2014: The year of cutting out the nonsense

This post comes courtesy of a two hour long brunch with my best friend Erik. As Erik recently turned 30 and I am about to head into my mid-30s, we were having a conversation about how things have changed as we have gotten older, and one of the biggest changes we have found recently, is that we are done dealing with the nonsense. To be honest, the word we used was not nonsense, but this is a family safe blog, so I made the decision to censor myself here.

Over the last few years, I have talked at length about getting rid of the toxic people/things in my life, and to be honest, it has been awesome. This new attitude goes beyond that. It gets at this idea that I feel like I am at a place in my life, where I do not have time for games or double speak or passive aggressive behaviors. I am at a place in my life, where I want to be up front with people and I expect them to do the same, and if they are not going to be up front, it is time to stop wasting energy on their collective nonsense. I have become more liberal about blocking/unfriending/unfollowing people from various social media sites if I get tired of the nonsense. This is not about getting rid of people who disagree with me, but getting rid of people who are posting things just to get a rise out of people without really paying attention to what they are posting, especially not researching stupid memes. This is about getting rid of people who complain nonstop about awful things are, but do nothing to fix their personal situation. This is about making my entire social media experience more worthwhile.

It is also about not wasting time on people who are not really important to me. I have enough people in my life who actually care, that why would I waste time on people who clearly do not care about my life? When you start to think about who matters NOW as opposed to who has mattered in the past, life gets much more focused. At some point, the past has to stay in the past. This is something we have been discussing in class recently, as we read through The Great Gatsby. My students get stuck on things they cannot change, and I have some students who are trying so hard to recapture a moment with a specific person, and we are reading this book about a guy who destroys multiple lives by doing that. It is possible to acknowledge having loved someone, and yet still allow yourself to truly move on in life to something bigger and better.

This also gets at the idea of just putting yourself out there without worrying too much about what other people will think. Last week I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Utah with a bunch of people I had never met. If this had happened in my 20s, I would have probably had a miserable time. I would have ordered almost no food, I would not have said anything that could have been taken in a way different from I meant it, and no one would have gotten to know me. This time, I had no shame in ordering whatever food I wanted to eat. I went back from seconds if I still felt hungry, and I felt like I was very open about who I am, the kind of teacher I am, and the kind of life I lead. There was a time when I avoided any conversation about my background in the Mormon faith. But on this trip, I was very upfront about it. I was going to tell people who I was and let them decide if I was someone they wanted to talk to. it was a completely freeing experience. The minute you allow yourself to just be you, flaws and all, everything gets infinitely more clear. You gain insight into yourself, and how you relate to other people. I knew that this person wanted to talk to me because of who I am, not because of who I was trying to be.

For years I tried to be everything to everyone else, and I allowed myself to be sucked into the nonsense. I bought all of the nonsense. I was not taking care of myself, and I was not growing, or learning anything about how I related to the world honestly. 2014 is going to go down as the year where I learned to honestly communicate to the world. I preach honesty in my classroom above all else. I ask my students for honest feedback because how can I grow as a teacher if the people who are being taught by me do not have a way to express how I am doing. it has led to an awesome, if sometimes overwhelming, dialogue between myself and my students, but also among my students themselves. I believe that I have an obligation to my students to practice what I preach, so that is my big key right now. If you ask me something, I am going to cut through the nonsense. If you want to know something about me, I am going to cut through the nonsense. Be prepared for truth. I cannot promise it will always be tactful, but it will always be sincere. Let us all practice sincere honesty. Let us all put our real selves out there because that way we know who is really there for us, and not just because we are pretty.

2014: Down with the nonsense, up with the sincere honesty. let's make it a thing!