Every time something exciting happens, I have a familiar urge, one that’s plagued me my entire life. I immediately want to tell someone else.
These days it’s a lot easier than it used to be. Social media makes it incredibly easy to write up the news and press publish. Even with the interference of algorithms, if you have 100 friends or so you can usually ensure someone reads it. Of course that doesn’t mean that they give you a sign that they did — either in the form of some sort of reaction or comment.
But it’s a quick way of sharing the news. And making it feel real. See, maybe it’s an extrovert stereotype, but things never feel real until I tell someone else.
My usual style, however, isn’t the big personal post. Not at first anyway. Instead, I have a few folks I tend to tell right away.
Usually my partner, who lives with me, finds out about things first. Usually. (Unless it’s something he really has no interest in or he’s overwhelmed and having an awful day and it seems like I should let him have some space and quiet.)
But I have a few other folks I tend to text or PM about what’s going on. And maybe after I talk to them, I’ll post about it to my personal social media.
Occasionally some of this makes it into my blog — usually if it sticks with me somehow or there’s a deeper issue at stake or a lesson here that surfaces over time.
But I have to say that I don’t have an awful lot of secrets. Not strictly speaking of course. There’s a lot that doesn’t make it into public. And I suppose I don’t tell anyone everything (my partner probably comes the closest to hearing everything — but he’s an introvert with a stressful job, so I try to be considerate and not talk as much as I could).
But there are very few things that I don’t tell anyone. Even then, I’ll find myself writing about them in my private journal — which while it isn’t strictly someone else kind of feels like it in the ways that matter.
It’s because of that urge to make it real somehow, I suppose. I’m not sure where that comes from, that feeling that it never feels real until I tell someone else.