Hello, hello!  As you may know, last week I decided to do a writing challenged turned Q&A thing (see it here).  If you haven’t chosen a number, but are still interested in doing so, feel free!  I discussed day 29 last week.  Day 8 is up today.  And days 19, 28, 12, 15, and 26 are coming up in that order (it’s a first come, first served order).  Today’s topic is courtesy of Dallas Funk.  She chose day 8, which is “share something you struggle with.”  Her only stipulation was that it be about more than my struggle to meet my writing goals, because she wants to learn something new about me.  So, I guess I’ll write about the fact that I struggle with expressing myself.

 It’s kind of like that.  But don’t get me wrong, it’s mostly just a face-to-face and/or an emotional thing.  In face-to-face conversations, I mostly just feel awkward when I’m asked for my opinion or whatever, so I end up uh-ing a lot while my brain plots out a response or I just go with the old standbys “I don’t know” or “I don’t care.”  Then there’re those moments when I give a way too concise answer and people look at me like I’m supposed to say more because apparently conciseness isn’t conducive to small talk.  That’s why I like the Interwebz and texting.  I can still have a real-time talk, but I can take my time to think through an answer without feeling like I’m being put on the spot.

Even worse than all of that, though, is when I have to express myself emotionally.  I laugh, I smile, I cry.  That’s about it.  It’s not like I can jump up and down when I’m excited.  I can’t scream or punch things when I’m angry.  So, negative emotions come out as tears (which only manages to piss me off more because crying is weak even though I know it’s really not).  Positive emotions come out as a smile or a laugh or whatever.  And I’m not blaming this entirely on the fact that I can’t do most of the physical responses, it’s actually mostly because I’m a bottler by nature.  I push emotions deep down into the abyss of my soul where they belong.

The weirdest part is that I don’t have much trouble expressing these things in my writing.  Granted, most of my main characters tend to be fairly reserved with their emotions, but they’re better at expressing themselves than I am.  Maybe it was all of those psychology classes I took that helped.  Who knows?  But I can say that I’m trying to work on learning to express myself better, whether in day-to-day conversation or with my emotions.  The latter is proving the most difficult.  And my hermit-ness doesn’t really help with the former.

What about you?  What do you struggle with?

Until next week!

P.S. I’m debating on posting a poem I wrote in undergrad one of these Fridays.  Anyone interested in that?  After all, it’s National Poetry Month.  But if no one is interested, I won’t do it.