#WTF: We’re not actually communicating with each other - we are unconsciously communicating lies.

That's a quote from Lady Gaga giving a talk at Yale.

Watch below:

Song that goes with the post:

That quote really struck me (the whole video actually) because I could totally relate. I lost my mind when I first moved to the island 2.5 years ago. I went from 100,000 mph, running my own "business" to (almost overnight) being "another half" and not only learning the language of compromise but the language of WTF have I been doing for the last 4 years.

As I've said previously, I had to go quiet in social due to the gentleman I was dating, but what I learned in the process was how truly addicted I was, and how unfulfilled the process made me. I vividly remember talking to Love #1 about what I could do with my life. Talk Nerdy isn't you, he'd remind me. I tried to keep it going, but I knew in my heart I was beating a dead horse. My rose colored lenses had been cleaned, and I began smelling the stench of my own bullshit.

I began literally HATING social media, HATING digital, and HATING this world that we were all living in which felt like mental masturbation. I had (in my mind) been to hell and back, and all I got was a lousy t-shirt.

Despite projecting myself as this "social media bad ass/ sex kitten," I was anything but. All I was, was a scared girl who got picked last for kickball and was royally pissed off that her heart got broken. Instead of choosing bon bons and the couch however, I said fuck you to life wanting to instead pull a Frank Sinatra and only do it My Way.

I study trends, and patterns (to a point now where it is completely unconscious), but who was I to give people advice on how to live? Was I really living it myself? I "had these answers" for everything, but my biggest problem was not looking at the person in the mirror who was projecting and communicating through my own perspective. After this wholllleee journey I STILL wasn't happy, and STILL wasn't feeling fulfilled.

That was a very low moment for me both personally and professionally.

Don't hate digital and your passion, advised Love #1 one day after I had clearly become a blubbery bag of bones. You're good at it. Use it FOR good, and stop looking for advice in so many different people. Heck, don't even take my advice on not taking advice.

I looked at him bewildered.

Here, read this book, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. It's a book based on a series of interviews between the author and journalist Bill Moyers. It dissects narratives, and storytelling in great length. From mythology to the institutions we've created - it's pretty neat. Admittedly I still have yet to finish the book, but I understood what he was saying. 

You understand this space because you live in it, he said. Don't turn your back on it, just change your purpose within the medium.

He was right, and after we broke up not only did I solve a problem within my community by building an app (that I also presented on the CNBC show The West Texas Investors Club), but I have more projects than I know what to do with and have built out this space as a place to breathe.

<tangent> It really is funny, I am a true blue writer in my heart. Nothing makes me happier than sitting at my great great aunt's secretary desk with a candle lit and a glass of red wine while typing away. It's like taking a deep breath and finally exhaling. I need to write to think, to be, to ... well, you get the idea. </tangent>

I still get a handful of emails every week from people asking about "how do they follow their passion," and most notably dating advice requests. I even wrote about one the other week.

After I finished and sent him the post, (the bottom line was that he was WAYYY too wordy) he admitted his own problem ...

I then had to catch a flight but offered to rewrite his dating profile on the plane (as it is the best place to write without any interruptions of phone calls, or emails), and asked him to leave it up for 30 days to see if there was any change in his dating activity. 

I got on the plane, opening up my laptop, and stared at the screenshots of his profile that I had made before I left. With each scroll through preview, it struck me that I was repeating a pattern. Yes, I do love to help people - truly, but this isn't educating, this is enabling. He already knows the answers to his questions. He can solve his own problem, he just has to be brave and willing enough to admit it to himself. I can't help people do that, that's on them.

There was a quote I heard a few weeks back that said, "you can't heal what you can't feel." Dating shows you who you are in a jarring way (if you are willing to look). You are the company that you keep, so what type of mate are you attracting? Dating is NIGHT AND DAY for me now, and not only do I meet super level headed successful dudes, but they're so chill and so down to earth. LIGHT YEARS away from the kind of men I dated previously when I lived in Los Angeles.

In becoming a different person myself, I changed the type of people that come knocking on my door.

I don't want to call it "inner work" or whatever hokey bullshit shrinks place labels on it - the bottom line is truly becoming an adult. Learning to forgive (truly) people that have "wronged" you, and much like Taylor Swift learn to shake shit off. We're all humans, we're all learning as we go.

I thought I was moving to an island to get married and pop out babies, and instead I was given this incredible opportunity to have true growth sans the crutch of social, and the internet. I became a person; I shed the persona.

Much like everyone else in the world, I still have no idea what I'm doing - but unlike before, I know I'm not going to pretend like I have the answers (am still asking too many questions myself).