After spending the weekend with the great bloggers at Blog U, I had one of the most fitting dreams that describes my feelings about this weekend completely.
The Dream
I was in Russia with Rafael and the girls, and we were out in the country near a border. There was a lot of land blocked off by the government that wasn’t being used, and I was so angry because it was unnecessarily taking beautiful land away from the people.
Rafael and I were in this small one-bedroom house. Cream colored paint on cement. The owners weren’t there, nor did they know we were. We were squatting for a hotel room because we needed to rest and there was just nothing available anywhere. I think we were also lost.
I started freaking out it was time to go as we were cleaning our mess in the kitchen, which was full of old fashioned things I’m not sure we knew how to use. So I told him to get the kids ready while I packed up the car, which sounds like a normal role reversal in our marriage in real life. So he was drawing the kids a bath in an old porcelain tub, and I was putting all the stuff I needed to carry back into the car into one huge pile, which seemed to be like 50 body pillow sized stuffed animals. I remember tigers, pound puppies, cabbage patch dolls.
Then I saw a small yellow car approach us. It wasn’t hard to spot seeing how it was the only car we seen on this country road the entire time we were there. He was a cop driving it. And he drove pass the house, stopped, turned around. When he turned around, I freaked, “Rafael, a cop is coming back.” He approached the house, and I made Rafael talk to him (which would never happen like that in real life due to my control-freak issues).
Next thing I know, I’m in the “police station,” which wasn’t anything like the house. It was dark. Rusty. And had an industrial feel to it. I’m in a swivel chair and the cop who took us had this weird thing in his hand. It looked like a weapon of torture. It was made of tarnished metal, and it was like long fingers that waved in the air protruding from a hand-held stick, almost like a rake, but used as a whip somehow. And with that thing, he swiveled the chair around, in circles, sliding me from side to side, and we danced like that with him flirting obsessively.
He was letting us go.
Then he takes me to a back room and makes me a bowl of soup. He tells me in his thick Russian accent, “This is Remember Me Soup. I want you to promise you’ll remember me as well as you’d like and as often as you wish.”
Then I woke up.
Blog U
Blog U was kind of similar. When I got there, I really thought I was doing everything wrong. My writing felt wrong. My numbers definitely felt wrong. My goals, my ambitions, I started second guessing myself. Do I really belong at a place like that? I don’t write for a career. I just plop my brains out on the web like I’m moving stuff from the living room into storage just to get it out of the way.
I even felt like I was saying Hi wrong. Maybe I’m rubbing everyone the wrong way? I mean, why would anyone want to hang out with me? Even more importantly, if I get an idea to do with someone, why would they want to do it with me?
It was so easy to feel that way because I’m a little on the autism spectrum, so I know socially, I’m awkward. I also know the more I feel like I’m doing everything right, that’s probably a sign that I look like a douche. But not just that.
This moment of school was full of really good writers who all have amazing personalities. I felt like the guy in the bathroom standing in front of my urinal, and I glance to my left and see 6 porno sized penises taking a leak, and I glance my right, same deal, and then I look down at my little 4 inch friend and think to myself, “Maybe, just maybe, I should have waited for everyone else to finish before peeing.” Then I lie to myself, “It’s not the size that matters. It’s the motion of the ocean… well at least I have some girth.”
By the way I’m a woman. I really have no idea what it would be like to pee as a man in front of other men knowing my manhood was being judged by that little prick dangling off my in-betweens.
I felt lost. I felt like I had all these devices like social media and my blog itself that I just didn’t know how to properly use.
But as inferior as I felt, I met people who were all like, “Hey, I’ve been looking for you. I love your blog.” I’m like, “Someone likes my blog? Why?”
And they started doing what the Blog U thing is about. They started building me up. It wasn’t just compliments and hugs. They all gave great advice on blogging and writing, some tailor fit toward my specific goals. They showed me how to use those old fashioned kitchen devices.
Nicole Kane Knepper gave me the best advice of all. I’m wanting to write a book, but I’m scared to let people read it. She told me to write it anyway. I can decide what to do with it later. I’m not even going to tell you people what advice Jen Mann had for me. That’s our secret. Who am I kidding? She probably doesn’t remember, so it’s my secret 🙂
By the time I left, I had turned some strangers into homegirls. I had turned my doubts into ambition. I had turned my thoughts into goals. I had turned around like I did in that chair and danced through all the crazy vague intangibles in my head and turned them into something I can reach.
I love the concept of Remember Me Soup. Someday, I’m going to be nothing more than a character in your dreams, and saying goodbye to all these wonderful people who helped shaped me in a moment of my life was not easy. I walked into Blog U feeling homesick for my family, and I walked out feeling homesick for Blog U.
So here’s a bowl of some “eat it or starve.”
I want you all to remember me as well as you’d like and as often as you wish because that’s how I will remember you.
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