Blogging Like It's 2006

When your partner looks at you across the breakfast table and says, “You aren’t being authentic” while you’re eating pancakes, it feels like a knife in the heart.

First of all, my soul is made of pancakes so I was as authentic as I could possibly be in that moment.

Second of all, since my authentic self has a wildly unhinged sense of humor and a lot of feelings - and I’ve been trying to keep a lid on a lot of that lately - I guess it’s true.

I’ve definitely fallen prey to some of those misguided “I am an adult and thus must be a perfect reflection of society’s construct of a responsible human” beliefs. Pro tip: Don’t do that. I’d much rather be a free range weirdo.

Our conversation about authenticity was actually in reference to my work and my writing. Since my job for the past number of years has basically been “help people get their shit together” (albeit in an unconventional way), I’ve felt like I need to have my shit together. Since I don’t have my shit together - at least not in the socially acceptable way - I haven’t wanted to talk about it, which has hamstrung my ability to communicate and share in the way I used to and really enjoyed.

I haven’t wanted to write about my real experience, because my real experiences don’t feel like something you can have if you’re also attempting to help other people. Yes, I hear all the things wrong with that sentence.

While I did have it together in the culturally-conditioned way - good job, paying rent on a house, etc - in my twenties, my older self has her shit together in a more real way. Less social currency, but more ability to function in a way that works for me and my brand of peculiarities. My older self is more, one might even say, authentic.

Maybe I also stopped because I thought I had to outgrow my weird, unhinged self the way I once thought I had to abandon cartoon t-shirts on the altar of being a mature adult.

Since I still wear t-shirts with llamas riding bicycles, maybe I get to reclaim my unhinged writing style. While I’ve become (arguably) more authentic to myself and who I am and what I want and need, my writing has become less so.

Really, I just want to return to the wildly unhinged blogging days of yore, when it was 2006 and we weren’t worried about branding or selling or SEO or anything much beyond LET ME TELL YOU WHAT MY DOG JUST DID. NOW I’M WRITING A RESUME FOR MY DOG. HERE’S MY DOG IN HIS BEST WORK ATTIRE, NOW FIELDING OFFERS and then posting a picture of your dog in a tie?

Remember those halcyon blogging days? I want those back. Because that style of writing was fun and endorphinizing and helped me write myself to answers, answers my current self could really use. It felt really true to me, in a way the current style - at least the style I’ve adopted - doesn’t.

I just want to write about my nonexistent dog in a nonexistent tie.

Whatever happened, most of my writing over the past few years has been sadly hinged, rather than gleefully unhinged.

Yesterday’s solar eclipse was smack dab over my midheaven - meaning, big changes are coming in my career. I’ve been feeling this for weeks - the chaos is real, my friends - and thusfar it seems to mean returning to the way I used to write.

Do we have to share all the messy parts of our lives in order to be authentic? That gong you hear is a resounding no from the universe. Do we have to be sanitized versions of ourselves to help other people? That’s another big no gong.

But here’s the thing: For whatever reason, I can’t get there. I don’t seem able to write the way I want to without sharing the mess in a way that I won’t do if I’m doing my current work.

Honestly, I feel a little betrayed by the fact that I’m not going to know what yesterday’s eclipse did to my career and writing for quite awhile yet. I want to know now. I want to know if the only way I can go back to being Unhinged Amber is to shut down my business. I want to know if I just need to scale way back so I have the time and energy and don’t feel the need to present myself in any particular way, but can still do the work I do love doing in many respects.

Or do I just need to find a job and focus on unhinged blogging and writing my books in my off hours?

I don’t know. But maybe if I keep writing whatever I want to write, those answers will come.

How You End Up with Ghouls in a Romantic Comedy

I finally finished re-reading the first draft of my novel! Good job, me!

This was something I planned to do in January, but may need to accept the fact that winter hibernation is real and I shouldn't expect too much of myself.

Now that spring has sprung - the grass is growing high and fast, the trees are blooming, and the cows are mooing - it seems my ability to do things has returned.

Aside from line editing and a confusing plot section where the goons switch to ghouls (?), I'm not sure there's much to do. At least until a few more people read it and tell me where the holes are.

Lots of writers ponder plot and characters and motivation before they ever start writing, but I just can't seem to do it that way. Whenever I try to outline, I immediately lose interest. My brain doesn't formulate anything until my fingers are already typing and following the story that's unscrolling in front of me.

This is how you end up with ghouls in a romantic comedy.

It's kind of like life, really. I mean, hopefully there are no ghouls in your life - none in mine, so far - but you just show up and start moving and see what happens.

If you stop moving, stop typing, things stop happening. And then the story gets really boring.

I wonder if the people who plot their books are also the people who can plot their lives. The kind of people with five and ten year plans who actually follow those plans.

I have never met a plan that I can't completely demolish within three months.

All I can do - in my books and in my life - is show up and see where the path leads and where I end up. Usually far from where I intended.

But, ghouls aside, where I end up is generally pretty good.

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This was posted to my Patreon earlier today. If you’d like to follow me there, I’d love to have you! It’s where I’ve been doing more personal writing these days.

How To Feel Your Feelings

I still don’t know what to do with feelings. I can admit it.

At 45 years old, I still don’t entirely know what to do with feelings, even though “knowing what to do with feelings” is part of my actual job description.

We all contain multitudes.

The problem with feelings - especially if you are the brand of human who has big ones - is that they can be inconvenient. It’s hard to tackle your to-do list in the midst of quivering rage.

This is an actual response I got to a newsletter workshop I did last month: “Your superpower is noticing the feelings around things, working with them, and clearing them.”

AND YET I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO WITH MY OWN ANGER AND DISAPPOINTMENT.

Aside from write a blog post and yell about it in all caps, I mean.

Also, this isn’t entirely true.

I spend a lot of time working with my own guidance and intuition - you kinda have to, when the way other people do things never seems to work for you (being a trailblazer is all fun and games until you realize you literally have to carve your own path out of the wilderness because WTF is everyone else doing?) - and this morning’s message from my intuition was to feel my anger and disappointment.

Cue: getting nothing else done. Thanks, intuition. My to-do list is mad at you.

How To Feel Your Feelings

According to me and the way I feel my feelings. Please comment with better ideas.

1. Admit that you have a feeling and should probably acknowledge it, before it crawls into your spleen, gets a mortgage, and never leaves.

2. Notice where that feeling is in your body and breathing with it.

3. Tell your partner you have The Feelings. Demand several hugs.

4. Sharpen a pencil and write three pages about your feelings, even though you start scribbling and making a mess at half a page in.

5. Shake it out like a kid having a tantrum when it starts feeling like too much.

6. Ask the ether for help and support.

7. Cry a little.

8. Get back to your to-do list.

We could sit here and pathologize my difficulty with feelings until the proverbial cows come home. Of note, the cows are not actually proverbial, because I live in Sonoma County, California (known for happy cows and also lots of chickens), and I can see cows on the hillside from my office window.

Or I could just accept that something about my nervous system, genetic makeup, and life has made feelings a bit of challenge for me, and continue doing the best I can.

It’s all any of us can do.

I will conclude by saying, Let yourself feel your feelings. Talking to the feelings, letting them out, breathing through them, asking them for messages will help you feel lighter and happier. The more you let your feelings breathe, the better you feel.

xo - Amber

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I made a thing to help you tap into your sensitive superpowers and feel better!

How To Get Writing

Your book is ready for you. The question is, Are you ready for your book?

If you aren’t ready to write, if you’re not feeling it, if you’re procrastinating, if you’d rather be doing other things, here’s how to dive into that novel draft (or any other writing):

Give yourself the time you need.

Feeling behind, feeling like there's not enough time, is a recording your brain made by listening to someone else. Your soul knows there’s plenty of time.

Unless you’re dying and you really want to finish the novel. In that case, just get to work.

Otherwise, give yourself some space. Don’t chain yourself to the desk. Let writing be a joy, rather than a task.

Let yourself feel your feels.

Whenever I experience writer’s block, it’s usually because there’s an emotion that’s clogging up the pipeline. Once I let myself feel it, the words start to flow.

Move your body.

Inspiration flows through the physical body, not just the mind. Do some stretches. Get on yoga YouTube. Go for a walk. Do any kind of physical activity that sounds good right now and see what appears.

Take a shower.

Showers always work for me. I step out clean and with either the next place to go in my writing or the understanding that now is not the time and I get to either rest or do something else. So helpful, that bathroom.

ASK FOR inspiration.

This blog post almost didn’t happen. I aim for both structure and inspiration in my business writing. (My current structure is an email to my list every Monday, a blog post right here every Wednesday, and a personal story on Patreon every Friday.) But I don’t like to force myself to write when I’m not feeling it. Writing is a joy to me and I don’t ever want it to become something else if I can possibly avoid it. Plus, forced writing rarely seems to do well or feel good to anyone.

However, no blog post was showing up for today. Hence, a pickle.

So I set the intention that the perfect blog post arrive in my brain with enough time for me to write it. I literally just thought, “I set the intention …”, and started doing something else with a big, fat “WE’LL SEE” rumbling through my uninspired brain.

Lo and behold, twenty minutes later, here I am. Typing up a post that arrived easily in my brain, and I have just enough time to press publish before I need to leave the house.

Thank you, requested inspiration, for un-pickleing me today!

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Want some help un-pickleing your writing?

I help writers bust through blocks and get their books onto the page!

Why Do People Judge?

I once sat with a friend in her living room as she talked about another friend, the proud owner of a fancy new car. Her phrasing was judgmental - but buried beneath it was a yearning, an "I want this." In that moment, I knew she was being judgmental to cover up envy, a desire for something she didn't think she could have.

Years later, I saw a picture of her standing proudly in front of the very car she'd been judging that day in her living room.

I never looked at judgment the same way again.

Why Do We Judge Others?

As with anything relating to human emotions, judgment is deeply nuanced. But here are a few of the main reasons humans judge other humans:

They have something we want, something we don’t think we can have.

The second part is the key here. If someone has something we want, but know we can have, we might be more inspired to go get that desired thing. But if someone has something we don’t think we can have (or are capable of) (or are allowed), judgment will set in to protect us from that deep yearning.

They’re demonstrating an attribute that we don’t like, something that exists somewhere within us.

We often judge people who are reflecting back to us some part of us that we hate, whether consciously or not. Whether it’s something that we’ve been to therapy for, or it’s a small, deeply rooted kernel within our beings, if someone is displaying something that echoes what we don’t like about ourselves, the tendency is to go in hot with judgement.

They’re doing something that’s not okay.

Yeah, we’re going to judge people who cut us off in traffic or otherwise endanger themselves and others. We’re going to judge people who are cruel to kids or animals. We’re going to judge those terrible shenanigans people can get up to, especially when they negatively impact others. Our wiser selves may pipe up with some information about what may be going on internally with those people, but in this instance I say go ahead and judge. I feel good about judging truly shady people (after a full investigation of said shadiness) and if I’m ever being shady, you should go right ahead and judge me.

Why am I being judged?

Chances are really good that - unless you’re up to some truly shady nonsense - the judgment is all about them and not at all about you. (See the above.)

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One of the best places to practice discernment with your own judgement is in the comments of social media posts. Yeah, I said it.

Maybe the Dalai Lama can get on the internet with zero judgment… maybe. I bet even Mother Theresa cursed out Twitter a few times. They just didn’t add their fuel to the fire. They breathed, noticed what was happening, allowed the feeling to move through them as sensation, and then went about their day being lights upon the world.

My personal opinion about the internet is that it feels like a safe place for people to unleash their unprocessed anger and fear and judgment - so many of them do. Maybe it’s so they don’t unleash all their unhealed wounds on their family instead (and maybe not), but humanity tends to use the internet - and the people who post on it - as an emotional dumping ground.

How Do I avoid Dumping my unprocessed emotions in someone else’s lap, on the internet or otherwise?

What a great question, thank you for asking!

Notice what triggers you to judge - or to any big feeling. Especially things that make you start drafting irate comments.

Now take a step back and ask what’s really going on.

“Am I judging because deep down I want what they have, but I haven’t allowed myself to believe I can have it or that it’s okay to have it?”

If no, dig a little deeper: “Do I want that, but am only just realizing that I want it?”

If yes to any of these, congratulations! You now get to choose if you’re going to take your judgement to the comments (and thereby delay getting the thing they have that you want) or if you’re going to take this fresh new information about yourself and move forward with it.

“Am I triggered because I do this?” “Am I having this big reaction because it tugs at something I don’t like about myself?” “Am I judging because this is reflecting something I really hate about myself?”

If yes to any of these, congratulations! You now get to do your utmost to offer yourself love, forgiveness, and grace.

If your reaction is “I’m judging because that isn’t okay!”

First ask yourself “Is it really not okay?” Like, are we talking abuse of a living thing or are we talking about something kinda annoying or that you don’t personally agree with? Or are they reflecting something that has been an issue for you in the past and you’re angry that you were judged for it?

If it’s just something annoying or that you don’t personally agree with, you get to choose how you spend your time. Do you want to try to change someone’s mind on the internet or do you want to practice your empathy by trying to put yourself in their shoes? Or do you want to just go back to being a light on the world?

If it’s really not okay, you get to choose how to spend your energy. Do you want to yell about it on the internet or find some way to use your power to change it?

None of these answers or responses are wrong by the way. You get to choose how you spend your time and your internet comments - and the block button exists for a reason. If the internet is your therapy, go at it.

Just keep in mind that where you’re being unkind to others is also where you’re being unkind to yourself - and you, like everyone else, deserve a lot of kindness.

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Judgment is a totally valid human response. I’m not here to judge your judgment. I judge, you judge, we all judge. We are human beings and being judge-y is one of our many gifts. It kept - and keeps - us alive.

That said, we also need discernment. Discernment to understand what’s really going on within us. Because the more we can dig a bit deeper to understand our feelings and what’s triggering them, the better chance we have to release or heal or process them. And then move on to a better, happier phase of life.

Transmuting our emotions is a superpower like no other.

Love, Amber

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If you want or need help ransmuting big emotions or giving yourself more kindness, that’s one of the things I do with lovely people like you.