I distinctly remember when I first joined. I read and read blogs. I even created a few of my own but never published them. I didn't trust in myself. I firmly didn't believe that this time will be the time that it stuck. This will be when the switch is tripped and I finally get the hang of this. I didn't feel comfortable opening up to people here on the site.
I searched and searched for sites. In my town, there is no quitters group, smokers anonymous or whatever they call them. Many of the sites out there will only allow you to join if you are doing it cold turkey. Well, that I knew I couldn't do. I tried my best and just couldn't do it.
I'll be honest, I came here and there were many I clicked with and a few that I didn't. But I realized that I was in a hypersensitive state and everything anyone said or did, I took to heart. I felt it as a personal attack and half the time I even read the response wrong. At times I overreacted and at other times I did not.
I mention this because I've seen this happen quite a few times on the site over the past year. If someone is being abusive or harassing, then report it to the admin so that he can investigate it. If someone makes a comment on your blog and you don't care for it, simply scroll past it. You'll find there will be many different comments following it. It's an opinion of one among well over 20,000 people on this site. We tend to be in tunnel vision at the beginning and don't see the group as a massive congregation. Think of when you were in school and there was always that certain someone that just irked you the wrong way, the same applies here. Take a deep breath and scroll past it.
I left all the comments to my blogs, the ones I don't care for along with the ones that have pushed me forward. I left them all there so that they could help someone else along the way. Another thing I've also noticed is at first when I read some comments and I was actually offended or hurt by it. Now that I go back and read them over again, I read them now with different eyes. I see what they were doing. If I would have deleted those comments, I wouldn't have had to chance to look back and reflect, learn and grow. I understand now what they were saying. Sometimes it may seem like it's the mood of the day or a snowball effect of something that happened on the site a few days earlier.
I have tended to create my blogs ahead of time on my computer. I add to it, delete from it constantly. It helps me to gather my thoughts, to categorize them, if you will. Prioritize at times when I'm struggling with something. Always remember the saying of take what you need and leave the rest. If you are unable to make your own journal at home and wish to do it here, all you have to do is restrict the comments at the bottom of the page. I hope that you choose not to do that, because there's so much knowledge to gather from the members as a whole. We can be your vitual cheerleaders. Here at EX, we're all just like a bowl of fruit. Some like bananas, some like apples, oranges, whatever. Just pick your favorites. Pass over the ones you don't care for.
