Still Needing External Validation

<p style=”clear: both”>Having turned off comments did (briefly) help with blogging, strangely. I think it had to do with having the sort of convoluted head that wants to manage other people’s impressions of me, that wants to give others what they want from me so much that I can start to lose myself around other people, and that it seems a little crazy, but it’s just one of those basic things about being me that I have to come to terms with — when comments are off, I am writing this for myself, but then I am free to share it, which — yeah crazy. And so also, I am careful with the stats that are available to me, that are mostly a generic where are the hits coming from, what are people looking for. And it’s this that kills me: at one point the unreliable narrator “bestowed” me with her two top search terms, “snorting abilify” and “edna krabapple porn,” which, really, what does that say about who we are and what we do? But I think that the search term bringing people to this blog that has surpassed that is “External Validation.”

So I feel a need to address anybody who arrives at my blog looking for — what? information about what external validation IS, or advice about how to get it? I have a sick feeling, from doing my own searches on the term that there’s this impression one can conquer one’s need for external validation, which, you know, we’re not wired that way, and there’s probably a reason for that, it’s the psyche’s very own checks and balances system.

And I feel uncomfortable addressing a generic “you” who arrive here presumably because your need for external validation has started to seem problematic. I would absolutely give you external validation because I think that as a human being (look! I assume you are not a bot or Eliza or a Turing test, but, heck even if you are…) you are entitled to external validation. But my saying that? Has got to undercut my authority when I tell you, you are a fabulous human being, your sensitivity and intelligence and — there’s no one else like you, and the universe is a better place because you’re here. That has all the reassurance of “You’re really special. Just like everyone else.”

But what I wonder is if it helps to know that there are apparently thousands of other people searching for external validation?

Blah. The above has been sitting in my drafts folder for weeks, like when I said that having comments off helped me blog it was simply true and not ironic. So now I have another blog entry in my head and want to clear this one, but I’ve been thinking about what works and doesn’t work in blogging. I was with a friend the other evening and we were discussing the news in another friend’s life which had been announced in her blog, and I wondered how I had stumbled across it because “I don’t read her blog.” My friend laughed “None of us read each other’s blogs. I don’t read your blog.” But I sort of laughed, “I don’t write my blog for you.”

The times when blog reading has been most compelling is when there is clearly a story unfolding in someone’s life, when they are clearly at a critical juncture. And I am perfectly happy that things have been no more eventful than my husband working long hours, my kids having recitals, which are their own stories, but with very slow, curvature-of-the-earth imperceptible arcs.

On the other hand, I am experiencing wrenching feelings of all the eventfulness in the lives of people I love, milestones and movings on and general May-ness, strain and exhaustion and stricken again and again by how interconnected we all are. And the writing comes out anyway, but I don’t expect any readership, don’t expect it to seem compelling.

On the other hand, if you arrive at my blog wanting some serious advice about external validation, the best I can do is promise you that it’s okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. We’re going to have to be okay together because we may not be aware of how interconnected we are most of the time, but it doesn’t change the truth of it anyway. And your needing external validation? That’s completely okay. I need it too. I’ll think everything’s cool and then the next day be wobbly with insecurity again, and the lovely thing about it is I don’t get to maintain any illusions about being self-sufficient or having all of the answers.