Several days ago I wrote about my desire to post the link to my website/blog on my Facebook page:
I ultimately decided not to. The feeling passed. But then yesterday, I listened to that song again while I was driving to a place the next county over. It was about a 30 minute drive and I had time to really think about it.
When I got home, I posted the lyrics to that song on Facebook and underneath I put on there that it was time they knew. I added that if they wanted to know the truth, they needed to hurry up because my “bravery” had a time limit. I included the link to my website and decided I would delete it after a set amount of time. After all, I could share it, but I don’t have to leave it up there in perpetuity.
So, I posted my link and set a timer for 3 hours and 19 minutes. Three for the number of years of hell I have been through most recently and 19 for the number of years I worked in my old job. Considering many of my posts this past year have been about that, I figured it was symbolic.
During that time of my link being out there for all of my “real life” friends and family to see, I felt anxious butterflies. To distract myself I washed the dishes and listened to my inspirational playlist. Despite the butterflies, listening to the music made me feel empowered. I asked myself why I felt I had to share my writing with everybody, and my immediate thought was, because I can! They need to know the truth about what I have gone through, whether it gets back to my old boss or not, I don’t care! I thought about my mother reading things I’ve said on here, especially about hating my father, which I do. How would she react to seeing me say that? Again, I don’t care! It’s the truth. Let it ruffle those proverbial feathers.
As I thought about all of that, I randomly looked up from the sink and saw my reflection in the kitchen window and I was smiling. I didn’t even realize it.
Around 8:00 or so, the timer went off and I edited my post. I didn’t delete the whole thing, I just deleted the link. If anyone is interested, I figured they could ask me about it.
And now here’s the interesting part, in 3 hours and 19 minutes, I got one ‘like’ click on the post and when I looked at my stats on WordPress here, I saw that 10 referrers were from Facebook. That’s it. How interesting.
It’s interesting that I can post a picture of my notes for a crocheting class that I’m teaching at work because we don’t have an instructor and I didn’t want to cancel the class. I can post that picture and an explanation of how excited I am to teach the class and I can get a flood of like/love clicks and a sea of comments in almost the same amount of time that I had the link to my website posted. But when I post about something that has been more important to me than my knit/crochet projects, or how our new dog is best friends with our old dog, I get next to no response. Interesting.
Now I know. Sharing this with people I actually know is not as good as sharing this with random strangers that also post on WordPress. It’s not the result I expected. But that’s o.k. Like I said, now I know.
And by the way, my mom posted a clapping hands gif in response to my post. I asked her if she saw the link in time, and her response was ‘no’. She and I talked on the phone later after that and she didn’t say a word about it, nor did I respond to her ‘no’. Again I say, interesting.
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