I can’t believe I don’t have a blog yet. I guess that’s what happens when you have singular focus on one thing for 15 years. I suppose that also gets you what I currently have: all dreams pertaining and relating to skydiving, check, fulfilled, and continually forming and filling. Malcolm Gladwell could totally use me in Outliers Part 2… 10,000 hours? Um, yes, and then some and some more.
Well, this is it, peeps. My blog. Yay!! Honestly, I’m so frickin stoked!!! After writing for Blue Skies Magazine this past year (love it, BSM is the best, duh), and having to relate all my content back to skydiving, this opportunity to write all of life feels like I lost 250 pounds as the obese subject on some TLC documentary special or something. Sh*t! Don’t get me wrong, this is totally win-win—now having this outlet for the life coachy side of myself (by the way, I’m a life coach too, love it, kill it, 10,000 hours here I come), my skydiving articles won’t be so strained with me trying to force my non-skydiving inspiration in there where it doesn’t belong. As such, I’m foreshadowing all my content will be notably better. Awesome. (And just for the record, Lara and Kolla at BSM have always let me write literally whatever I want, with zero edits, even when the only thing skydiving-related in my whole column was the random DZ reference in the first paragraph. Thank you, lovely ladies, just wait for the next one, I’m so on it, you have no idea.)
Ok, so next thing you should know… I’m about high comms. Hence the title of this blog. (Oh my God, YAY, I have a blog!! Yes, seriously, I’m this excited, and this much of a dork, go with it.) High comms, as in high communication. As in, just say it. Be honest. Be courageous. Step through your fear and talk about whatever it is you actually want to talk about, or exactly what you don’t want to talk about. Take a deep breath, step onto the coals, and do it. It’s f*cking magic I tell you, because the soles of your feet are fine on the other side. In fact, you end up feeling like you just had an aloe-vera foot-rub. Shocking, yes. True… yes.
So anyway, why this seemingly odd conviction about high comms? Here’s the story… back in the day, I enacted a harsh social experiment on myself. Gosh, when was it, like 5 years ago? 6? 5? I don’t know, if I really thought about it I could tell you, but the point is what I did. Long story super short for the sake of a reasonably sized first post, I was just out of yet another failed relationship. Sure, we can get through break-ups, done it before, but because of how this one went down, what I did, how I felt, how bad it was… I had an epiphany. I had an a-ha moment to match Jodie Foster in Contact. I actually think I went a little nuts, but with the most striking clarity a mind this side of the Milky Way had ever experienced. Truth was, I really wanted a boyfriend, and it finally hit me that what I was doing simply was not yielding the results I desired. As such, and like the obsessive over-committer I am with everything, I gave up dating and sex COMPLETELY, and vowed that regardless of whether I liked someone, or someone liked me, that no way, no how, I was NOT dating until I was actual friends with the guy first. I believed the way to achieve this friendship was 100% honesty, and 100% sharing. Not that I was a liar before, certainly not—I was talking, abnormal, no holds barred, tell everyone, everything. Honestly, it sucked at first, but ultimately wasn’t all that hard. Once I realized my life wasn’t going to end if I—don’t say it—was myself with guys I liked, I stepped into onto a whole new era of confidence and calm.
And I did this… hard core… for a year and a half. No dating and over-the-top sharing that only a certain few could survive. But you know what, I weeded out the faint of heart, and attracted a fearless few not afraid to be who they are, and inspired by the mirror they saw in me. Those few became, and still are, my very best friends.
Anyway, this story is one of the major reasons I am the communicator I am now. And why I also love high communication as a topic and lifestyle. I am SUCH a better version of myself because of this experience, and I’ve always been pretty awesome. Seriously, thank God for getting dumped worse than normal, otherwise who knows if I’d ever have freaked enough to take such aggressive action. What I didn’t know at the time, and only realized much later, was that that experience—that commitment to myself, honoring exactly what I was thinking and feeling, and saying it all out loud—that was one of the key experiences that created my voice, my perspective, and my passion. And good lord, who would I be without that?? Don’t even want to contemplate that one.
So there we have it. High comms. My plan is to post when I’m inspired. Past, present, future, it’s all fair game. I hope my topics help. Topic suggestions always welcome, encouraged in fact. Email me anytime. I’m on twitter now too, @highcomms, and I’m adding a facebook fan page soon. Video-blogs will be a future thing, but I’m definitely into that idea. I’m doing it all because I feel like I’ve finally figured out how to say what I’m really about. It was always wearing the skydiving/life-coach cloak, covering up the fact that I just dig authenticity. Real people willing to live as large as they can. I hope I will always fall into that category. If I ever start not liking myself, I’ll know I’m slipping.
Thank you so much for reading! I totally love you, totally mean it. Yay… here we go……………..
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But you know what, I weeded out the faint of heart, and attracted a fearless few not afraid to be who they are, and inspired by the mirror they saw in me.
