#breakingradiosilence

The Rest of the Way, Part Five: Age Is More Than a Number

I just turned forty-seven this month so for the next year my age will be a prime number. It wasn’t so bad because I get free stuff now on my birthday because of app on my phone (Starbucks and Taco Cabana). Personally, I’m looking forward to turning fifty when I can officially start getting my senior discount and my AARP card. Yes, I’m looking forward to getting older. I know this flies in the…

The Rest of the Way, Part Four: Putting On Grown-Up Clothes

Recently I’ve begun to tell myself something that helps to quell some lingering anxiety and it’s this: If someone has a problem with me, they can put on their grown-up clothes and come talk to me about it. One of the things my anxiety does to me is get me thinking people are wanting to land on me but holding back waiting for the right moment. In reality, I’m over-thinking crap I shouldn’t be…

The Rest of the Way, Part Three: You’re Not Just Here To Soothe Someone Else

For more years than I care to admit, I tried to figure out why people were insensitive and downright mean and cruel when I hadn’t done anything to warrant that. I thought that my mere presence just brought out the worst in people because I was fat, shy, and ugly. I thought that I was too much of a weirdo for people to want to treat me right. I also thought I disagreed with too many people, too on…

The Rest of the Way, Part Two: Believing In Something Good, Or Just Better

“It gets better.” I’ve heard this a lot over the years but have had a lot of trouble believing in it. Why? Well for starters, you can read the previous blog entry in this series for one answer to that single question of why. But there is a second answer that I’ll go into here. For as long as I can remember, I feel like I heard ‘no’ more often than ‘yes’. I feel like I’ve been discouraged more…

The Rest of the Way, Part One: Shifting Out of Crisis-Mode

I like to blame my anxiety on hormones and shit, and hormones and shit do play a factor due to my age (forty-seven). But I’ve begun to realize I was raised to be in crisis-management mode from a very early age and because of that, it’s a default setting in my mind. So the questions I’ve asked myself about this are: 1) Where did this crisis-management mode setting come from? 2) How the hell do I…

The Rest of the Way – Introduction

I’ve been telling myself this almost every day for the last year: “I’ve made it this far, and so I know I can make it from here. I don’t always know how but I know I will.” It’s kind of a play on a quote from a movie, ‘Clash of the Titans’ with Sam Worthington and yes, I know this movie is a cheese-popcorn fest but there was some good stuff in it. One line in particular: “You’ve brought us this…

Writing About Fear Is Not Easy

For me, writing about fear is not easy not because I’m revealing things that show I’m vulnerable, but because I have been afraid of how my vulnerabilities will be received. And in the past, they weren’t always received very well. In fact, I’d say most of the time they were minimized, deflected, or rejected outright. I’ve always thought I was being too hard on people who minimize, deflect, and…

My Third Fear of Following Through: Attention

In order to have a chance of being successful at my goal of being a self-supporting writer and creative content producer, I will need to market and promote my work and by extension, myself. And the thought of this scares me because I’ve always said I’m not comfortable with attention on me. Why? Well, that one goes back even further than the first two fears. Some of my earliest memories are as a…