Holding Back

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. – Ralph Waldo Emerson



Is fear holding you back from living your fullest life and being truly self expressed? Put yourself in the shoes of the you who’s already lived your dream and write out the answers to the following:

Is the insecurity you’re defending worth the dream you’ll never realize? or the love you’ll never venture? or the joy you’ll never feel?

Will the blunder matter in 10 years? Or 10 weeks? Or 10 days? Or 10 minutes?

Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are?

Now Do. The Thing. You Fear.


Fear by Cotter Lachlan

No. The answer is simply no.
Gentle readers, your MatchGirl cannot put herself in the shoes of someone who has lived her dreams. That's just not possible.

Here's the thing, dear ones. My dreams are my own.
Am I inspired by others? Of course. Do I look at people who have reached levels of success that I hope to achieve and wonder how they got there so quickly and if I can get there, too? Of course.
But there is no one person who has achieved my dreams.

I have, though, been held back by fear. Especially when I was younger. I wrote about facing one's fears, posted last Friday, as part of this very challenge.

So here are some things I have been terrified of, and that I have faced head on.

Unemployment.
Asking for what I want out of a relationship.
Approaching people for help - job related or networking related.
Standing out in a crowd.
Talking to strangers.
Getting serious about my life.
Going for what I want.

The main thing that ties all these fears together, gentle readers, is an underlying fear for so many of us. It's a fear of rejection. Here's something, however, that your MatchGirl has learned about rejection over the years - it's not really so bad. Because, at the end of the day, there is always someone - be it friend, lover, parent - out there who loves you and wants you and will steel you up again.

So I agree with Lachlan. Face your fears. Do the thing that you're afraid of.

You'll be better for it in the end.

I promise.

Imitation Is Suicide

Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?

I don't know how to answer Fabian Kruse's question, gentle readers. I truly don't.

Your MatchGirl, in her own opinion, has always been a pretty original bird.

It was, in fact, probably a bad thing when I was young. At least for my social life. Middle and high school girls tend to want to march to the beat of only one drummer, and those that are different than them are not always (or often) welcomed to the fold.

In terms of art, I think it infuriated my professors at university that they could not stick my paintings or my influences into one neat basket. Not that they did not value individuality and originality. They certainly did. But how to critique something you don't know what to compare it to?

I don't know how to approach this prompt, dear ones. Because I don't see myself as an imitator... To thine own self be true, isn't that how the saying goes? Is there any other way that one ought to live? I believe that I was raised to stay true to myself, to be my own person, and that I have lived that way - or tried to - for most of my life....  I don't have a true answer for this, but for now, though I'm posting it, I leave this essay unfinished...

Be Good To Each Other

Today's Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance Challenge prompt, from Eric Handler, is not a simple thing to wrap one's head around, gentle readers. Your MatchGirl has, for the past two years (a little longer) been sharing her life with you on these virtual pages. She has been sharing her hopes and reams and fears, but, she has also been spreading her message.

And perhaps I could have answered this in a tweet. It's quite possible that it needs no more than that.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?

But as I take this Trust 30 challenge, I have, for the most part, enjoyed sharing my thought process, here with you. I hope that you've been enjoying being part of it. And, though I post a handful of days behind, due the the publishing schedule of this blog, I hope that you've enjoyed keep up with what I'm writing about. Believe, your MatchGirl is thinking on and writing about these prompts every day. It's a good exercise. I hope many of you are participating as well.

But, to today's prompt. If I could spread my personal message to one million people, right now, what on Earth would I say?

Be good to each other. Treat each other right. Think about how you want to be treated and, for goodness sake, act accordingly when you're interacting with others. Life is too short, gentle ones, to act any other way. So I share with you, fewer than one million people, but perhaps I will reach one thousand who will take this to heart an spread it to one thousand more (and that's a really nice start). 


Be good to each other. It's the golden rule.


It's how your MatchGirl tries to live her life. I hope it's how you try to live yours.

Face Your Fears

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. - Ralph Waldo Emerso 

Emerson says: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now.

Facing one's fear, gentle readers, this is what we are consistently asked to do. Lately anyway.

This is a bit of a tough question for me. I have, for several years now, lived my life very much in the open. I've blogged about it - here and elsewhere. I've shared my scary stories. I've shared my hopes and dreams. I've let you see my disappointments and failures. I've told you what I was afraid of.

Every day I do things that terrify me. It's a good thing, I promise. It's a hard thing for sure.

Something that no one who knows me now, in my mid-thirties, truly believes is this: I am shy.
Painfully shy.
Devastatingly shy.

If I am in a room full of strangers, I must steel myself before I go in. I must take deep breaths and basically throw myself through the door. To speak to people I don't know takes a great deal of effort. Especially if I must speak first.

When I was in college, if I was not sure I knew someone in my class, I would wait till the last possible moment to go in.

At parties, I often stand near the food/bar/kitchen until someone approaches me.

At networking events, it's very hard for me to approach people unless I have met them before. And even then I still need to talk myself into it.

You're surprised.
Those of you who know me from this blog.
Those of you who know me from Work It Brooklyn.
Those of you who know me from Zemoga.
You are surprised.

I seem so outgoing you will say.
I seem so confident.
I certainly, by no stretch of the imagination, seem shy.

But I am.

It's all an act, gentle readers. It's a public face I paint on when I face the world.
I am not as shy now as I was when I was young, when I would develop a debilitating stomach ache whenever I needed to be in a place I felt uncomfortable or with people I did not know well. But, I will still wait till the last moment to enter a room if I'm not sure I'll know someone. I will still linger at the kitchen door and look into my drink at a party where I do not know many people. When I hop up on stage at Work It Brooklyn events and "shhhhush" people like a kindergarten teacher, it's out of sheer necessity.

But, I am not gonna lie. I feel awesome after I do that. Because I know how hard it was for me, on the inside, to actually do it. To mak that interaction happen.

I have always been encouraged to face my fears. At 16, after crashing my parents' car, OK, actually, rolling it over and totaling my parents' car, my grandfather had me driving his truck in the fields behind his house. I've faced more personal fears, as well, leaving a terrible terrible, but seemingly secure, relationship; relocating my adult life to a new city; saying "goodbye" to someone that I loved, because, at the end of the day, it was for the best.

As for facing fears, am I going to run to Coney Island and spend a day riding the Cyclone? No. Probably not. But there are fears we face to make our lives better and more productive and to keep them moving forward... and there are fears that, really, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter...

Five Years

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. – Ralph Waldo Emerson






What would you say to the person you were five years ago? What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?

Oh gosh gentle readers. This hits a little close to home. But, it's something that your MatchGirl has spent a lot of time thinking about ... as she ponders her life and times.

What would you say to the person you were five years ago?

Five years ago I was 30. I was excited to be thirty. I still felt young and like life was still of possibilities (at thirty-five, I still feel this way), but I was a bit of the mind set that life would happen to me. I wasn't quite sure how to make life go the way I envisioned that it should be.

To my 30 year old self, I would caution that life is what you make of it, not what happens to you.

To my 30 year old self, I would say, look around at all these people, at this birthday party. These people, they are your best friends. In five years, 90% of them will still be a part of your life. Love them and treat them right. They'll love you right back. And they'll protect the shit out of you - no matter what happens. I know you cherish them now. Continue to do so.

To my 30 year old self, I would remind that it's OK to be single. While sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's kind of fun. Take every day and every relationship and every man as it comes. Don't try so hard. Don't force it. I promise it will be all right.

To my 30 year old self, I would say, don't be so afraid. The worst that can happen is that you'll mess up. Life is to be lived. Stop being so timid. Stop being so cautious. Get over it.  Life is best when you live it.

What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?

In five years, I'll be 40. That's a big number. I remember my dad turning forty and everyone saying he was over the hill. Of course, my gay friends say that 40 is the new 21 (these are the same men who told me that 30 was the new 21). But that's okay. I don't want to be 21 again. That's a hard age. Looking forward, I'm not exactly excited to turn forty. But I don't fear it.

To my 40 year old self, I will say, know that your children are their own people. You can't right your regrets through them, You're journey was yours. You have to let theirs be their own.

To my 40 year old self, I will remind, that this journey has been a tough one, and, even if it still is a struggle, every piece is worth it. It must be - it has been so far.

To my 40 year old self, I will say this: Lighten up. Stop being so serious. Remember to spend at least as much (if not more) time living outside your own head as you do in it.

To my 40 year old self, I will say, look at these friends around you - this man you've chosen to spend your life with, these people whose weddings you've attended, this extended family that you have gathered around you, blood or not - these people have been with you for all this time. Love them and cherish them and treat them well. They love you and cherish you and, still, will protect the shit out of you. These friendships, this community - this is something that's amazing. This is something that a lot of people don't have. Don't take it for granted.

One Week To Live

Gentle readers, I must admit Sunday's Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance challenge prompt left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. "What if you only had one week to live? What would you do?" Maybe it is because I have been asked similar questions over the years - particularly when I was first laid off and the journey that I'm on now began.

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. – Ralph Waldo Emerson


If you had one week left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve to only do what makes you come alive.


Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual “always something better” spiral?


prompted by Jonathan Mead

But that the thing. Right now, I'm moving towards all the things that I want to do.

My job situation is getting harder, but better, and I see great possibilities.

I'm living with Boyfriend and we are planning a future together. We're arguing about the names of our unborn, un-conceived children and bickering about whether Li'l Wayne is appropriate wedding music (no, we're not engaged, you didn't miss anything). We're building towards that future.

I'm building community online and off.

I'm enjoying time with the people I love and adore.

I'm learning. I'm growing. I'm living.

If I had one week to live, I'd quit my job and travel somewhere ridiculously exciting and romantic, because, cost be damned, my friends, I wouldn't have to worry about expense.

But that's not the way the world works, dear readers. So, living within reality, I'm doing all that I can to push forward and make my dreams come true, and as those who have been long-time readers of this blog know, I'm making pretty good headway.

If We Live Truly, We Will See Truly

If we live truly, we shall see truly. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


Not everyone wants to travel the world, but most people can identify at least one place in the world they’d like to visit before they die. Where is that place for you, and what will you do to make sure you get there?


posed by Chris Guillebeau

It's interesting to me, this prompt, gentle readers. Because I don't read the quote "If we live truly, we shall see truly" as having to do with looking outside one's own environment. I don't see it ias a question of going somewhere to find one's true self.

It's great to travel the world. It's amazing to go to a foreign country and see things you never thought you would. To see the differences that make people the same. I have friends who have packed their lives into storage and taken off for Africa and those who have gone diving with sharks. I have friends who have moved to be closer to their parents, a place they never thought they'd move back to, to keep the strong family bond as their children grow. I have friends who have been to every continent except Antarctica (but that's on their bucket list). I have friends who have never left the United States.

For me, I have long loved Japanese culture, and I've dreamed of going there since I was in my teens. I've had promises of trips there whispered to me and I've dreamed of scheming a way to go. The cost, however, has always been prohibitive. I would still love to go, though. While I'm young(ish) would be preferable, but if it's when I"m older, that's the way of life,

I've been lucky enough to travel to London - when I was a walking wiki on all things 90s Brit pop, Norther soul and British invasion; to Paris, in the springtime (though solo, on a business trip, it's less romantic); to Bogota, where I hope to get back to again in the very near future. To Mexico and Canada, too. I'd like to go to Nova Scotia, maybe, to where my family came from. This is something my mother always wanted to do with her mother, but they never got the chance. It's humbling, I think, to go to the place where your family has so much history, to trace headstones with crayon to onion skin paper.

But, for myself, to live truly and see truly, the place I truly want to go is the place that my next adventure takes me. To the place where Boyfriend and I will settle and raise a family. To the place where we will call home as children grow and as we continue to grow. This is what I want most in life, right now, to find the place that we will settle and call home. And I'm not worried about the steps it will take, or that I will have to go through, to make that happen. I just know that it will.