During my weekly meditation and accounting of self I allowed myself to step back and really consider how I feel about the events of the last year. I took a moment to embrace my anger and disappointment in some of the things that have transpired in my professional and personal life. I let myself be angry for a good half hour, reflecting on how it felt to be mad and reasoning where some of that anger came from. Doing this helped me to recognize that I’ve been angry and operating with that anger as an undercurrent for some time.
I cannot go into details about the conditions of my anger without casting down negativity on a number of people. I don’t want to do that. There is no real need to be that person anymore. What I can say is that I internalized a great many things and allowed that to take away from who I am and what makes me happy. Moreover, I found myself worrying about what people think about me, which is very counterproductive and worthy of lighting the flames of anger within me. Once I’d rolled around in all of it for a while I decided to consider the impact of the anger.
Being angry makes me less effective as a person. The trick then is to recognize the triggers and to learn how to turn that emotion into something else–something that has nothing to do with undoing lies told or righting wrongs or managing impressions–something that is born from the core parts of you. For me that means returning to the idea of story and space and connecting with those emotions that swirl within me in order to embed them in story.
I’m fortunate to have writing as an outlet.