Broadcasting
Mar. 26th, 2002 01:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mattlistener"He who cannot howl, will not find his pack." -Charles Simic
For some of my adult life the top challenge on my personal stack has been broadcasting. For lack of sending out my human signal, I don't get noticed, I don't draw people into my orbit, and I feel lonely and isolated. Since I've been successful in relationships in recent years this has been lower in priority -- until just recently.
A few days ago I *noticed* myself *not* sending out signal, which I don't think I've ever caught so consciously before. I was around people I didn't know, and in the moment I got a whiff of some kind of "don't notice me" system in myself. I realized in a flash that I knew where this came from, and it gives me an idea for how to get out of it.
I made a defining life-choice in grade school. Faced with mockery and rejection from my peers, I thought it through one day and decided not to invest any concern in being popular, being included, or in what people thought about me. I changed channels, focusing my energies instead in learning, reading, and in good 1-on-1 interactions with other fringe kids who were on my level.
This I've known for a long time. What I didn't know, and realized a few days ago, was that I did something more -- I turned off my broadcasting system. I wasn't interested in any of the noticing I would get on the schoolyard, so I stopped being noticed. This worked very well in context and freed me up for everything that was important to me at the time, but has become a great handicap today.
I've always approached my broadcasting trouble as a matter of figuring out how to send out signal. But that's all wrong! Think of an infant -- humans are born broadcasting. I did something, and am doing something to this day, to block signal from going out. If I work out how to *stop* doing that, signal will go out naturally, effortlessly, genuinely.
As I've begun to do, the way to stop the blocking is to cultivate noticing myself doing it, learn the details of my "don't notice me" strategies, find how it feels to be there, and thereby open up to the choice to be a different way. That's going to take a lot of noticing that I don't currently do, but I feel like I have enough of a grip on it now to start.
Why has this moved to the top of my list again? I'm realizing my medium-term desire to move into a larger living space with Brandi is mostly so that I'll be able to host and facilitate community groups. I have lots of skills and talents that will make that work, but to be as successful at it as I envision I could be, I'll need to be broadcasting well.
I've been using Livejournal in a sporadic fashion -- I can't get interested in writing in a daily-update style, and have been feeling around for a more specific purpose to put it to. I'm going to start using it as a log for noticing what I do to not get noticed.
For some of my adult life the top challenge on my personal stack has been broadcasting. For lack of sending out my human signal, I don't get noticed, I don't draw people into my orbit, and I feel lonely and isolated. Since I've been successful in relationships in recent years this has been lower in priority -- until just recently.
A few days ago I *noticed* myself *not* sending out signal, which I don't think I've ever caught so consciously before. I was around people I didn't know, and in the moment I got a whiff of some kind of "don't notice me" system in myself. I realized in a flash that I knew where this came from, and it gives me an idea for how to get out of it.
I made a defining life-choice in grade school. Faced with mockery and rejection from my peers, I thought it through one day and decided not to invest any concern in being popular, being included, or in what people thought about me. I changed channels, focusing my energies instead in learning, reading, and in good 1-on-1 interactions with other fringe kids who were on my level.
This I've known for a long time. What I didn't know, and realized a few days ago, was that I did something more -- I turned off my broadcasting system. I wasn't interested in any of the noticing I would get on the schoolyard, so I stopped being noticed. This worked very well in context and freed me up for everything that was important to me at the time, but has become a great handicap today.
I've always approached my broadcasting trouble as a matter of figuring out how to send out signal. But that's all wrong! Think of an infant -- humans are born broadcasting. I did something, and am doing something to this day, to block signal from going out. If I work out how to *stop* doing that, signal will go out naturally, effortlessly, genuinely.
As I've begun to do, the way to stop the blocking is to cultivate noticing myself doing it, learn the details of my "don't notice me" strategies, find how it feels to be there, and thereby open up to the choice to be a different way. That's going to take a lot of noticing that I don't currently do, but I feel like I have enough of a grip on it now to start.
Why has this moved to the top of my list again? I'm realizing my medium-term desire to move into a larger living space with Brandi is mostly so that I'll be able to host and facilitate community groups. I have lots of skills and talents that will make that work, but to be as successful at it as I envision I could be, I'll need to be broadcasting well.
I've been using Livejournal in a sporadic fashion -- I can't get interested in writing in a daily-update style, and have been feeling around for a more specific purpose to put it to. I'm going to start using it as a log for noticing what I do to not get noticed.
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no subject
Date: 2002-03-30 08:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-03-30 10:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-05-29 06:47 am (UTC)You made a conscious decision in High School;
but is this also part of your 'blending' capacity as a counsellor?
I wonder if you could post the full reference for the Simic quote?
thanks and Blessed Be
xx