by Marty Coleman | Sep 12, 2013 | Chaz Bono, Mr. Xperience Says - 2013 |
Don’t blame me, Mr. Xperience says today is #5.
Who Are You?
It’s good to have a strong identity, isn’t it. If you don’t, it’s easy to be swayed and pushed and bullied into being someone else, someone the other person wants or needs you to be. That someone else could be a bad person, i.e. “He just fell in with the wrong crowd, that’s why he stole all that stuff.”
Being Secure
It could be you are being pushed by someone who isn’t very secure. To increase that security they want others to be like them, and that makes sense because they become more secure when they see others imitating them. That is how some parents are. But the best parents are secure. They are wanting their kid to be a unique being, not a mini-mom or mini-dad. They don’t need that reinforcement of their identity to compensate for their lack of confidence. They are happy to see their son or daughter find their own way in life, career, relationships.
Celebrating the Unique
They have ideas of what might work for their kid, and they put that forth. But they don’t reject or condemn the child when they become someone different than they are. They celebrate their kid’s uniqueness. That is how they make sure they have happy and secure kids.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Chaz Bono, 1969 – not dead yet, American writer and musician
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by Marty Coleman | Sep 11, 2013 | Mr. Xperience Says - 2013 |
Xperience tells me today is day #4.
Creativity
When it comes to creativity, stopping is the worst thing you can do. Yes, we can get stuck. But, unlike real physical stuckness, in most of our stuck situations we can change our situation, environment, focus, etc. We can leave something behind and come back to it. Hopefully the going away leads to seeing the problem in a new light. If you are a visual artist it can be seeing the cool colors – the greens,yellows and purples – of outdoors instead of the warm colors of your indoor space.
If you are a musician, maybe it’s listening to something you would never listen to, or something you haven’t heard in 20 years, or listening to the sounds of the world of the city instead of the suburbs. Something to mix up your understanding of sound.
Writers can write a story they know will terrible because they don’t know the subject at all. That should unstick them in a hurry.
Relationships
The most important area to realize this lesson is in relationships. Being ‘stuck’ in some aspect of a marriage or partnership is so common as to almost be the norm. Taking steps to change a relationship is scary. It’s easy to be stuck due to fear that unsticking things will get out of control, will change in unforeseen ways, will be painful. But taking action is still the best course of action in spite of the fear.
The question is what creative steps can you take to unstick yourself. Not unsticking the other person, since you don’t really have control over them, but yourself. How can you unstick you? That will most likely lead to the log jam breaking apart. Maybe not right away bit it will happen.
How have you unstuck yourself in the past either creatively or in relationships?
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Jeanette Winterson, 1959 – not dead yet, English writer
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by Marty Coleman | Sep 10, 2013 | Mr. Xperience Says - 2013 |
Mr. Xperience sees this happen all the time, how about you?
The End – Husbands and Wives
You hear it often when a woman gets divorced. She lost herself in her husband’s identity, or maybe her kids’ identity. A few years later she doesn’t know who she is anymore. A divorce occurs and she goes on a quest to find herself. It can happen to men as well, though I don’t hear about it as often.
The Start – Friends and Family
But a person who allows themselves to get lost sometimes practiced getting lost a lot earlier in life. Maybe it was an outgoing, dynamic friend who took you under her wing. It seemed great at first but after a while you realize you had become just a shadow presence. Your real identity didn’t come out, just variations on the theme that was your friend’s identity.
Or maybe it was your very strong willed family. Maybe your mother pushed you to be just like her, and because you just never developed the idea from early on that your own interests and personality were worthy of existence, you became a mini-mom.
The Practice
So, how do you not end up lost in another person? You practice being your own person again and again and again. That means you might have to fight for your identity’s right to exist. A lot of people don’t want to fight, they don’t like confrontation. But the price of not standing up for who you are is losing yourself. Is that worth it?
Practicing being who you are with grace and confidence is not the same as doing so with an angry chip on your shoulder though. Communicating honestly, responding calmly, but continuing to do what it is you know you are meant to do, in spite of pressure, is the key.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote is anonymous
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by Marty Coleman | Sep 9, 2013 | Don Marquis, Mr. Xperience Says - 2013 |
Last time Mr. Xperience gave you essential advice about sex. Today, he is guiding you in your child rearing. He just wants to help.
My mother told I did this many times on the changing table. She also said more than once she did not block it effectively. I probably should have apologized to her for that.
Moms, has this happened to you? Men, don’t wait to be told this story by your mother. Go apologize to her for peeing so rudely. And now that you have control of your limbs and bladder, lift the seat up before and put it down after.
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This public service announcement provided by Mr. Xperience
Quote by Don Marquis, 1878-1937, American writer
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by Marty Coleman | Sep 6, 2013 | Mr. Xperience Says - 2013, Yvonne Fulbright |
I am starting a new series today called ‘Mr. Xperience Says’. Some lessons and warnings we can hear again and again but it doesn’t take hold until Mr. Xperience tells it to us. They aren’t lesson I in particular learned via Mr. Xperience. Some I did learn that way, others I haven’t had to deal with but I know many close friends who have. Mr. Xperience is a busy man. Ms. Experience is too.
The Mistake
I have a number of friends who have done this, in spite of them being warned by friends and family that it was a bad idea. It wasn’t until Mr. Xperience told them that they really understood how bad an idea it was. It’s amazing how many people only pay attention to Mr. Xperience. It’s even MORE amazing to realize there are some people who never listen to Mr. Xperience and as a result make this and other mistakes again and again. Those people are hard to watch live life. It’s one thing to give advice, see it ignored but then see Mr. Xperience give the advice and it being learned. That is frustrating but at least you know the finally listened to the advice. But when they don’t even listen to Mr. Xperience, that is torture to watch.
My Xperience
I never had sex with my ex. Well, I did before she was my ex, but actually we slept in separate rooms for almost a year before she moved out so we weren’t having sex well before she was my ex, and that just logically continued afterwards. It’s not that we didn’t have the opportunity after she moved out since she had her own house, I had mine. But she wasn’t about to let that happen and I moved on relatively quickly as well.
Tucson
Many years later we spent 5 days alone together in Tucson, Arizona. We had gone there to talk to one of our daughters and try to persuade her into coming home with one of us. We did see her the first day but she got scared off by what turned out to be wrong tactics on our part and didn’t show up the next day for our expected conversation about things. We hung around for a number of days hoping she would show up, talking to her friends and landlord, but she never did. In the meanwhile we spent every day together, driving here and there, eating meals, waiting in this one cafe. We got along pretty well, with only one small tiff, and it was pretty much a version of some of the tiffs we had had during our marriage about child rearing. Not a huge fight or anything, just a difference of opinion.
Reassurance
We also stayed in the same hotel, about 3 doors down from each other. This scenario of course led to a bit of anxiety on my wife Linda’s part. She wasn’t really worried about anything happening between us, but at the same time, if something were ripe to happen, this situation was definitely letting it happen way to easily. So, she had some worries. Each night I called her and reassured her of the truth. The truth was, 1 – I loved her, not my ex. 2 – I didn’t want to have sex with my ex. 3 – she didn’t want to have sex with me, either. This made her feel better. I was very happy to have married a woman who trusted me in that situation.
My ex was (and still is) in a relationship herself. I wasn’t privy to her conversations with her boyfriend, obviously, but it would not surprise me if he had some of the same worries. I might be wrong, she could have spent years railing against me, talking about how much she loathed me, but I never got the impression she did. At the same time, she did divorce me and she never showed any interest in the possibility of getting back together in any way, sexual or otherwise. I don’t know her boyfriend’s personality though, besides him being a nice guy, so I don’t know what their mutual worries or thoughts were about it. Whatever the case, we both spent the days as caring co-parents to our daughter, not as ex-lovers yearning but denying ourselves sex with each other. I am glad of that.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Yvonne K Fulbright (and many others)
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