People can become addicted to fame, money and attention as deeply as they become addicted to drugs. –Dennis Prager

I have this thing about attention, friends. To be honest, I don’t really like it. I don’t enjoy being gaped at and watched while I’m speaking. I don’t like to be asked a zillion questions about my life because I don’t always want to share everything with everybody. If I’m honest, I’m a friendly, talkative person but I think there’s a difference between being cordial and just blatant self-disclosure. There’s a difference between making moderately friendly conversation with people and just fishing for attention from whomever is in the room.

For example, I know this woman that’s clearly really intelligent and probably fairly good at her job but she has this annoying habit of reliving like, everything she’s ever endured on a daily basis. I have literally heard the same story from her about fourteen times and if I’m being brutally real with you, I barely even know her! She’ll continually tell people about her dating horror stories, the various restaurants she’s been in, and the insane amount of work her boss is always throwing on her desk. She is super open in the workplace and even tells stories about how certain members of her family have been involved in domestic violence incidents, how they escaped said trauma, and the amount of senseless beatings they allegedly endured. She has this really annoying habit of reminding everyone in the room that she has a funky, dyed hair color, that she is relentlessly liberal, and that she is basically for any government program in existence, as oppose to her male co-worker.

I get it: we are all entitled to our opinion and there’s nothing wrong with a little safe self-disclosure (said the weekly blogger). But to be honest with you guys, it’s like she’s got a word limit that she’s got to hit every day. It’s like she is just incessantly searching for attention from absolutely anyone that will give it to her. It’s like she just wants to be heard and she doesn’t care if that means telling the same story one thousand times (even though most of us were there and heard the story first hand), insulting the same individual one million times (especially when they aren’t there to defend themselves), or reminding us on a daily basis that apparently every date she goes on is Dateline worthy.

#DontWatchAlone

I mean, I understand that people want to vent or they want to be heard and let’s be real, that’s why I’ve got a blog in tow. But the primary reason I write isn’t to ramble on about all my problems and historic tragedies, despite how helpful the catharsis is. It isn’t to remind all of you how much I basically hate every man in existence despite the fact that a lot of them really deserve it. It isn’t because I think I’m the best writer to have ever graced the internet and thereby believe that I’m entitled to a weekly blog because people need to hear my advice. It’s not as if I have this mentally that people would be unable to survive without my vast knowledge of relationships, domestic violence, and general idiocy.

I’m not a professional writer, I didn’t major in journalism or English education, and I don’t have a degree in philosophy. I don’t know everything about the various disorders that severely affect our children, like autism and ADHD, I don’t know the DSM-V by heart and quite honestly, when I’ve used mine, it’s taken me a really long time to figure out how the diagnoses even work! I’ve never been through a divorce, I didn’t come from a broken home, and I don’t have any real problems in my current romantic relationship. I’m a social worker, I’m someone who is, above all things, passionate about domestic violence, I’m someone who wants to continue my education, and I’m someone who wants to be a voice for others. The only knowledge I have is from Social Work school (which I worked really hard at, by the way) and from the multitude of personal experiences I’ve had in my own life. I’m not an expert on anything; I just want to help people. Even if all I’m doing is making them laugh at how awkward I am in my YouTube videos.

When I first started writing this blog, I used to have a little tagline at the end, inviting people to email me and share their twisted boyfriend stories with me. I just want to hear your story. I just want to make sure someone tells it for you.

I just want to make sure that you’re heard.

Self-pity becomes your oxygen. But you learned to breathe it without a gasp. So, nobody even notices you’re hurting. –Paul Monette

But honestly, the reality is not everyone is trying to be heard. It’s not that all people are just misunderstood or fell down the rabbit hole because something heart-wrenching happened to them. I think sometimes, as much as I would really like to advocate for people, they just want to hear themselves talk. I mean, honestly, I see it all the time. It isn’t necessarily that they want to be heard but that they just want to take up all the space in the room. They want people to know all the things they know, they want it verbalized that they’ve had a particular experience, and they want to dominate the conversation. Because maybe unintentionally or otherwise, they believe that they’re the sole center of the universe.

And sometimes I think it’s more than just people being standardly selfish. Sometimes I think that some people just naturally crave attention and will do anything they can to receive it. To be fair, I actually know a lot of people like this and sometimes, it can be kind of taxing to communicate with them.

For example, there is one gentleman in particular that I’m acquainted with that performs this way on a daily basis. I mean, I barely know this person and I literally know everything about his entire life because he’s just continually volunteered it to me. And not just me, but anyone that will listen.

And in fairness, I’ve got to give this man credit because he has lived an exciting, educational life. He’s worked on various sides of child safety, including the police department, and is really super intelligent. I mean, aside from the fact that he makes it known on a day-to-day basis that he has just recently earned his Master’s degree, you can realize this just by speaking to him. He’s bright, he’s inquisitive, he can read people extremely well and he uses a fairly impressive vocabulary for your average meathead from the alleged projects in New York City. (And before any of you have a meltdown about my insulting individuals from NYC, my whole family is from there so just save it.)

But what I don’t appreciate is the attention he incessantly craves from apparently everyone. What I don’t like about him is how he shoves his opinions down your throat because he is under the misguided impression that he’s the only one that knows anything. He seems to speak a lot on domestic violence and while I’m okay with that, because I’m clearly not the only expert in this field, I get irritated when he insists he’s the only one in the room with knowledge. We had one particular falling out because he insisted that one woman, in particular, was “poking the bear”, implying that she was instigating the arguments with her abuser.

And listen friends, I’m a fairly calm, friendly individual. But I don’t care what that woman allegedly did to her husband. That doesn’t give him license to throw a stroller and accidentally hit his child with it because he’s angry. That doesn’t mean he’s granted permission to ever put his hands on another person because someone pushed his buttons. But perhaps in my line of work, that’s always going to be my stance. Sometimes I nag the absolute shit out of my husband but he would never raise his hand to me.

In a social media world, the danger is being overexposed and when something is overexposed, it is no longer interesting. If it ever was. –Donna Lynn Hope

I see this most frequently on social media sites. It seems like people are so readily willing to strip themselves bare in the presence of all their social media “friends” and honestly, it’s kind of scary. I mean, I can’t even lie to you and pretend like I’m innocent of this because we’ve all done it. I remember, back in the days of MySpace, I was persistently competing with the girl my asshole boyfriend was cheating on me with. And I don’t know what exactly drove me to think that her knowing every aspect of my life was a good decision but I made sure she did. And honestly, in those days, she used all of it against me. I thought I was making her jealous with how supposedly great my life was with my secretly abusive, psychotic boyfriend but what I was really doing was giving her endless ammo.

But hey, what’s social media for, right? To bully people that are lesser than you? To creep on people that will only give you a certain amount of access to their lives? To read geography tags to figure out where people are so you can haphazardly bump into them? To “reconnect” with people that are from your past and quite honestly, probably need to stay there? I mean, that’s the century we live in right? It’s absolutely terrifying!

It just seems like more often than not people are using social media to pronounce their problems for all the world to see. They use it to remind the world of how difficult their life is. They use it to let people know what a sorry state they’re in because there’s a really good chance they might get some sympathy out of it. I mean, who better to give you the attention you’re clearly craving than 200 of your purportedly closest friends, right? The people on your Facebook will care if no one else will!

I just don’t really understand it anymore. When I was young and going through some really strange things, it seemed sort of normal for me to air a lot of my dirty laundry on the internet for the world to see. But as I’ve gotten older, I sort of realized that the whole idea of begging for attention via your Facebook status is sort of pathetic. I guess it could be that people sometimes just don’t have anyone to talk to and who better to get some feedback from than the people who are right at your fingertips? People who will judge you but probably won’t alert you to it because they don’t really know you. People who will give you a little sympathy like or empty compliment because it’s easy to just type it up on their smart phone. People who don’t really know the whole story, people who don’t really care to know the whole story because quite frankly, they’ve got their own things going on. People who are just going to respond to your nonsense post on Facebook because it sounds like you’re on a ledge and it’s their civil duty to try and hold you back.

You know what’s so crazy? We actually got one of our cases like that. A mother was at her wit’s end and probably not in her most clear emotional state so she posted a Facebook status regarding her feelings. Somebody saw it and felt enough concern to call in an abuse report. When we got this woman into the office and spoke with her she said, “I was just upset and posted a stupid Facebook status. I wanted a little attention.”

Moral of the Crazy: I fully understand what happens when people are bored with their life, when they’re possibly emotionally unstable and are just seeking some help from someone who will just listen to them. I realize that sometimes people just need to vent to an outlet that they don’t have to physically face, that sometimes it’s easy to just open up your Facebook application and say something passive aggressive, something overly dramatic, something that screams histrionic tendencies because although the world is at our fingertips, the truth is that sometimes there just isn’t anyone to talk to. I’ve seen people be really open about motherhood, struggles with their children, and whatever else and take to their various social media venues to seek out advice because sometimes Google is a scary place. Sometimes you would rather just get some insight from the people in your immediate area, people that you know are probably just like you, people that possibly won’t judge you but if they do, it’s not like you’ll ever know about it.

I get that for some people, the internet is a safe place. I mean, like I said, I’m guilty of it too. I’ve got my face on a YouTube channel that I update every week and I encourage people to subscribe to it. I’ve got a blog that I spend hours writing for every week and I post it on my Facebook and Instagram for the world to see. I’ve got a Twitter account that I use purely for my blogging purposes and I post little rants about work, cubicle life, the cute little problems that come along with being a social worker, and tidbits from my weekly blog for absolutely anyone who can navigate a hashtag to see.

I get it, friends. The irony of all of this isn’t lost on me. I know I’m not immune.

But there is a difference between shameless self-promotion and whining because your life is hard. There’s a difference between posting things to inspire others and posting pathetic little Facebook posts because you want someone to realize how hard you’ve really got it. There’s a difference between offering friendly advice and insisting you know it all. And there’s a huge difference between being assertive when it’s needed and just dominating the conversation because you thoroughly enjoy to hear yourself speak.

I just have to say that one of my biggest pet peeves in when I come into contact with the brand of person who never has anything good to say. If your life is supposedly nothing but chronic bad luck, unfortunate circumstances, and negative energy, I’m sorry but you’ve got to make some changes. It can’t just be that everything was handed to you in a lousy form. It can’t just be that you’re always misunderstood and taken advantage of, that things just seem to never go your way, and that you’re somehow surrounded by all this crazy bad juju. It can’t be that people are always treating your horribly, that your relationships always fall apart, and that you’re forever burden by some crazy health dilemma. There has to be something goof in your life. There just has to be.

Or what are you even doing here?

I get it, we all have bad days. When I was in more unfortunate circumstances, I feel like I had more than my fair share of bad days. Things were hard, they were stressful, and while they certainly weren’t to the caliber of crisis that I’m sure other individuals have endured, it was crisis level to me. And while I wasn’t on a constant uphill swing, I worked really hard to stay positive over the years and honestly, that sort of took over my whole life. Now I’m really, really good at finding the positive in almost anything.

I could easily post whiny things to clog up everyone’s Facebook and Twitter timelines but why? What is that doing besides exacerbating everyone’s tendency to be miserable? What am I doing besides proving that I can’t seem to find anything better to do than complain on social media about how supposedly tough my life is? When I know full well that there are people going through way more than I could probably ever handle. There are people having really serious mental health problems that inhibit them from working, there are people paying out the ying yang because they’re having fertility issues, there are people who are currently being forced to truck their children around on public transportation because both their family vehicles quit working in the same week.

I know I’ve been on this tangent before but friends, it’s not that bad.

It’s just that sometimes, I would like to hear something besides, “Woe is me,” as my father would say. Sometimes, I would just like to get on the phone with someone and hear that something is going great rather than all the godawful things that are going on. Lately, I feel like with this pregnancy especially, I have made it a daily goal to just not dwell on things, to not stress about things, and to not allow my anxiety to get the better of me. Some days are bad days but that’s to be expected. Some days I just have a hard time getting it together and remembering that I have so much to be joyful about. But other than that, I try to just push all the negativity to the other end of the spectrum because I can’t allow it to surface. I’ve got way too much going for me to get tripped up by negativity and pessimism.

The reality is that sometimes people need to be heard and honestly, I’m in one of those jobs where I see a lot of that. And in those cases, it’s okay to take a step back and allow someone to just vent, to just share their unhappy feelings, to maybe produce a reminder for you that you should be thankful for what you’ve got. But anything more than some constructive conversation probably isn’t so healthy.

I have some people in my life that are actually really, really close to me and I have this chronic problem with them. I love them dearly but I never hear anything besides whining. I mean, these people, it’s like outwardly, you would believe that there is absolutely nothing good in their life. And I love them, I love these people so much, and I am always a vault for them to vent to. But sometimes, it’s too much. Sometimes I’m weighed down by my own stressors and I’m keeping them to myself because I don’t like to dwell. Three minutes on the phone with these people and I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got to go because…” and I give them some nonsense excuse because I just can’t handle it.

What I want to say is I’ve got to go because you’re ruining my positive vibes only daily mantra. What I want to say is I’ve got to go because no matter what I say to you, you’re going to stay miserable and refuse to life yourself out of this. What I want to say is I’ve got to go because talking to you is bringing me down and quite honestly, I just ain’t about that life!

The reality is that live is too short to be anything but happy. And if that sounds cliché, I apologize but I wholeheartedly believe it to be true. Life is difficult, stressful and full of disappointments but it’s what you do with all those things that makes life worth living. You can’t just lay around and whine about your life. You’ve got to get up and change it! You can’t just laze about and expect things to change just because you want them to. You’ve got to go out there and demand good things! You can’t just continue to put out negative energies in the world and expect sunshine and roses. You’ve got to will things to be better and change your outlook!

The truth is that everyone wants a little attention sometimes but I’m of the school of thought that positive attention is what’s really worth striving for. People say that bad publicity is good publicity but I strongly disagree. I want to be remembered as someone with laugh lines and the chronic ability to smile no matter what’s going on, not for whining and crying because someone cut me off in traffic.

Keep the faith, people because happiness is a mindset. It’s sort of like changing your diet; it ain’t going to happen overnight but once you see the value in your changes, you’ll realize it’s worth it.

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitted. –Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Follow me at my twitter page @thatcrzk8 for more updates and rants about my neurotic abnormalities and celebrity obsessions. Be sure to subscribe to my up and coming YouTube channel to stay up to date on the things that grind my gears, specials about domestic violence awareness, and reasons I love my South African, jerky making husband! More videos to come soon!