An Unintended, Unfortunate Pattern of Radio Silence
A promise to my readers to let life live me and bring you along for the ride
Heyyyyy… Remember me?
Before you say anything, let me tell you what I’ve realized: it’s become an unfortunate, unintended pattern of me going radio silent after the holidays. Personally, I blame January.
Januarys are just the worst now, right? No one’s really talking about just how bad — and how long — January is as the first month of the year.
It’s so clearly not December’s fault. Yes, it is a busy time, but there are holiday parties and get-togethers, the best food(s), that week between Christmas and New Year where time ceases to exist and an opportunity for general decompression.
But January? This is the month when you’re forced to go back to work the day after you’ve recovered from the biggest drinking holiday of all. Also, you have to go back to work!? Dry January looms, you tell yourself to go on a diet and get back into the gym. The annual bingo card of ridiculous happenings in popular culture resets and you are unceasingly amazed at just how “I did not see that coming” life can get. And worst of all, it takes approximately 17 years to end.
Raise your hand if you, too, have been personalized victimized by January.
Now that we are well within the safety of February and the dust has mostly cleared, I figured it was high time I got back on this writing horse.
So much life has happened to and for me since we last caught up. So. much. There’s so many things I want to share, so many stories I want to tell you.
In the spirit of sharing is caring as well as attempting to get my life together, I’ve cataloged the haps of the past couple of months:
How I faced my fears through international pre-Christmas travel
How January is it’s own 7th ring of hell, and how surviving the longest month of all time reminded me that we all need to be kinder to each other
How when you’re stressed and on the verge of burnout, your body WILL make you have several seats AND cancel plans to move your life forward
How I learned that my dad is not, in fact, a Leap Year baby
How crying at movies has the power to expand our consciousness and embarrass you in front of a celebrity director
How I learned that the dating pool is full of garbage people, but I have a deep seated fear of dying alone
Even though I hate to admit it, there’s something to be said about what you gain from what you go through.
That is, understandably, a lot of information. Why would I tell you all that? Why will I tell you more about those things in blog pieces this year? I have a life, I have things to do. I have a day job and friends and family members who need me. I’m a (pet) parent, for Christ’s sake. A MOTHA. Why do I choose to write instead of just watching Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix for the one millionth time? Why am I, through the radio silence and beyond, still striving to be a writer? What is my central dilemma, the compelling reason why I want to tell these stories now?
Because even though I hate to admit it, there’s something to be said about what you gain from what you go through. There are lessons in ludicrous. There's freedom on the other side of the fuckery. But there’s no such thing as all good or all bad. There’s no point in your life in which you’ll escape the tough times. You will get bored on vacation, or too scared to leave your hotel room. You’ll fail to be present for what you’ll later realize in hindsight was a great moment of your life. You’ll get unreasonably angry, or feel dramatic levels of sadness at things that will mean less than nothing to you in 24 hours.
We live life, but it also lives us. Sometimes we fuck it up. We’ll always fuck it up. It’s how you fix it that matters most. How you repair. How you learn from whatever life throws at you.
Call me crazy, but I figure if I share my goods, my bads, my crazies and my in-betweens, maybe you’ll be able to be that much more present in your own life. Maybe you’ll embrace your own spectrum. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll allow yourself grace to recover from your own radio silence.
x, Jocelyn J