Date: 03-12-2025
This was me rambling on in March of 2025 about how I have so few in my life with whom I can share my inner world and feel truly seen. For the past few years I’ve been undergoing a radical inner transformation and it’s been frustrating not to be able to share that with anyone in my life. This website is an attempt to broadcast my little signal out into the world and hopefully find others who can relate to some of what I’ve experienced. It would still be many months after this recording that I would finally take action on this here digital garden. Such is my apprehension when it comes to sharing and being seen.
How Do I Find My People?
I can go to all kinds of different places where people socialize and just try to vibe. Hope that I vibe with a person or two. That sounds exhausting and also like I have such bad anxiety about group sharing and introductions and things. Like, the worst.
I think what might be more an alignment with me is just putting my beacon out there. Starting fresh. I don’t want the things that I share now to be seen by anybody that I know, because everybody that I know knows me as I was. And so they’re mirroring back to me who I was.
It feels out of alignment. It feels like old and outdated.
Iterating, Refining, Becoming
I think I’m just kind of like iterating and refining what it looks like for me to express myself.
Because at first it was like, I’m gonna post reels on Instagram of things for my journals and stuff. It didn’t work with the Instagram reels thing.
And then I had another mental breakdown about my self-worth and everything, and it’s been a process.
But then I emerged from that and decided, okay, well, maybe I can put some value on the world. Because I felt like unless there’s value for others, and I don’t make it about me, then it’s not worth putting up.
That’s kind of what I’ve been telling myself.
The Belief I’m Challenging
And I’m kind of like coming into an awareness of that narrative that I have of like, if I do anything to be seen just for myself, that’s wrong. That’s vanity. That’s pride.
And I really truly, 100%, consciously and unconsciously, have believed that for a very long time.
And it’s only really recently that I have begun to question and challenge that belief.
My Great Uncle’s Blog
I can’t say exactly where the questioning started, but what really galvanized that was seeing my great-uncle’s website.
Oddly enough, I found his website, or my grandma shared his website with me a while back, and I kind of visited it here and there. And recently I did a deep dive into it.
He’s a writer. He’s an illustrator. He’s a poet. He’s somebody who I feel like I would really get along with.
And I’m just reading through his blog. It’s like journal entries, really. They’re really well-written and really witty and fun and personal. Extremely personal.
And you wouldn’t think that they would offer “value” to the people reading them.
But it made me realize something.
Personal and Universal at the Same Time
There’s a kind of value that’s not delivered and served up as, “This is something valuable for an audience.”
It’s personal.
And it’s valuable in the way that it resonates as a universal human thing.
It can be personal and valuable and universal at the same time.
That’s what poetry is. That’s what so many authors and creators and artists do. They create for themselves, as an expression of who they are and their experience.
They’re not consciously thinking, okay, how do I package this for an audience?
The Rules I Think We Impose on Ourselves
I think it’s just the culture and everything that I’m absorbing online. It’s like you have to create value. You have to say things this way. You have to have an introduction. You have to have at least three valuable takeaways.
There are all these rules that I think we’re imposing on ourselves.
And I don’t know exactly where that comes from.
But I’m starting to see that that’s not true.
There’s something inherently valuable about just expressing yourself honestly. As long as it’s honest, as long as it’s from your core, somebody’s going to resonate with it.
And it’s going to help them. And it’s going to be valuable.
Is It Wrong to Want to Be Seen?
So I’m kind of at this place where I’m challenging that whole idea of, am I doing this just to be seen?
Because… so what if I am?
I think it’s healthy to be seen.
I think I wish that I existed in a community of people that could see me and come along for the journey of my transformation.
But I don’t. And that’s just not the case.
And unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the case for a lot of people.
Leaving the Group, Finding New Nodes
I think so many of us are terrified to venture out of our comfort zones, especially when it comes to beliefs. The beliefs of the community—that’s a stronghold on people.
I think it’s very rare to have a community that’s willing to really evolve and change with each other.
I wish I had that. But I don’t.
So I think the next best thing—the real advantage of living in this time—is that the internet provides a means of connecting with people who resonate with you where you’re at.
They can be a million miles away, and you can still connect.
I think that’s truly amazing.
Evolution in a Networked World
If you think about history, how many people were just stuck in their communities. If they wanted to evolve, well, good luck trying to evolve on your own, away from safety and connection.
People probably didn’t do it. Rarely, I’m sure.
So this is something very unique to this time.
Now it’s possible to leave and go far out with others who are in other networks, other little nodes. And you can create new networks.
Those networks can be fortified by the number of nodes coming into them.
What is that going to do? That’s interesting.
I’d like to be part of that.
Broadcasting a Signal
I’d like to find my little nodes that are like me. That feel alone with where they’re at.
And how can I do that?
If I don’t broadcast my signal—which is what this is—then how will they find me?
So I think I’m getting over that idea that nobody cares what I have to say. Nobody cares about my personal stuff.
Because that’s not necessarily true.
As I’m reading my uncle’s blog, I care. I’m enjoying it.
Even if you weren’t my family, I think I would still delight in it.
Delighting in Each Other
I think we delight in each other as human beings when we’re honest, when we share from the heart, when we dare to be witty.
We can get to know each other if we put our little signals out.
So that’s what I plan to do.
The Void and the Haven
I think my biggest obstacle is my own self-doubt. But I’m really growing in that way.
And there’s no pressure.
If I just make a website and nobody knows about it, nobody sees it—just me, for however long—that’s okay.
I think it could be like a little haven for me to just witness myself.
Being Witnessed, Being Alive
Because I think ultimately this whole desire to be seen… I think we really want to see ourselves.
We want that reflection mirrored back to us in others.
I think essentially that’s what life is.
God witnessing God.
Let me just live through this person. What does that look like?
I don’t know why that makes me emotional.
Why This Exists
So building a website just for me, with my writings and art and possibly little videos, is a way to witness myself. To see myself.
To empower myself by sharing my voice, even if it’s just to the void for a while. Or forever.
Who knows?
I think it’s going to be a real growing experience, regardless of the outcome.
I think the process is going to be fun.