Embracing Me
The midyear review that reminded me how great it is to be me. Weird parts and all.
First voice over above! I posted the fourth attempt For better or worse that was my limit. (I was going to post the third attempt no matter what but then did one more) Apparently I don’t know how to talk and read at the same time. I’ll learn. (Or I won’t, then you will get a more authentic version of how I would tell you this stuff in real life. I can’t get a thought straight out of my head either.)
July marks the half way point of this year. I love goals and lists and planning so it is irresistible for me to not spend at least a moment or two reflecting on how things are going at the mid point of the year.
In January, along with a planning calendar, I bought a fun notebook, which was going to house all my notes for the year, one notebook to rule them all instead of a couple for the various topics in my life which I always mixed up and so really just had 2 or 3 random notebooks with a jumble of different topics. I abandoned 2 or 3 partially finished notebooks to start fresh in January. Something I do not typically do. I like to finish a notebook but told myself it was OK, I can make independent decisions and I can decide to leave half a notebook blank and start fresh in January.
What was fun about the new notebook is that the spiral was at the top instead of the side so I flipped the pages over the top rather than flip through it like a book. How fun! How creative and unique! I was going to love this notebook!
I hated that notebook. If I needed to refer back I couldn’t just flip through a few pages, I had to literally flip over and look at every page along the way. It was just awkward. There is a reason the book style is so popular. That notebook is still really fun but just not at all practical as my daily notebook to organize my whole life. If you are looking at a notebook like that just know it is not a daily, organize your life, type notebook. I’m sure it has a purpose but I don’t know what it is yet. I bought a regular notebook to take over as the one notebook to rule them all at the end of March, which was probably 2 months past when I decided it wasn’t working.
As I was reviewing the notes in the old one a couple weeks ago to determine if I needed to continue keeping it handy or could put it on a shelf, I came to page one where I listed my goals for the year. I made very broad goals mostly related to relationships this year rather than the SMART goals they teach you to make and as a result I am largely on track despite not looking at them or remembering them for 6 months. I was intrigued by one particular goal.
“Embrace being me”
Probably inspired by my decision to get a unique notebook. (Or maybe the reason I got it?)
I’ve been thinking about how this idea is playing out for me this year. It is a little bit of a twist on “who is Melanie” saying I am someone good and can just enjoy the path I am on. Not a rethinking of who Melanie is but an embracing of who Melanie has always been.
I am an enneagram 71. I first found enneagram when I was a couple years back to work and trying to find my groove. I happened to come across a few podcasters talking about it and 2 of them were also 7s. Listening to them reflect quirky things about my personality in their own stories and realizing those things are part of who I am, not right or wrong, good or bad, just me, was so freeing. I might not react to things like you but that doesn’t make the way I react wrong. Example: I am a laugher. If you tell me about a major crisis you are having I might laugh and make a joke about it. Nothing personal, I think all my trauma is hilarious. And I don’t think laughing about it dismisses the real pain of a situation. I will still also be horrified for you and check in on you regularly.
A year or so before I started learning about enneagram I had a boss who told me she did not think I was taking my job seriously because of something I had laughed at that she felt needed more reverence. I felt so put down and called out and like there was something fundamentally wrong with me because that is how she presented it. Our personalities clashed in several ways and that wasn’t even the last straw of the job but it was certainly on the pile. Healing came a couple years later as I was listening to Bob Goff on a podcast talking about their beloved family retreat, and if you know anything about Bob we are talking beloved, beloved, he has said and written a lot about it. Then it burned to the ground when they were gone one summer. In the podcast talking about it he said, “And then it burned to the ground! ha ha ha”. And something in me healed. It was not funny, it was real and sad and I am sure there was deep grief there. I know because if it was me I would have said it exactly the same way, laughed and still held deep grief. And I knew in that moment I was OK. I might still need to read a room when it came to laughing at not funny things but I did not have to apologize that I reacted to life and hard things in that way. It was the beginning of me learning to embrace being me.
There are dozens of other Melanie quirks but I think the biggest part of what I want to accomplish in embracing being me is just embracing the journey I am on, the life I have, the boring daily and the fun adventures. Making mistakes, being awkward, trying new things, exploring a style not quite on trend, changing my mind, being impulsive, saying the wrong thing, not always accomplishing what I want to, half-assing projects, and still loving who I am. Loving when my daughter tells me that she told her boyfriend something I said and they both think it is weird2. Loving how I do things, how I think about things. Loving when I do nothing all day, forget an appointment, or a friend’s birthday, or that I already have 2 bottles of lime juice at home while grocery shopping. It’s fine! It’s good! I’m embracing it. Embracing being ME!
Since this feels more like a lifelong pursuit than a one off lesson I am not going to put a check mark next to Embrace being Me on my goal list just yet but I do think half way through the year I am on track.
How are your goals looking this year?
If you don’t know enneagram just roll with me past this part of the post because it is too hard to explain in a footnote. Here is an enneagram site: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions/
One of my other goals is to disentangle my life from my daughters and not solve her problems as quickly or tell her what to do all the time. It’s been a challenge for both of us honestly but it is actually going quite well. We are on our way to adult mother/daughter relationship. Also, apparently we are at the stage where I can’t say anything I wouldn’t want the boyfriend to know.