Joseph Jarrett

Part of my mission and this online discourse I do is to share what I have learned from my experiences in this life. It never occurred to me that I should share how emotionally taxing it can be to do something vulnerable, creative, and risky. I guess you could say most people just chalk it up to reality and such, but I would not agree with that. I cannot tell how much hurt and pain resurfaced as I wrote and prepared everything. Even now, with these little blog posts, I struggle emotionally sometimes.

            As a whole, Mishaps & Mistakes felt very easy to write. I was just recounting memories and what I got out of those moments. Simple, right? Yeah, no, it definitely was not. This may come as a shocker, considering how emotionally stable I am, but I cried myself to sleep many nights in the writing phase. Certain chapters of the book were so incredibly difficult to relive. They were things I wanted to move on from or forget about. It is entirely impossible to do that when you are quite literally putting it out on paper for the world to see.

            When I wrote Chapter Eleven, “Always the Right Person, Never the Right Time,” I absolutely lost my mind. There I was, freshly heartbroken, writing out all of the sweet and romantic things that occurred in the short but intense relationship I shared with Gabe. Can you even fathom how hard that was? It had been mere months since things went downhill in that department, and I was just clacking away on the keys of my laptop about how he made me smile so much. I hated every second of writing that chapter. I made a TikTok afterwards on my personal account, in which I used “party 4 u” by Charli XCX as the main sound. It was trending at the time, and I saw so many people posting things they were struggling to handle with this song playing. I had to participate, and I found comfort in others who understood me.

            I also struggled immensely to write Chapter Sixteen, “The Things I’d Do to Hear Your Voice Again.” Fun fact: this was the last chapter I wrote in the book. While there are a few that follow it, I pushed it off because of how devastating it was. My grandma, whom we all called Baba, passed away in July 2024. The book was released in August a year later, but the wound still felt fresh. I shared a transcription of a voicemail she had left me in the book, and it was devastating to process her voice into something among my words.

            It does not matter what authors write about. Or what any artist produces, honestly. At the end of the day, anyone who is trying to do something like this is probably in pain. They are probably an anxious wreck who questions multiple times a day if they should do it. These thoughts took up an astronomical amount of space in my head. But I still did it. I found the courage to finally shut down my anxiety and fear. I conquered it for once. My emotions are still raging today, but I have never felt this kind of peace in my life before.  

            So, if you have ever questioned if you are making the right choice by speaking your truth and putting it out in the world, you are. I promise you are doing what you need to do. If I had the opportunity to release my story for the first time again, I would still do it. I have no regrets. I would happily relive all of those emotions again. I have learned that being emotional is actually a beautiful thing, not something wrong. I really wish I had learned that earlier in life than at 26. I probably would have punished myself less in the past if I could have accepted it back then. But maybe that’s just how the journey was meant to pan out for me. Maybe you could be a little more forgiving and accepting of yourself than I was of myself. If my crazy self can do it, you definitely can.

Now, enjoy “party 4 u” and cry it out. You’ll be okay.