Beyond the Punchline: Who Are You When the Laugh Track Stops?

Trying to figure out how to start this post is tough. It's been some time since I recently shared with you guys, and though I'm trying to not use this as an excuse but life does life shit some times. 

Just to recap - I've gone over where I'm at in my life post-divorce, and being able to build a foundation through friends and family, if they're there. The last couple of weeks, I've had the idea of talking about trying to find balance between life, work and everything in between, but after these last couple of days, and having some discussions with my therapist I feel like we can table that idea for another time. 

Before I begin to rant, a special shoutout goes to my therapist. She's been great in helping me navigate and make sense of shit that I can't. I'm going to gatekeep hard, 'cause she's the shit. 

Anyways, I obviously won't dive too deep into our conversation but one conclusion we came down to is this - I rely heavily on my humor, as dark and offensive it can be sometimes, which is great in certain situations. But, as I'm kind of navigating some new things right now, my therapist came with the Falcon Punch straight to the nuts and got me good. Where I'm at now, and where I'm trying to position myself, I can't use humor as a crutch to guide me to where I need to get to. 

She flat out asked me, what are my attributes that I can present outside of my humor - and to be honest, as a goofy guy, I had no answer. As quick-witted as I can be sometimes I had jack shit. A huge part of me hates talking about myself because it feels like I'm bragging, and I mentioned this, I love being a behind the scenes kind of guy, I don't like the attention. Maybe that's the middle child syndrome kicking in, but I like not being the center of attention. I say all this because it truly was difficult for me to think past my humor and solely identify how I can apply my other attributes outside of my humor. 

So you might probably be like what the fuck is he talking about? I'm saying, if you're in a position to, get a third party perspective and try and find what makes you - you. 

In my therapists word, not mine, I'm/ I:

• Persevere
• Faithful/ Hopeful
• Mature
• Gracefully accepts and rise to challenges 
• Vulnerable 

Granted, I did mention that although she sees these attributes that I didn't necessarily,  I felt that all of these were circumstantial  because of the things that I experienced emotionally. A good part of me still feels that I didn't choose any of these out of the goodness of my heart, but I chose to not live a miserable life and the motiviation to be better for me and my daughter is what brought these out of me. 

Regardless of how you come to find this, it's important. Once you identify what they are, that can be used going forward. Not solely for relationship purposes, but it can be applied to so many things in life, faith, work,etc. I think this is how you build a solid foundation within yourself, I might be wrong, actually I'm pretty sure I'm wrong but this is what has helped me. 

Again, and I'll finish off with this. We are not license therapists. I am only trying to give support and give a better understanding of how you can use my experience to help navigate this. You might not agree with everything, and that's fine but use what you can. If it works, great, if it doesn't it hopefully gets you thinking outside of your everyday thought process. 

Peace dudes, 

Andres