He shut his eyes in anguish willing the pain to go away. Nobody understood what he was trying to do, especially his father, but they could at least try and support him. Instead, because of their own discomfort they shunned him and in turn made him feel like what he was doing was somehow wrong.
Jim wasn’t trying to do anything illegal or untoward. He was just trying to be happy and to follow a path of creativity instead of working for the “the man.” Jim wasn’t a lazy person, by any means, but he was fed up with working for someone else. He was unwilling and refused to work for a company again.
When he asked his family to look at his new website, he was excited. All things possible and positive flashed through his mind and he felt content with his current situation and positive about his future. Jim had spent long hours creating the layout of his new website. It had a blog that supported his overall theme and a page to showcase his literary works. He created a Facebook page to increase viewership and slowly, he was introduced into a new world. A world of other writers, thinkers, and bloggers.
The overall plan was to use the website as a creative outlet, it, encouraging him to hone his writing skills through blogging and writing short stories. Along the way, he would use third party advertisements and affiliate marketing to earn extra cash. And everything seemed to be going fine until his father said one word, in an email, that rocked his new world and ignited his worry.
This isn’t a new thing, really. What did he expect his family’s response to be. If he had had the forethought to ask himself before, he might have come up with the reaction he got. But he didn’t.
It’s hard for someone to change. Things often change on the outside, but rarely does change occur deep down, in the space that makes a person who they are. And, Jim was a dreamer, an optimist, and now somehow, a bit of a coward.
His mother had often told him,
“Son, you need to think before you speak. What you say has consequences. If you just blurt out whatever comes into your head you might hurt someone’s feelings or make them uncomfortable.”
Jim never listened. Or rather, he listened but couldn’t change.
Being impulsive was hard wired in his very being. It was who he was, for better or for worse. To not be impulsive, to somehow remove the impulsiveness was impossible. Instead, his Mother’s intended teachings backfired and Jim did exactly what she had taught him. He thought about what he wanted to say, or do, and said it, or did it. No filtering, no analyzing possible consequences of his actions.
For a long time Jim flung sentences at the world like snowballs and acted out every possible whim without thinking, until his mother’s warning started coming to pass. Until he started hurting those around him through his actions. And that’s when Jim met fear and found out he was a coward.
Jim’s world was small now, shallow, and one dimensional. A self-created reality constructed to only allow that which was conceivable and understandable to manifest. It was a prison to keep him safe from the unknown. Writing though was helping him break out of his mental cell.
Writing, while having its positive attributes of expressing thoughts, emotions, and creativity, had another effect. Understanding. The act, slow as it was, gave Jim the time to consider and learn. He started to understand and the boundaries of his little world of self-protection started to expand.
Is this what made his father so uncomfortable? Did Jim’s father also live in a self-created reality, protecting him from what he couldn’t understand? Or was he just put off by a son who never changed. Unsupportive because Jim was at it again.
When Jim told his father about his new website, all seemed well. He never expected what was to come. It started to happen after he sent his father a text message with a link to a new blog post, that he was particularly excited about, and he didn’t get a response. Nothing. That was weird, Jim thought. Maybe he’s out with friends or just doesn’t have his phone on. Then it happened again and then a third time.
The optimist Jim was, he didn’t overly think on it and let the text rejection slip from his mind. A few weeks later, things were going quite well for Jim. He was having fun and really enjoying the process or writing, both creating blogs for his website and working on his new book. And this is when it happened, after an ill-fated email and a subsequent response from his father.
Jim understood.
