Turning 30 means some kind of fundamental change is supposed to happen, right? For some people, it's marriage thinking, or kids, or buying a house, or fixing into a career. For me, though, it's about being more open. I've seen thirty years of guardedness and, well, it's exhausting! Always having to calculate who is going to react what way to me. Always fearing that being open means being vulnerable. And being vulnerable means I might be taken advantage of emotionally.
Well, I don't want to do it anymore. So I'm moving on from that. I'm putting the fear aside, I'm going to embrace the uncomfortable tension I have of being really truthful about what really makes me...me. And if someone doesn't like what I have to tell them, if they turn away from me because they think my life is scary, or my history is too complicated, or my needs to much, well, that's okay. I'll deal with that. But staying closed in fear really isn't getting me anywhere.
Given my dorky background and career, I think about building human relationships like I think about data analysis. You have to gather as much data as possible in order to fully come to a conclusion. With people, that data includes personal information. Without that personal information, there is so much missing data. And we all know that missing data leads to terribly inaccurate conclusions. We have to make assumptions based on previous experience and try to use those assumptions to inform our current situation. Well, I don't want the relationships I build with humans to be based off missing data. Because the assumptions people are going to make about me are definitely going to be wrong. So now, I work to fill in the gaps so the people with whom I want to be close will be able to have all information necessary to come to accurate conclusions about me.
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