Complaints are Not Conversations

Someone very important to me told me recently that a complaint is no way to start a conversation.

And that's true, to a certain extent.  Nobody wants to listen to a Debbie Downer all the time, especially if "Debbie" makes no efforts to change the things she's whining about.

I complain.  A lot.

I complain about people, about the weather, about the stupid choices I make, about the obnoxiously loud people at the bar table next to me, about the general public's inability to use the correct version of a homophone...I even complain about having to park in the "wrong" place in a lot with no assigned spaces.

And it's easy to do.  It might be, now that I think about it, my biggest character flaw, and God knows there are plenty.  I'm critical, and sometimes overly so.  Very few things meet my standards or my expectations.  I'm struggling right now to think of something that I reacted to with a, "Wow, that was more than I hoped it would be!" or "Damn, that was great!"  With the exception of motherhood and my AMAZING kid, The Rest of Everything is pretty much one huge letdown.  Yes, that's my next book title.

I know this about myself, all of you who read this and think, "Oh, so she KNOWS she's being a huge bitch?"  I do.  Trust me.  Trace it on back to elementary school and my former kindergarten teacher who told me one day that I needed to smile more.  Right.  She meant well, and I guess at the time, that was her attempt to acknowledge that I didn't look happy.  Well?

Perfectionism sucks.  No, I'm not claiming to be perfect.  I probably make more mistakes before I drink my coffee in the morning than most people make in a week.  Most days, I'm a mess...a mess working really hard to hide that from everyone else.  A mess with messes piled so high I don't know how to get out of them.  A pile of discarded efforts, unfinished tasks, things that didn't live up to my expectations and so, got tossed away.  I'm working really hard most days to keep those messes from pulling me under and to keep everything neatly in its own pile, its own disorder.

Social media has sensed this weakness in me.  It has stuck a screwdriver right into that wound in my psyche and given it a good ole twist.  No matter which platform we're talking about, they all have their own little way of driving that, "You're fucking stuff up" idea home.  Snapchat terrifies me.  What if I accidentally send that stupid selfie to my story instead of the intended audience? I would be mortified, and my heart pounds hard every time I use it.  Instagram?  Well, it's the least damaging to my soul, I think.  I get to take little pictures of artsy-fartsy things, my cats, and the healthy food I'm trying oh-so-hard to make myself eat, and I get to not really pay much attention to anything or anyone else.  Twitter used to be my complaint central.  I could bitch to the wind, drunk tweet stupidity and self-deprecation, and nobody would know.  But real life found me, so I have to be careful there, too.  On top of that, I've gathered a slew of like-minded individuals in my following/followers, and that's becoming a blessing and also a curse.  Facebook, though...there's nothing for the self-esteem like a good Facebook post, right? When it's your own, that is.  And when it's not...well, it's a nice reminder of all of the things you could be doing, should be doing, won't ever be doing...and if you did do them, they wouldn't be good enough.

I'm an all-or-nothing person.  I paint every day for thirty days, then lose my paint brushes amongst the books I haven't read.  I successfully give up all carbs for two straight weeks, accidentally eat a piece of chocolate, then decide to eat every carb in sight for the next three days.  I gave up on writing, really...a while back.  Why? Because it wasn't good enough.  I started caring about how many views I had more than I should have, and that was never the intent of blogging.  The original purpose of this blog was a journal of life for my son; at some point along the way, it changed from that into something more personal.  Sometimes I've had things to write about, and sometimes I didn't.  Some of the things I did want to write about, I didn't want people to read.  So I quit, because I couldn't make this exactly what I thought it should be.

Complaints can be conversations.  Or at the very least, conversation starters, if they help us find the things nagging at us and dragging us down.  I missed my blog, and I missed the things it helps me figure out.  My posts might start as complaints, but my hope is that they turn into conversations...even if I'm only talking to myself.