The Courage to Take Up Space (Without Permission)

I have a lot to say, and truthfully, reveal so little of it. 

Despite the fact I have a podcast (podcassidy) and post what seems like 900 times a day, I still have so much that I keep inside. I speak through memes and jokes, but don’t necessarily have that vulnerability baked in. That’s why I find it so damn admirable when I see people out here being fully themselves and letting the world know their wild thoughts.

For every one thing I share publicly, there are ten things I don’t disclose. Sometimes it is just a matter of wanting to keep it private; sometimes it is for the safety & security of others in my life, or usually, it just isn’t anyone’s business.  

A lot of things in life bring us down. My entire intent in posting is to bring joy, levity, and peace to the chaos that we live in daily. A lot of times, that means making a joke without justifying why, because the context behind it would just take away from that intent and change the focus from the meme or joke to me. 

Most of the time, this approach is okay; I do see the backlash at times, though. 

I will share a meme that I find funny and can relate to due to my life experience, but people in the comments will be quick to jump to conclusions about me due to not telling my life story along with it. 

I don’t want to share my life story on LinkedIn, though.

For a long time, and still now to a certain extent, I am overcoming the idea of taking up space without politely knocking first.

I didn’t have many friends in school, because I didn’t let myself take up space in others’ lives, or let myself be known well enough to make those friends. I didn’t speak up, I didn’t demand the attention of a room, and I quietly hid in plain sight. I was just waiting for others to come to me, and it was easier to think that no one cared based on that than to face the reality that I was too cowardly to try making them myself. And because of that, it created an isolation and loneliness in my life that I didn’t realize I had created myself.

I thought others hated me, but the reality is I never dared to stand up and give them the opportunity to decide for themselves how they felt.

What I know now that I didn’t know then is that they weren’t sitting there concerned with “oh what will this person think if I share this???” or “what is this story isn’t interesting enough” like I was.

But like… do you know how many uninteresting stories I have heard in my life? And how many times I still appreciated the message taken away from it regardless?

So many people put whatever they want out into cyberspace without concerning themselves with how much of others’ time they are taking up with the amount of their content, without worrying about whether it’s “entertaining” enough, or without thinking others will begin to have a negative impression if the content is “too” personal.

I started posting more frequently and worried that people would get annoyed with it and unfollow. And you know what? They did. But more people came along who supported me and liked this frequency.

When I launched a podcast of my own, I was worried that people wouldn’t want to sit for a full hour and watch it. And you know what? Many don’t. But some do, and do so frequently enough that I have my own little community of people who look forward to them.

I have written a couple long-format posts in the past, and always edit it down for length, because again, I don’t want to be taking up too much space on someone’s feed and take up too much of their time reading it without proving “value”.

The thing is, though, everyone who comes across our content can interact with it however they like. We can put something out there and let others make the determination of whether or not it’s valuable to them. If they don’t like it, they will unfollow you. That will happen no matter what you post. It doesn’t mean you should keep your insights hidden away from those that actually will appreciate them.

So that’s what I am starting to do here. 

No more editing down to make sure it’s not “too long” for social media, no more filtering to get around algorithm limitations, and no more keeping it all inside. 

It’s time to stop asking for permission to speak and just do it.