Spiral Journal Spread 7: Be True To You

Be true to you ... that's a hard thing to do sometimes, isn't it? I've been struggling with that a bit lately, particularly when it comes to the daily grind. Sometimes it's hard to be true to yourself when circumstances are out of your control and the circumstances are not exactly favorable. Not sure if that makes sense. I stumbled across a blog the other day that stuck with me. Of course, now I can't find the blog, but I remember the message. The writer had started writing a blog to chronicle her every day life -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- but didn't tell anyone about it. But then her brother thought it might be fun to Google their names one night, and lo and behold, her blog popped up. She hadn't held back on her blog. She blogs about family issues, friend issues, work issues, whatever she's dealing with, so it was all there to see. At first she was embarrassed and concerned, but now that she had been discovered, she couldn't just all the sudden stop laying it all out there. So she continued. Some of her family and friends were supportive of her upfront, in-your-face honesty while others were not quite too happy, but still she continued. And she was true to herself. And I cheered her on for that. 

I've written a couple posts that family members haven't liked because some of the things my family has been through have not been very pretty, but don't we all have our difficult family issues? And I've written a couple posts in which I've referenced difficult times on the job, and it's unfortunate that I feel like I have to censor myself so much more there. Oh, to be my own boss! For the record, I have a great boss. But there are others farther up the pay scale than I whom I'm tasked to work with on a regular basis who, shall we say, don't see the sky the same color as I do nor value what I bring to the table. I guess that's the crutch of social media. You put your thoughts out there, somebody's gonna see them, and they just might not like them. The most difficult part is when you get into situations where you feel you can't speak your mind, even very diplomatically speak your mind, without facing potentially dire consequences. So the challenge becomes how do you then be true to yourself ... without quitting your job, selling everything, grabbing your family and moving to the Keys?  Ah, the scourge of responsibility...

This page actually started out quite a mess before I turned it around. I decided to take Roben Marie's advice and take all the pages out of the spiral journal while I'm working on them. Then I'll put them all back in when I'm through.  Much easier that way!  You can see my other pages in this journal here. Thanks for stopping in!