. We prefer to forget.

Still, we have common leaders, people that inspire us.”

“For the longest time, I didn’t want to be a part of it.”

“It takes courage to look at yourself and accept your [differences]. It takes courage to love yourself anyway. It takes courage to go beyond merely trying to survive your life and start trying to actually enjoy it.

How could you complain about being in a tribe like that? It’s wonderful.”

“Would I still like to be cured of my [difference]?”

“When you learn to accept yourself, you also learn to accept the tribes you belong to. They don’t have to be rich or clever or even desirable. The fact is, it’s your tribe.

And sometimes, that’s all that matters.”

So what was my point?

Since I’m comparing myself to a disabled person, I want to clarify a couple of things.

My difference isn’t obvious. I can hide my difference if I want to. Some disabled people can too, but not all. I have a choice about letting others who meet me know, but at some point it becomes a choice of lying or being yourself and that isn’t a choice at all.

It affects me everytime I interact with someone. It’s there changing the way I behave, how I connect with people, how I feel. Until I learn completely to not let it define me I will still give it some power over me. In that way I feel it is the same.

I want to know more people in my tribe, but I’m scared by it too.

For both our tribes (Jon’s and mine) I know that there are people who are proud of being a member (heck, I have my moments), and therefore might take offense at the phrase “no one wants to be a member”. The point is that these tribes change the way you view the world – you can’t be in or out of these tribes without changing who you are and how you think. Being in these tribes brings lessons that others don’t always learn, and that’s a bonus, but you can learn these lessons another way, and I therefore think that people (if it were possible to have the choice) would choose the other way. That’s what that phrase means to me. You don’t choose to be a member of the tribe. You find yourself in it and you deal.

I don’t want to offend anyone with this. But I needed to say something.