Hi, steemit community. My name is Maxim.
I joined this community some time ago and was excited to become part of it at first.
Especially, after being trained by @fatpandadesign on how to make it in this community. I tried to write this introduction over and over and was always facing resistance. Whenever I feel resistance in my life I asked myself why am I feeling this way and what is behind this feeling. Behind most of our feelings are fears and unmet needs, so I started asking myself a question why. And I think I found the fear behind my resistance, the fear which started many years ago and the fear which defined a lot of my journey to this day.
Back in time
To understand it we need to go back about 30 years ago - growing up in the former Soviet Union - a country trying to transition from one extreme to another I’ve been bombarded with confusing messaging. On one hand, we had the influx of western media telling us about the way to life a dream, contrary to that a large body of the soviet and the pre-soviet era literature was part of our school education and extra curriculum activities. With all this transition I’ve been always puzzled with one thing - humans. My perception of humans from western culture was mostly utilitarian - use other people to achieve your goals and move on, this perspective never resonated with me. Interaction with other humans from soviet culture was amazing in books and ruthless in reality the string contrast between advancing humanity and living in the community and being afraid of your own neighbors as people reported each other to the government.
As a kid, I often like to keep to a small group of friends and to not engage with too many people. I changed four different schools and being tired of trying to make friends in every school I decided to give up friends. Computers were my new world, the world of internet and infinite possibilities, the world in which rejection of me is not connected to myself, it’s just my digital identity. Rejection - it’s one of the biggest fears we face in relationships friendship or romantic. Fear of being rejected leads us to sit on a train looking at our phones, books, newspaper instead of interacting with each other. That fear has been making myself introvert even so over the last three or so years I’m noticing that my best comes out when I’m interacting with other people.
The Change
At some point in my life, I was so depressed of choosing the wrong path over and over again in my life. I was filled with regret about my choice of materialistic needs, profession, and even my marriage. So I cut all three at the same time - I quit my job, left my marriage and embarked on searching for my new profession.
Three years later I’m still kinda in flux, multiple relationships after and trying to be personal development coach I’ve been coming back to it industry as money essentially run out.
So what about the fear?
I got sidetracked into talking about myself too much - hey it’s introduction, isn’t it ?. As longtime traveler now I get to face the fear of rejection daily - I need to talk to people I’ve never met, often in the language I barely know and it’s been going okay. I say okay because I’m not sure I can even match some of my extrovert friends. The real extroverts who can have a friendly chat with anyone - grocery store clerk, call Center service representative, a person next to you on public transport. Those friends inspire me and I hope one day to reach mastery of fear to that extent where I don’t need to think so much.
So here is my another way to face that fear and see if this community is interested in more of my psychology mixed with some weird thoughts on the computer industry.
Let's see if I can fit here or face the rejection again, one way or another it's learning experience.