Tag Archives: friends

People are reading this blog and asking for more. Eek!  Cue the performance anxiety.

I changed my email address this past week with a prefix of “wellofintention”, and added an autosignature of “Check out my blog!” – done dutifully as my How to Blog Gotham Writers Workshop teacher had instructed.

Then I started floundering about it.

I imported my contacts into my new email account, taking needless hours to do so.  I decided I needed a quote in the autosignature as a buffer right before the “Check out my blog!” to soften it up a bit.  I spent hours combing through quote websites mulling it over to myself.

Should I have a Margaret Mead quote?  Yes, a woman quote would be excellent.  Well, the “never doubt a small group” quote is so overplayed.  Gandhi?  Well again, the “be the change” quote is used a lot.  Audre Lorde?  Benjamin Franklin?  Really want a woman, Lily Tomlin?  What’s a good “intention” quote?  Who’s my favorite historical figure?   Do I even HAVE a favorite historical figure?  I don’t think I do!  What does that SAY about me?

I looked and looked and read and read many, many quotes (ahem, stalling) and finally settled on the short-n-sweet Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. ~William James

Meanwhile, I drafted the note about my new email and stared at it for 2 days.  The inner voice declared people are going to think I’m full of myself if I ask them to read my blog.  I added people to the BCC list.  I took people off.  I stared some more.  The inner voice said they are going to cringe when they see how much personal information I’m sharing.  I reasoned with myself, if I put the link in, they won’t even click on it.  Stared at the email; tweaked the text slightly.  What are people going to think of me?

Then when I managed to exhaust myself thinking, mulling, staring, and reasoning, I just did the easy thing: I went into my Drafts folder, pulled up the email and clicked send.

THEN, I discovered the link to my blog didn’t work.  Back to the inner debate.  Do I let them all know? Maybe they won’t notice since they won’t click on it anyway!  Then perhaps because I was very tired of myself at that point, a crystal clear choice presented itself – if you send out a faulty link, it needs to be corrected.  So I sent a follow-up email with the correct link.  Eek!

And the response has been humbling.  Emails came in, texts were sent, comments on the blog were made.  Friends I hadn’t heard from in a while wrote to catch up.  My dad (lovingly) called me a “pain in the neck” for changing my email.  My aunt asked me if I’d seen the pictures of her new puppy.  My social worker student friend told me she loves me.  The gal who was my FIRST friend when I moved to NYC, wrote “Robby! I LOVE the blog. Very honest and interesting.” Another friend wrote “cool blog!” and invited me to read as well as be featured on HER blog.  A special friend of mine said she has been following it and wanted me to know that she’s always there for me, to call anytime.  A text came in from a dear friend that she read the blog and she misses me.  Another friend who’s taken up running commented on the blog that she’d like to run with me some time.  A close friend told me the name of the blog makes her think of yoga.  A sweet friend wrote she’s looking forward to reading about my progression.  A lovely friend of my mom’s comments on Mourning Glory welled me up with tears, plus another friend wrote I inspired him to call his mom.  This is in addition to Facebook comments of “I’m hooked!” – from a friend and my mother-in-law!

All of this moved me, and I would never have known a bit of it had I not decided to push through all the crap that was holding me up and just send out the damn email letting my world know about this blog.

We tend to think that sharing ourselves is a selfish act, but by doing this it builds a bridge between us and the people in our lives.  And it’s not that hard.  It’s much more difficult to wrangle with doubt and exhaust yourself than it is to just sweep it aside and get on with your life.

I now have 17 Facebook “Likes” and 6 blog subscribers!  Woohoo!  (Eek!)