As a big part of my life is writing, and my writings are not just on this blog, but also on Dutch gaming websites et cetera, you could say I am pretty outspoken. I review games, activities, movies, and I just tend to have an opinion about things pretty quickly. Some people think that is a bad thing, but I can’t really help it. Plus, my opinion is not going to be the same my whole life, if someone comes up with pro’s or cons, I try to be open and listen, and I sometimes get inspired to see things differently.

What I sometimes struggle with though, is that people think that because I am a pretty extrovert person, I am very confident or I am a very tough person. That is not entirely the case, cause I have always been a pretty insecure girl actually. I care very much for people and I am very much willing to help. Not that I am travelling to Africa to feel better about helping other people, but I do not think a person that would be very tough and a bit arrogant could survive being a management assistant. You have to have a drive to want to help people, even if you can sometimes strangle them because they can be so annoying! 😉

I can be very stubborn and extremely black and white, which is something especially my boyfriend, who I live with, has to struggle with. And I think to him it must be difficult as well, that the brain just automatically thinks that being outspoken means being very confident. To me it has more sides than that though. I cannot help not being a quiet person and I love talking, discussing things and I am very curious what people do, why they think a certain way. I think that is a positive thing, but my boyfriend is not always happy about my curiousness, hihi.

The fact that people with opinions can still be insecure people, is something that is extra tough with social media these days. Everybody is just being mean to each other, mainly for no reason, especially in journalism. It is easy to say things on the internet. Even though you do not say things face to face, they can still crush a person. Thankfully I do not get a lot of negativity around little old me anymore, I used to get way more of that when I was a bit more outspokenly feminist, but I am very thankful that I do not have to be nervous about checking out my Twitter timeline at the mo 😉

Cause it really bugs me, even when I have written an article that 8 people compliment, if there is just one person that says I did not do it right, I always remember that and it can really ruin my whole day. And the worst thing is, I do not just do this with internet trolls. I do this in my relationships too. If someone says something mean to me, I will remember it forever. But all those compliments, those little things, they just seem to fade out my brain so swiftly. Sometimes that makes me sad, because it seems unfair, and it is as if I want to do this even though that is totally not the case.

I was thinking about this whole ‘Outspoken people have feelings too’ headline above my article. I always saw this as something that mainly women struggle with. Fun, fearless women that have an opinion and share it, as especially in the old days women in movies were mostly quiet people that were more assistants than key characters. But then I realized that men have to deal with this all the time too, even more than women, as men are still not really OK to have strong feelings in general. However, my experience with men tell me that men do tend to remember the compliments over the bad things, so at least that is a plus 😉

Obviously I cannot change people’s behavior, but I try to ask myself a bit more if I can change my own. How can I make sure I remember the good things and forget the bad ones? A while I wrote down compliments and read them back in tough times, but I always feel like they ‘expired’ by the time I read them back. Plus, the bad things still stuck with me. But recent changes in my life have taught me to at least be a little bit more positive, and may be even better: they have taught me to be a tad more patient and to accept a little bit that I can’t control everything.

But recent changes in my life have taught me to at least be a little bit more positive, and may be even better: they have taught me to be a tad more patient and to accept a little bit that I can’t control everything. May be not always, but at least at some moments I feel strong about myself that way. Other times I just screw up again, but did someone not say that doing something always means a 99 per cent failure or something like that?

There will always be people bad mouthing you, but never forget: every person you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. This is not a quote of my own, but it is absolutely brilliant. So no matter how tough a person may seem, and no matter how much a person yells his or her opinion on every street corner, that does not rule out they have not got any deeper feelings under those big personalities. Think about it!