Word of the Week

Outlet

Definition: a means by which something escapes, passes or is released; a means of expressing one’s talents, energy, or emotions

Outlet

Consider this...

When I was a senior in high school, I wrote a poem about the death of my grandfather. It wasn’t anything earth-shattering, but we had been studying the works and words of e.e. cummings in my English class, and I liked the way his poems looked on paper, so I decided to give poetry-writing a whirl.

What I ended up with was pretty much just a list of awkwardly written sentences and random words that reflected how angry and devastated I was about my grandfather’s death.

Like I said, the poem itself wasn’t anything monumental. But the act of writing? Of purging my brain and body of all the emotion I felt but wasn’t able to tell anyone about? That was what blew my mind, shattered my earth. It was then, as a senior in high school, that I made writing my outlet.

For me, writing is a way to set free the feelings, ideas, thoughts and other emotions that I typically keep to myself. Some of the things I write, I let other people read. Some things I still keep to myself. What happens once the words are on paper aren’t as important to me as actually getting the words on paper.

What matters is that I feel a sense of release when the words move from my brain and my heart to my fingertips.

I don’t think anyone can say that there are feelings, thoughts, ideas, emotions that they don’t keep bottled up inside. We all keep things to ourselves. We internalize, we daydream, we imagine, we put on a smiling face even if we’re frowning on the inside. It happens. It’s who we are, how we were raised.

But why keep everything bottled up inside? Set it free! Find an outlet, some method of transferring your feelings to the outside, so they don’t weigh you down. You don’t have to write, like I do - maybe painting is more your thing. Or boxing. Or screaming into a pillow.

This week, I want you to make a conscious effort to find an emotional outlet for yourself. It doesn’t have to be the one that’s going to stick for the rest of your life - you might need to try several different options before you find the best one (and believe me, you’ll know when you find it).

For now, the point is to allow yourself to just try letting go of some of the things that weigh heavily on your mind. You might not even realize how much you’ve been holding in until you let some of it go. That’s ok. Embrace and enjoy the process of re-directing your feelings, and let it motivate you to keep going!