A Swarm Becoming Thunder

New towel? Anyone? Any… one?

Lately, I’ve been wondering, if I’m where I’m supposed to be. But this isn’t the usual twice-yearly big question-of-self-doubt perking its head up. No, it’s not that.

Usually, these self-doubty questions help me re-affirm my desire for being here. On the great big WWW, doing my entrepreneur thing. Showing up everyday, tap-tap-tapping away on this Toshiba laptop of mine… writing posts, writing code, designing art and basically helping others follow their own dream.

Not that I’m way ahead of you. Really I’m not. Especially if this morning, I’m thinking of throwing in the towel on all of it.

Real, honest, imperfection.

Maybe you are shocked by that. Maybe not. Maybe you’ve been around long enough to build your own opinion of who I am. Who you think I am, based on how I’m showing up. Here on my blog. Maybe you feel like you know me because we’ve worked together, having had client sessions to discuss the next steps in your web presence and other things you’d like to do with it. Maybe we’ve met offline a couple of times for coffee. Or lunch.

Maybe you saw my recent video with Tricia Karp. A woman like me, who is using the story of her own life as a guide for the kind online of business she’s building. You’ve seen my embodied presence, articulating my thoughts and ideas… rolling my eyes. Real, honest, imperfection. You’ve seen me now. Maybe you know me a bit better than you did before.

Caution: Intoxicated blogger ahead

All of us out here, bop around Twitter & Facebook, socializing with one another, getting to know one another, and sometimes there are a few of you, that when you tweet something, it hits on a personal truth of my own. And I can feel myself almost stand up more, maybe my dreams become a bit more solid and so I breath in deeply, one more time, a new determination and renewed commitment to being here, because I don’t feel so alone. I feel understood. Or known, somehow. Even if/when we really don’t know one another.

It’s a funny thing how that juice, or that connection, begins to establish itself. Based purely on what someone else has said. Either in a tweet or in a post. There’s a solidarity we feel. I want to run up and squeeze Danielle LaPorte for saying it so perfectly short & sweet. Or I want to raise a fist high in the air when I see a tweet from Bridget Pilloud about how some artists out here hide behind their excuses of being an artist to let themselves off the hook of actually running a business. Or when Charlie Gilkey throws out a zinger, that feels so meant for me. Not for all of you too, but just for me.

There’s a very fragile line between giving all of yourself and losing all of yourself. Be careful when you’re walking it.

This post is about disillusionment, my own and yours too. It’s got to be the #1 pedaled intoxicant on the information superhighway. And we can have disillusionment on so many levels out here.

Ok then, how about a game of cards?

I’m asking myself today, if my dream of entrepreneurship, of doing things I love with people I love and for people who truly appreciate the way I serve and who I choose to be while in service to and with them… I’m asking myself today, if it’s all been built on this shabby house of cards called disillusionment.

I can tell right now, this post isn’t going to underline some awesome life principle about disillusionment. Because for now, I haven’t got one. I am in it. And so, I am going to be in it. I am going to show it to you. I want to talk about it. With you. Here. On my blog.

I am going to save, whatever great thing I learn about disillusionment, for another post. After probably a few good coaching sessions from members of my team of adorers and supporters. Some is free. Some is paid for. All of it, is mine. And I will take it. But not today. Not right now.

One more time, I recognize how I wait. And then at some moment, I say now. Now you have my permission.  Go ahead. Really speak. Say what you’d like say. As if you were sitting here, with me, in person.

I want it to be real, don’t you too?

And I don’t know if jaws will drop down, I’ve really lost track of all the possible “outcomes.” There are too many to consider. And none of them really matter. If I’m willing to honor myself, my heart, my truth, my voice, me. My blog.

I’m out here, to be doing something different. I believe tomorrow’s heaven is built on it.

I have wares to sell, offerings of service. But if I took money out of the equation, I’m here to be me. I’m here to practice that. With an audience. Because I think secretly, deep down in all of us, we have this innate desire to find and connect with our audience, our people. The people that feel like, after you read a tweet or post, you know them. That You and I get each other.

I mean, I want that to be real. Don’t you too?

That’s intimacy there. That delicious feeling of getting got and getting them. You know, that moment in your head/heart/head/heart… in your BEING, when you get someone and they get you.

Online, it’s a word or sentence, written or read.

Offline, well you know. Think about what it’s like to look into someone’s eyes…

And the moment I decide, “Yeah, I get you!” I’m also saying, I like/admire/respect you. And I trust you. Or, at least what you just said. It resonates with me. I feel it and know what it is. I say Yes to it. I say, “Me too, me too!” You and I share this idea. Common ground. Solidarity. Union. Joining. We are one. For a moment anyway.

And so I get why disillusionment, can be such a bitch to swallow. Why it digs in so deep. Twisting & writhing. Why my teeth hurt. I gnash. I clench. I tighten. And swallow. Swallow swallow swallow it fucking whole. Opening wide. In you go…

Disillusionment.

It’s when you find out that what you’d hoped for isn’t gonna happen. Or at least, not the way you planned it. Like, just because you build a blog and have a pure heart, you are not going to replace that corporate salary. Not without real work. Real commitment.

It’s when someone chooses to show up with you completely contrary to everything they’ve shown you as who they are, until this moment. So all the “Yeah, I get you’s!”, the likes, admiration and respect. All the trust (which now turns back on you, because you’re the dumbfuck who trusted). Common ground. Solidarity. The union. The whole enchilada. Gets flushed down the toilet.

It’s out here. There is plenty of it being pedaled. Don’t think you won’t step in it. You will.

Disillusionment requires a disguise. Otherwise, like all scary unwanted things, we’d run from you if we saw you coming. And disillusionment does not look (or smell) like the steaming heap of crap that it is. It’s nice and warm though, when it squishes up between your toes! Consider it a disillusionment consolation prize. A fair exchange for all that other stuff you gave… the respect, the admiration, the trust. The tweets. The time. Your love & energy. For shit between your toes.

It is, very much like highschool in some ways. Discovering that there are people out here, whom you respect and admire, who turn out to have highschool attitudes. And be, not what they say they are, at all.

Disillusionment is here. Sitting beside me. I’m figuring out what I’m gonna do. Today, I tell myself and you the truth. I feel so disillusioned, I want to quit. I want to throw it all away. Flush it all. After I puke of course.

Tomorrow, I might feel different. I don’t know. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today, I am disillusioned.

And this daily disillusionment I swallow is making me ill, infecting pieces of me, and my business. I cannot lie to myself any further. I cannot swallow another day.

A stranger inhabits too many of my inner rooms meant for soft light and smooth adoring voices. Not this dark, thickening suffocation. This strange-her.

She’s big & ugly. She’s a swarm becoming thunder. She’s a beast.

She is my intoxicant. And I am disillusioned.

Tagged as: Beast, Bridget Pilloud, Charlie Gilkey, Danielle LaPorte, Disappointment, disillusionment, Self Doubt, Tricia Karp