Walking the Talk of Vulnerability: exposing the personal blog

From the start of my already long-stretched blogging career I’ve been facing the same dilemma: to tell or not to tell my family and friends about it. You’d think writers want to be read, but there is a case for anonymity and sharing only with those close friends you know to appreciate your style, your online friends and those few other bloggers from across the ocean and wherever.

With my current blog I have come to the point where I want to cover important topics, for others to read it and get involved. This is now my primary reason to write. Following from this, you’d expect me to widely promote my blog. I don’t. I am afraid of rejection.

Being open about our insecurities and fears will bring us closer together.

One of my favorite themes is Vulnerability and how we can use it to change the world for the better. It goes like this: We are incredibly similar in that we all have insecurities and fears and this is what can bring us closer together. Our insecurities and fears come in many forms, but there is always a core of the fear of being rejected. Rejection is a horrible thing and we should stop being so hard on ourselves and others, we should judge less and be more compassionate. I believe being open about our insecurities and fears can contribute a whole lot to making our world a nicer place. That way we can learn how connected we are to each other. There will be more peace and harmony.

So I preach the importance of sharing your feelings of vulnerability. I am trying to apply this in daily life, but it is truly an art and it takes a lot of practice. I regularly feel like a hypocrite, with the worst thing being not openly sharing my blog. It feels like sabotaging myself, my good intentions and work.

Welcome to Munching on a Dream

Here we are. The blog Munching on a Dream is entering a new era, an era of renewed openness. From the start in autumn 2014 I meant the blog to be interactive and now it’s time to invite everyone to join the discussions. Welcome! 🙂

Some things about me and my blog: I don’t write often, but I do take it seriously. I just adopted the current layout, so there have been some changes and I am still trying to make it nicer. There will be a nice header at some point and stuff. I do really like minimalism by the way, this is not just me being uncreative and having poor taste. Well, maybe it is! Anyhow, this blog is a living thing and I hope you appreciate it as such.

I don’t tell you what to think, but I suggest what to think about.

To make it even more lively: I highly appreciate comments! Like most bloggers. I am not trying to tell you what to think, but to suggest things to think about. I like to see this space as a place for ideas and interaction, so please do let hear from you! Also, you are most welcome to come with suggestions of any kind. Things to look up, read into, write about… I am open to collaborations as well. You can comment on a post or use the contact form. Yes, I take it very seriously! (While I’m at it: collaborations with illustrators would be great. To make the oh-so-serious blog more fun-ish.)

For me it is nice to see how my initial idea for this blog hasn’t changed so much! You can find my first, introductory post here. I also have an About page and such, which will be updated soon because of the new layout and so.

My blog sharing insecurities

Now I will give you an impression of the insecurities I faced regarding sharing my blog. Just for good old fun, you know? I hope you like it.

I am afraid that:

people will think I am a hypocrite for pretending to be balanced, while in reality I can come across as and be pretty stressed out
people will think I am writing nonsense or irrelevant stuff
people dislike my pictures (or their size – I’m still undecided about this, this was also different in my previous layout and part of the reason I changed)
people think I eat shitty food
people will blame me for being behind concerning (vegan) food trends (which I am, I totally admit it)
people will think I’m weird
people will think I am acting ‘all important’ and will see me as arrogant
people will use the insecurities I write about against me, however that may be possible
the mentioned things will make people see and approach me differently than they do now
the mentioned things will make people talk bad (worse?) about me behind my back instead of telling me what they think of me
the mentioned fears will make me super anxious about posting here
the mentioned fears will prevent me from writing my truth
the mentioned fears will prevent me to enjoy writing my blog at all

This may be about it. It is an interesting train of fears, don’t you think? And actually, I bet most of you can recognize these kind of fears, no? Maybe not concerning writing a weblog, but concerning many other things, possibly.

I am now confident that sharing my blog is a good idea. I hope it will benefit my readers, my blog and me. If you have comments on or questions about the mentioned insecurities or whatever, feel free to write a comment. Though, you don’t have to resecure me about the bullet points I just wrote, for I won’t believe you, anyway. – I’m joking! But seriously, I am totally fine and I hope you are too. Writing this blog post did help me, by the way! As expected.

Learn more

To learn more about insecurities and how to deal with them: go to my page of the insecurities tag. There is now seven posts in there and I absolutely love them. (I may start doing the arrogancy thing here…) I also like the to write about the topic of body image, as you can see in the body image tag page. There’s a lot of overlap in those two pages, but still I like the second one too. Further, if you want to learn about how vulnerability can help heal the divisions in the world, I recommend you to watch my friend Tom Davison explain it here.

My most recent post is about relationships and this post finally dragged me over the edge of sharing my weblog with all my friends. Go read it! You find it here: The many ways of Love – and how to do it. It actually is about insecurities as well, ha!

Now you are free to go to the comment section or wherever you want to go. Enjoy! Thank you for visiting my blog. My blog and me appreciate it. 🙂

I’ll write to you soon!

Love,
Nina

Photo by Giulia Bertelli via Unsplash.

Posted

20 March 2016

Inner growth, Other, Relating

Nina de Haan

Tags:

connecting, insecurities, vulnerability, writing

Comments

4 responses to “Walking the Talk of Vulnerability: exposing the personal blog”

Marloes Fröling

6 April 2016

I really like your story. You have a lot of fears, I see, but you are very open about it. This makes it wonderful to read. I think it will help you as well, as a kind of therapy. Not in a bad way, in a funny, open, hey-look-at-this-I-share-my-opinion-and-hope-to-be-not-afraid-about-it kind of way. Don’t be scared, keep sharing! It are always the people that stand out from the crowd that have to defend and explain their opinions. But those are brave people 🙂
Actually I am thinking about keeping a blog myself for years now, but never made the time or have the energy to start. Maybe I will now, thank you!

Reply
Nina de Haan

6 April 2016

Hi Marloes!
Thank you for your comment. 🙂
The ‘fears’ I mentioned here aren’t necessarily huge fears that live in my head, but more like fearful/insecure thoughts. Putting them here was meant as an illustration, not to show how incredibly fearful I am. Which is also the point: it’s extraordinary to be open about this, while we all have those kind of thoughts every now and then. And actually, many of those fears or whatever you call them come down to the same things, to the fears related to the negative beliefs of not being good enough, being weak, being worthless, being unworthy of love, etc. We all have such negative beliefs and are afraid others find out they’re true, while they aren’t 🙂 (but we kind of belief so ourselves).

Your conclusion ‘you have a lot of fears’ made me feel uncomfortable, so that’s why I wrote this addition. 😛 I’ll probably go into it another time in a blog post. If you’re interested, I can recommend you to read books of Eckhart Tolle and Jan Geurtz haha.
But thank you for your support! If you start a blog or something, let me know! I’d like to read it.

Reply
Julia

12 May 2021

Hi Nina,
I just read your blog for the first time today and I think it is very interesting. From someone who has known you outside of the blog :)) I will react on your fears

and as you wrote . If you have comments on or questions about the mentioned insecurities or whatever, feel free to write a comment.

people will think I am a hypocrite for pretending to be balanced, while in reality I can come across as and be pretty stressed out
As I knew you in this time *currently I am not sure how you are* I feel like this was actually always a fun part of you, on the one hand having all these very balanced and smart contemplations, on the other hand getting emotional and stressed about things, I found this combination to be interesting and fun! 🙂 In some way it makes it more fun to also see these stressed sides of you, because it is so relatable.

people will think I am writing nonsense or irrelevant stuff
I relate to how you feel, I also think this way sometimes. Iguess there is some truth to it, I mean, in some way everything we do is irrelevant on universal scale and in some way it all matters so much. To me it was interesting to read how you keep aligned with your beliefs and values, even if they go against what is practical for your personal life (i.e. kundalini) which is a pretty admirable thing to do.

people dislike my pictures (or their size – I’m still undecided about this, this was also different in my previous layout and part of the reason I changed)
I saw you had a cat picture on an article about a different topic. and I thought it was cute and imagined you found the cat cute too. Lol

people will think I am acting ‘all important’ and will see me as arrogant
It is interesting that you wrote this because I was afraid you would think this about me. maybe because I tried to understand why you did not want to be my friend/or keep in touch with me (or at least not put time/effort into that at that time) and tried to think of some reasons why I might not be that interesting for you. Amongst others I thought maybe I appeared arrogant when I talked enthusiastically about my job. *btw same way, no need to resecure me or something like that, I totally respect that that was what you wanted when we reconnected*

people will think I’m weird
definitely 🙂

people will use the insecurities I write about against me, however that may be possible
It is interesting as in some way it also feels like if you share your insecurities, I would be less likely to use anything against you, because it makes you so human and easy to relate to / I guess it gets easier to empathize

the mentioned things will make people see and approach me differently than they do now
the mentioned things will make people talk bad (worse?) about me behind my back instead of telling me what they think of me
the mentioned fears will make me super anxious about posting here
the mentioned fears will prevent me from writing my truth
the mentioned fears will prevent me to enjoy writing my blog at all

I can relate to having all of these fears too. I so often have similar fears to this when I know everyone can look at my website. Once an old friend from droef, that I did not talk to for a long time, wrote me a message saying “omg you are …different now”… Without talking to me, only after viewing my website. Such a weird feeling to think that people might perceive you in a completely different way depending on how you present yourself online.

I think it is also a fear to think that people will see only the parts of you that you present online, which is never the full spectrum of all that you are. As a blogger you are not able to putting that into perspective, because you are not actually talking with someone. If you talk with someone you can adapt to their response – for some way that feels less vulnerable than sharing everything upfront. It is easier that way to show the nuances in your opinions and thoughts or show that you understand their/other perspectives too even if they are different.

Reply
1. admin
  
  13 May 2021
  
  Hi Julia!
  This is such a cool elaborate comment. Thanks for putting effort into it. 🙂 It’s pretty cool to hear it from another point of view. Here are a few more thoughts:
  – the fear of being a hypocrite may have to do with the imposter syndrome too, and also of not being able to show everything at the same time, like you mention in the last paragraph. Indeed, because on the internet what you present is quite static and not the whole of what is/who you are. But then again it doesn’t have to be the whole; it serves a purpose to just focus on one aspect/set of aspects at a time. It helps you to see that more clearly. 🙂
  – ‘some way everything we do is irrelevant on universal scale and in some way it all matters so much’ – indeed!
  
  Thanks for stating you have similar fears! It even feels weird to write that out, I think. But it does feel vulnerable in a way to share about the things you care about online. And indeed it’s also weird to have people base their image of you (solely) on how you present yourself online. For me, this blog post feels really weird too, because people may start to think that I’m super fearful and then see me as such. I’m not sure if that would be accurate. But on the other hand, would it matter? Probably not.
  This is such an interesting topic.
  
  About the other things I sent you personal messages.
  
  Reply