This is a long overdue post. I stopped blogging this year
because I was so busy that I could either sleep at all, or blog. Now it has
finally calmed down a little and I can adjust to everything that has happened over
this past year. I’ve made amazing friends, finished my third year of university
and had some very exciting opportunities and achievements. I’ve developed my
dancing and teaching skills. But I was not blogging.
There are multiple reasons for this. Lack of time was the
main one, but also the enthusiasm I had for blogging was gone. I didn’t know
how to get up the energy or motivation to write. There wasn’t something I felt
I could be writing about or for. This is due to a loss of my voice and what
trying to say with my blog. I got mixed
up and bogged down by what other people were saying I should say, or what I
sounded like.
I felt I had lost the uniqueness that I’d had last year, being
the Scot in New Mexico, and I’ve been trying to deal with that. After spending
last year going out and doing exciting stuff all the time, and being able to
tell people about it through Life in the Deen. However, now I’m back in
Aberdeen, I was suddenly just a face in a crowd. I was no longer ‘special’ or ‘memorable’,
nothing more than just the short girl. I was just another Scottish girl at a
Scottish university. My novelty had gone. And I lost a little confidence in
myself. Instead of saying why not, I would just say why? Why me? And although
that sounds whiney, it is how I felt. I felt I had to try so hard to be
different, and to stand out, and although this was a fun year, it ended by
falling a bit flat as I didn’t really move on from what I had been doing the
past year. I am glad it’s over now. I hadn’t achieved everything I wanted to,
and so I was disappointed with myself.
I discovered that people wouldn’t always listen to me, or
believe in what I was saying, and for whatever reason they had, my face didn’t
quite fit their vision. And even if you’re the one who worked hardest on
something, that is not always rewarded or realised by people. And part of me
felt, no feels, quite knocked by this. I was never going to be good enough, so
why bother trying? I was not necessarily the best, but I am a grafter. However,
claiming you will work the hardest at something is fairly hard to claim as a
full-proof argument. Anyone can claim they will do that, it’s kinda par for the
course.
I am a modest person. I am not good at bigging myself up
anyway, and when you get hit with a stream of rejection, it’s almost impossible
to continue to believe in yourself and your abilities. What makes you any
different? Why should it be you? These questions can be asked as confidence
boosters, or as cutting insults depending on the tone and inflection, and for
that to be going on inside your own head can be incredibly damaging. Once a
thought like that is conceived, and takes root, it is difficult to shift. And it
will grow and develop until you no longer trust something you love to do.
To lose your way, and your voice is something that is
incredibly difficult to do, and to explain.
I started concentrating on what something should be rather
than trying to create what I wanted it to be. I got bogged down on details, and
then did not voice my concerns when I didn’t understand or agree with
something. I stopped thinking my voice was valid. I was hung up on how I should
say something rather than what I could say, or wanted to say. And so, I lost my
voice with Life in the Deen. I didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t think
that anything I was saying was valid or worth anyone to listening to.
I am still working on it, and I give myself daily reminders
that my voice is valid, my emotions don’t make it any less so, and I should
remember that girl who went out to New Mexico last year. She was fearless and
didn’t care what people thought of her. She was self-sufficient with her own
independent spirit, and didn’t need someone else to validate her achievements
for her. She had courage, and I need to channel that girl. She is still somewhere
in me, and I have to remind myself of her. If you are feeling this way too, or
have felt this way at some point in your life, comment below telling me about
it. I’d love to hear about how you dealt with it, or are dealing with it.
