A Silly & Simple Life
It's all about perspective, right? Or is it perception?
For as long as I can remember all I have ever wanted was to share my voice. To ask the questions burning inside of me, to share my stupid thoughts and to have the opportunity to learn from the world all around me. Cool thing is, I was born in ‘95 and got to grow up with the internet. So dreams came true, but looked a bit different than expected.
From the beginning of my time interfacing on the web I have been doing it obsessively and I am now realizing, rather poorly. I think I was so desperate to get my voice out there that I never really put thought into what I said, or how. Plus, it’s just the internet, it’s fake. I fell hard for the social media ploy. Hard and flat on my face. So, I am getting back up and asking myself, “what does my voice need to share?”. The answer to that question was easy: my silly & simple life.
What’s a better and more intentional way to do so than a dying piece of media? BLOGGING. Think Carrie Bradshaw with a shaved head in rural Ohio and organic cannabis gummies instead of cosmos. Also, no dramatic obsession with “earning” the love of some man. I have myself, thank you very much. And because of the love I give me I cracked the code of how to find your soulmate! (Don’t try. Don’t deny it or fight the opportunity, but don’t try) Now I have a loving and supportive partner who satisfies EVERYTHING I could ever desire. I am so lucky. I am so fucking lucky. I am so lucky I almost hate it because, why? Why do I get to be lucky? Please read that with some nuance. I am not truly saying “woe is me”, the title of this publication is “Humor Me” don’t take me too seriously. I am just sharing that in a world like we live in there is a…guilt for getting to be happy. But I am releasing that here and now. I am so lucky and I am sharing my beautiful, silly, and simple life and all the mess that comes with it.
The other mountain-sized road block in the way of me having the courage to start a blog. Because yeah it took courage for me to do this! I think? Yes! Anyways…The other road block: why would anyone care? What if no one likes it? What if I say the wrong thing or someone misinterprets what I am saying? The answer to overcoming this hurdle was simple: THEY DO NOT MATTER. I am sharing this for no one, but me. Any other eyes that are graced with these powerful words I am sharing is a gift, but I am writing this and screaming it into the void, for me. I finally get it now. I have always heard people say “I am doing it for me” and now I see that it is neither selfish, nor fake when someone shares that sentiment. They are sharing themselves, for themselves. It IS that fucking simple. I have a voice in me that is dying to possibly, maybe one day be read and hopefully it will inspire someone, somewhere, at some time to take stock of all the immense love in their life, even if it is hard to find. Especially if it is hard to find. I’ve been there. That’s how I found all this love I have, by having a lot of anti-love. Because hate really doesn’t exist. What you hate, you fear. Maybe I could show some new ways to find love in places no one would expect. Like right within you. Even if you find yourself handcuffed, in the back of a cop car with a pipe in your center console. You CAN find love. It’s all you, all the love comes from you, all of it is within. So with that I release the need for any validation on my words I choose to share here.
I know my truth and trust and love myself. That is all I can ever ask for and the only legacy I would ever wish to leave.
A Few Truths About Me I Would Like to Share with You
Speaking of now knowing my truth, please, again, don’t that that too seriously. Humor me, I know MY truth. I really want to emphasis this. My sister told me I was coming off “Mother God-y” and I almost pissed my pants because that could not be farther from the truth.
I don’t want to tell other people what to do or how to fix their problems. I am not claiming to know any huge secret to happiness or peace. I am not drinking silver or copious amounts of alcohol. I am not preaching. I sure as hell am not claiming to be “the mother” of all beings married to “the father”. I am a human. I am a mother. I am a partner. A world citizen. A good neighbor. I am calm and patient. I move slowly and intentionally because I trust that what I need won’t miss me . The good always boomerangs back around. I am extremely lucky and I have lived a life with a lot of privilege. I accept that. I am done…letting it be something I hide behind. I didn't realize it, but I kind of think that’s what I have been doing in some way maybe? Maybe that’s the white guilt having a deeper meaning that I am just now understanding. Perhaps I’ll dissect that in another essay someday, still plenty more to learn and unpack in that rabbit hole. A journey for another day. What I am saying is, please never read my words or interpret my meaning to be me being all knowing or something crazy. Well not crazy like that. I am just a crazy artist lady, my only intention ever is to share love.
I am who I am.
I completely accept that being.
I completely accept me.
I deeply, deeply love me.
I love gardening. I love it. I love smashing through the weeds with the hoe. Planting the tiny seeds and watching as the buds pop through the soil, reaching for the sun. I love having dirt jam so far into my fingernails that they feel like they couldn’t hold anymore without prying off. I love my watering rotation of spending either: my evenings watching the sun go to sleep and the moon come out to play or spending my mornings seeing the sun tuck the moon away for the day. I love noticing the tiny spider webs between the blades of grass at dawn and dusk, highlighted by the mist from my hose. I love the spiders. Me. Elizabeth Kelsey Akers. I fucking love the spiders. The Orb Weavers especially. I have one living in the corner of my sliding door in the kitchen. She and I spend our evenings together after everyone else goes to sleep. I put the house to bed, take a fat bong rip and prepare for the next day. While she savagely rips apart the pathetic prey caught in her web. I shall call her Charolette.
Something else I have discovered is that I am a lot braver than I thought I was. I am a lot more scared than I knew, too. Let me begin with the latter.
These past few weeks I have been experiencing what I am calling an Awakening. I cannot possibly imagine another word for to describe the evolution that has occurred within me. It has been awakening to self awareness. As any life changing event, it has been breathtaking as well as riddled with insurmountable pain. For every beautiful glimmer from source I have seen, something has been taken from me before I knew I was ready. I trust that these are all things that I have served and have served me, so I am choosing to release with love and accept my pain. In doing this, the thoughts have stopped. The thoughts have stopped. For the first weekend it lasted four full days. I was ego-less, I was human, and I received a steady flow of love and inspiration from myself and the world around me. Perhaps you are reading this and thinking “Okay, that sounds insane”. I urge you, again, to humor me. I am only sharing my experience and truth. Another word, another phrasing, some other way of communicating that I experienced an exceptionally life altering experience may make more sense to you. Figure out how to read my words without thinking I am an egotistical maniac or having a psychotic episode. I beg you to try to understand me. I am wildly sensitive. I feel everything. I have an incredible ability to read people, energies, and situations. A side effect of this magical gift is fear. Fear of all that I know could go wrong, all I don’t know, all I can’t control. Fear of rejection and vulnerability. Fuck, I am terrified of myself. What if I fully unleash her and she does or says something unforgivable?
For so long I have hidden fear. Not “hidden in fear”, I have hidden my fear. The thing is, I never really learned how to be scared and have it be okay, so instead I adapted by learning that I can ignore that fear. I can escape into my mind, my “LaLa Land” as my parents affectionately called it. A mind palace, if you will. Fear lived in my mind surrounded by an impenetrable barricade of lies. These were my “lies to survive”. The lies I told to suffocate the fear and take away its power. Little did I know I really just allowed it to grow and manifest more fear into my life. It may not have broke through the barriers, but it bled through the wounds I was inflicting on myself by living an inauthentic life.
My other fear conquering tactic was facing the fear head on. This one I had no idea I was doing until recently. I am terrified of death. I am so scared to die before I am ready. I am so scared to lose someone I love. It’s only gotten more intense since becoming a mother. The intrusive thoughts about my fears. When I first started acknowledging my fear of death I talked myself out of it because I have seen death and been able to remain steady. I am a nurse, I know death in a more intimate way than most. I started thinking about why I had wanted to be a nurse. The initial answer was the same it always had been: to help people. I continued to think about this answer and it didn’t totally fit. I realized there was another layer to my desire to become a nurse. I wanted to learn about death. About health. About how to stay healthy and what to look out for. While it was a good tactic, I now find myself sitting in bed before I go to sleep thinking about all the things that could be going wrong inside my body. I catastrophize every headache or muscle twitch. Sometimes I try to say all the things to my baby I need her to know if I don’t wake up. Sometimes I cry. Always, I try to solve it. To dissect the problem. Meticulously searching the internet for answers, remedies, anything to help better prepare. In some ways I feel that part of the reason I wanted to become a nurse was so I could care for myself and my family better. Which is great, but maybe I overexposed a bit…
Here’s the bravery part: I’m going to keep learning and exposing and sometimes hiding when I need to. I am going to be brave and listen to myself and my body when it is feeling afraid. I am going to keep myself safe and moreover I am going to find my fears. Even if it is just to wave at them from a distance, I want them to know it is okay. I want to honor my fear and the part of me that it is. That feels really brave to me.
The “InInIn” Method of Media Consumption
The InInIn or “Intentional Internet Intake” is the backbone of my newfound peace and happiness. I have created it and it is one of the few things I will share as something I think everyone could stand to do a little more.
Most of us at this point, generation doesn’t discriminate in this instance, are absorbed by our phones. I am not saying anything new or ground breaking here. People old and new are spending time staring at a rectangle instead of living their life. We are expected to put ourselves into 15 second clips with the right aesthetic to find our “target audience”. As a younger millennial, I am saying enough. My phone is for communication and audio consumption. My computer is for working. Media is not social. Basically, I am being intentional with how I am using the fucking gift that is access to the world at my fingertips. I am learning just how valuable it is to have this available and even possible.
Sadly, learning this also comes with the knowledge of at the cost of this privilege of robot technology. As it feels it always leads when you follow the path of privilege, we arrive at human exploitation. The cobalt batteries in our phones, as well as other tech, are mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Not only is mining cobalt backbreaking work, it also results in a toxic dust that is subsequently inhaled by the miner. Who is most likely, a minor. The “artisanal miners” or the indigenous Congolese people. Especially children, their small size allows them to climb into more cramped spaces to mine the mineral. Now, I am not an expert on this so I urge you to just do some research and maybe think before upgrading your phone because you can. I am currently fighting the urge on this one. It may be dumb, but I am just now learning this “don’t buy just because you can lesson” at 29 years old. Not because no one tried to teach me. Relax Mom and Dad, if you are reading. Just, lessons like that didn't…click until recently for me.
I said early on in this piece that I am a chronically and notoriously poor communicator via social media. I am too sensitive for it. I am also, just now on the brink of 30 admitting to myself that I am a highly sensitive person. Highly. My first friend breakup was early in 9th grade, I was 14 years old, I berated my best friend on Facebook for being a “whore” and so on and so forth. All because the guy I liked thought she was pretty. So she had to die, but obviously I wasn’t going to do that, so I turned to this cool new place on the computer, Facebook. There I covered her wall with slander and let the world know who she really was. In retrospect, this is probably one of my biggest, and few, regrets in life. One of the things I anti-love myself the most for. This pain I caused to someone who had been there by my side my whole life, thus far. I didn’t even let her speak. I just attacked. Get defensive first so you are the victim…such a stupid thing I believed for longer than I am willing to admit…I often look back now and wonder how different my life would be if that person who was in it when I was young was still here. The person I read Twilight and Harry Potter with. The first person I ever shared a garden with. The girl who taught me about periods. The best friend I ever had. There were so many beautiful and painful parts of our childhood that we shared together. I destroyed that over an impulsive decision and a fucking boy. A boy with a Bieber haircut. And I used the meanest place I could think to do it. Online where everyone would see. How fucking evil of me. It’s taken a lot to forgive myself for this initial fuck up, clearly I still am learning to forgive.
Now, I promise online bullying was not a habit I continued! However, putting your foot in your mouth online (and in person) is a subtle art I have mastered. Social media is fake, right? It doesn’t matter, right? It doesn’t define me, right? If that is so, then why do we tear apart what we share through our socials? Why do we search for hidden meaning in words that aren’t there? Why do we judge so many books by their cover? Please note that I am hardcore including ME in that “WE”. I judge, criticize, compare, even obsess over other people’s social media. People I don’t even like. In particular, the people I don’t like. Bonus if they have “wronged” me. Kidding…mostly. Now, my profiles aren’t perfect by any stretch. I am sure they are laughed at and mocked. I accept I may be cringey. I get excited and just need my words to be out of me or I will throw them up. Word vomit. The worse part is that I care. I care about how I am being perceived, if I am being 100% understood. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc; I am too immature for them. Too fucking sensitive and not intentional enough. I take them too seriously. I loved sharing moments of my life on Instagram, however it wasn’t healthy for me. I can look back now and see that. I almost did things only if they were postable. Possibly worse, I went above my means to achieve that postable content. Going as far as living above my means to make it looks like I was living a great life, full of happiness and living the absolute dream. Much more so in my younger years of posting, but it seeped into my later social media usage too. In more subtle ways.
The funny thing is, I have realized that I…kind of don’t actually care. I don’t care about living a life other people find attractive or interesting or even inspiring. I don’t care about being influential or going viral. Honestly virality is kind of my nightmare. Fifteen minutes of fame sounds like a failure to me. To have all eyes on me for a moment, just to be forgotten when the next one-hit-wonder shows up to steal the limelight. No, that is not a legacy to me. Nor is a large, bountiful estate furnished with the finest goods. Or a seemingly perfect body if it means not getting to have cake when I attend a wedding. I don’t want any of that nonsense. But, it is tempting when you live in this world. In this time. When it Is the norm to care. We get so distracted about caring that we don’t realize we aren’t authentically sharing. Not anymore. It is not possible to care about others opinions and be authentic simultaneously. I wanted it to be, so bad. Sometimes you can’t wish things into existence, though. Somethings we cannot just manifest. Like that I am not made for the internet world. I need to learn more. About myself and the technology. I am too sensitive. And the media is too overwhelming. It is too much power for me. Too much responsibility right now. I got a kid I need to focus on, not like counts.
So, now here we are four weeks off the social media sauce and here are some things I have learned:
All of my problems are not solved, but my mind is free to problem solve the ones I need to devote energy to, instead of thinking about the attention something I had shared online has gotten.
While I have lost touch with many friends who I interacted with mainly if not solely online, my relationships in my reality are flourishing, especially with myself. A lot of people have actually reached out and I am embracing other forms of contact like emailing and snail mail. I just ordered stationary and I am so excited.
Social media made me a worse partner. I was more jealous, paranoid, insecure, needy, confrontational, and less attentive. I compared my relationship to others and hid parts I thought people may not get. I just feel more connected to my love without my phone in my face constantly or even often.
Pictures and videos are better when they are captured for me and not for the world. When I don’t check to make sure they are perfect. When I just capture what I can in the moment.
I feel free.
My social media ban has a few exceptions that are very important right now, but I am hoping to phase them out eventually. Trying to keep up with the events happening in Palestine, and elsewhere in the world, I have found the best places to find the first hand accounts of people living through these atrocities is through their social media. It is also the best place to find unbiased news covering the genocide. So for a certain amount of time a day I do my research and familiarize myself with the current state of terror. This allows me to stay informed so I can continue to take action where I can. It helps. Even if it just helps me, it helps. It feels more…personal. I know I am not much help. The effect I could ever possibly have will never put a stop to this, but I can keep talking and sharing. I can throw pebbles and cause some ripples. If enough of us do I swear we could start a tidal wave of change. Keep throwing the pebbles. Sending the emails. Making the calls. Sharing the stories. Raising the money. Voting. Talking. Protesting. Caring.
The InInIn includes more than just restricting social media. Intentional listening, reading, watching all forms of media! I am making it a point to read only books that I own, I get at the library, or I borrow from someone. Audiobooks have been a new hobby. God, if you get one thing out of this article please listen to The Courage to be Disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi. It has changed my life in more ways than any piece of literature. I have listened to it three times in the past year. I will probably listen three more times. I highly suggest listening as opposed to reading because it is written as a conversation. I will raise my child reading it. This book is the Bible in my house. Please, take the time to sit with it and let it help you simplify everything. It is triggering, but just sit with it. Sometimes it’s okay to be uncomfortable. More on that later…
Possibly the funnest part of the InInIn has been the changes I have made to the TV shows I watch. Basically I don’t. The only show I have been watching has been CSI: Las Vegas a show that quite literally shaped me as a child. Not because of the cops, or the forensics, or even the victims. No, no, no. Only one person spoke to me on the show and boy does he still. Nick Stokes. God, fuck, I am in love with him. The coolest part about rewatching it now? I realize I married my Nick Stokes. My perfect gentleman, just a touch of cowboy, but cleans up real nice. My honest-to-a-fault good guy who will always stick up for the little guy and do the right thing. A little bit cocky perhaps, but in an ungodly sexy, humble way. Cole Akers is the Navy/Missouri Nick Stokes and holy fuck, am I a lucky lady, or what!? Needless to say it has been cathartic to rewatch this show now as an adult, married to my “Nick” and having achieved my dreams and…I really understand what a “comfort show” is. I thought it was The Office or Below Deck because I can rewatch them over and over again. And they are, in their way. But CSI…CSI COMFORTS me, man. It makes me feel like I am back in my safe space as a child. I don’t feel that often and I had no idea how much I missed it. I am really grateful this silly little show can provide it for me. I am grateful for the privilege to such a simple reprieve.
On one of my social media breaks I came across a TikTok where a person was sharing the sentiment that in 30 years we will look back at this era of humanity and laugh at the fact that we even had the internet. What a comforting sentiment. That one day all of this will be obscure and we will have created a new form of knowledge sharing and communication. Also kind of scary, because we’ve allowed the internet to become what it is. So, what could the next “internet” be capable of?
Hello, Discomfort my Good Friend
My “2024” theme was to lean into the uncomfortable. To embrace what makes me question myself and my limits. I have definitely had the bravest year of my life yet. Maybe not in big and seeable leaps, but in tiny personal steps, I have moved miles. I mean for fucks sake, I am writing this with a shaved head, hairy armpits and legs, while my co-sleeping baby naps. If you told me 5 years ago this would be me, she would laugh in your face. That’s the thing I have learned through this uncomfortable year, that every person I once was won’t love every part of me right now. I can love every one of them though. And I do.
Some discomforts I have embraced so far this year:
shaving my head
growing out my body hair
co-sleeping
making TikTok’s (pre-social media ban)
speaking my truth- no matter who it is or the consequences, it is MY truth
learning to care for our chickens, they are so gross but I want to be able to help when needed. I’m learning this is a big part of farm life
getting my nails dirty while gardening, sorry grandma…
accepting myself living in Ohio…as a New Yorker who moved here from Southern California, this hurts, but it’s true, I am never leaving my home in Northeast, Ohio, I think it will inspire the art of my life
stepping away from external validation
That’s just to name a few. I could go on and on. If I am being real, once I started trying the uncomfortable and I saw it work out, I got kind of addicted. I get excited now thinking about the opportunities each day is going to bring me to learn and grow. I just read a quote from Ann Druyan:
“And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?”
I read it over and over again. This lesson has really been what the universe has been teaching me in response to these steps I am taking. Every time I sit with my discomfort I discover something about myself that I always knew and had forgotten, or tried to shove away and deny. It’s like I am simultaneously meeting myself for the first time and have spent every second of forever with me. It’s a perplexing and beautiful paradox to be in. Painful at times, too. I can feel that as I get closer and closer to the “truest me” I am making some people I love uncomfortable. I am changing and they are noticing and I can understand that. I am not sure how to tell them it is okay for me to make them uncomfortable without it sounding a little crazy. That I am okay. That I am just stepping into trusting and trying, instead of overthinking and holding myself back. I can only get to know myself by saying things, doing things and then learning from the outcomes. Maybe I am a little crazy. That’s okay. I feel more like a scientist of life. Of my life. Creating hypotheses of myself, my wants and needs, my beliefs. Then I carry out experiments to learn the truths of myself.
Another discomfort I have been learning to play well with is: serious self reflection. Especially on my relationships with others, as well as with myself. For iexample, I can see that in today’s world I do not qualify as a “good friend”. I will not comment on every social media post, I will not text back in a timely manner and I will probably forget your birthday. I am selfish in relationships or toxically self sacrificing to the eventual point of implosion. I hide my true thoughts, wants, needs from my relationships to make sure my partner is feeling fulfilled and protected and loved. That leaves me holding myself up and inevitably I will begin to struggle and need support and I really have no idea how to communicate for help. I make the mistake of doing too much or too little. I over explain or I am too nonverbal. Instead of communicating effectively, I somehow fuck it all up, making a huge clusterfuck of a mess and then I don’t have any idea how to even begin cleaning up. So, as any rational person does, I walk away. I try to forget about the embarrassment, confusion, anger, whatever it is I am feeling. I lock it away. Basically I am admitting here, in writing, on the internet, my communication mortal enemy, that I am a terrible communicator. I am long winded. I monologue. I ask too many questions and probably off topic ones. I go on rants and get derailed again and again. Can you count on me? Who knows? I like to think so but I am really questioning myself. Which is a good thing because it leads to me learning. Remember that quote from above?
Learning about yourself and all the patterns you have created in your life, intentional or not, sheds so much light onto why you are the way you are. I am finally seeing clearly just how my life has shaped me into the person who has made every decision I have made. I can’t excuse some of them, or explain them. But I understand why. No one else has to get it, the peace it brings me is insurmountable. From that peace I get to build new habits, new methods of communicating. I feel like a toddler the way I find myself speaking in my head, like I am lecturing a young child on how to talk to others and be kind. Maybe that sounds silly, but I kind think the world needs just that. To give ourselves a refresher on those lessons we learned as a kid. Lessons like:
Slow and steady wins the race
Fake it til you make it
Keep It Simple Silly
Your words matter
It doesn’t matter what they think
Not everyone will love you, that’s okay
Starting is the hardest part
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
Think before you speak
You’re all you have at the end of the day
It’s funny when I was a kid I would read these types of motivational quotes and dissect them to find the deeper true meaning within. Now I look at them and can see that there isn’t a hidden meaning. There is not bigger picture. Take them at face value, just do as they say. Slow down. Keep it simply. Love yourself and others. Speak kindly, especially to yourself. Life will be shit, move on. Always keep moving. The very worst, if not only mistake you can make in life is this:
»BECOMING STATIONARY AND SETTLING«
When I was in my early 20s I moved in with my boyfriend at the time. It was my first apartment on my own. We were both moving two hours away from our families and meeting in the middle: Albany, NY. Things were very serious and we were planning to move forward to commit ourselves to each other and start a life. Then some bumps started popping up in the road. I had failed nursing school which kept me from starting the job I was supposed to at a hospital. Instead I landed a sick gig as a “pet care expert” at Petsmart. Needless to say that job didn’t last long. I lost a few too many ball pythons. I am just waiting for the East Greenbush monsters to emerge and wreak havoc. From there it was a job as a server at Dave and Buster’s. As a job it was…a job. As for friendships and connection, wow. I never expected I would be thanking Dave and Buster for bringing some of the most incredible people into my life. As any person who had their dreams crushed by themself, I developed a drinking problem. That boyfriend started playing video games with his friends online religiously after returning home from work with his Yuengling briefcase ready to be emptied. We enabled each other obsessively. After all, that allowed us to remain in our bad habits.
The thing about having a partner that people don’t seem to realize is this: finding them and being together isn’t the hard part; it’s keeping each other excited about life and engaged. So this boyfriend and I lived together, rotting our lives away and poisoning our bodies to get through each day. We never checked in with one another. We never checked in with ourselves. We settled. We were on the path of settling. I am so grateful everyday that I woke up and when I looked in the mirror one day the glass shattered. I say the road we were on, the life I was headed to. It would have been a fine life, I would have been safe and content. But it wouldn’t have been the true me. I think if I spoke to that boyfriend now he would be really grateful that I woke up that day too. I kinda think that though it hurt us, it saved us.
That’s the cool thing about the uncomfortable, it always moves you forward. Sometimes the movement is a smooth glide, sometimes a rough toss with a hard landing. A move nonetheless though. Nothing is more important than to just keep moving in the life.
Putting One Foot in Front of the Other
Just keep moving. Taking a step is better than freezing up. The amount of times a day I scream in my own head “just MOVE” in reference to just make a decision, just do a chore, just pick an activity. It really applies to any and everything. Just do something. Even when I am scared I just keep telling myself to keep moving. Choose how to deal with the fear. Trust yourself, Kelsey.
In summation, welcome to “Humor Me”, my corner of the internet to be silly, happy, passionate, healing, imperfect, and share my true authentic self. My step forward in sharing my voice in the world, but doing so in a healthy way for me and hopefully more palatable way for you, whoever you may be. If you are me, hey sexyyyy, you’re doing really good, they are loving it.
I love you, see you soon <3
LOVE THIS. Thank you for sharing💗💫