I heard a podcast the other day (it wasn’t this one, which is a good one, too) about how lame it is that we show only our most-attractive selves on social media. Not a new observation, but I realized how guilty I am of doing that here.
I try to keep it real. I’ll share about a divorce dream. I’ll tell you when nostalgia puts me deep into a funk. I’ll share the story about the rats. But for the most part, I present myself as a benevolent, observant, insatiably curious blogger who might take a seven-year-old out on the town for her birthday or write a shame-on-you-letter to the CTA. I love, I love. Love me.
But you don’t get the mud. Why would I share it when I get to pick? On balance, I’m not a bad guy and that is actually true, but I have behaved horribly in my life in both word and deed and judging by the argument Claus and I had recently, I have yet to see the light. I was being so awful. Constantly interrupting him, yelling, just mean as a cat. To get me to snap out of it, Claus grabbed my shoulder at one point and said, “Mary! Stop!” [Editor’s Note: In no way, shape, or form was this a threatening moment in which I felt unsafe. It was a stop-sign, “Earth to Mary” gesture, nothing more.]
And he was right to do it. I was a seething brat just then. Though Evil Mary situations don’t occur often, they do occur, and I don’t race to my laptop to blog about them. Let’s see what else I can come clean about in the name of making sure you don’t think I’m so great.
– I betrayed a friend’s trust and hurt her when I shared with someone that she called me too much. I’m pretty sure it got back to her because she doesn’t call me anymore. I miss her and I’m not sure how to fix it.
– We’re not supposed to do AirBNB in my building but I have had two AirBNB people in my place in the past two months. I’m not doing it anymore (being an AirBNB host is not for me) and the building’s rule is there to keep people from using their homes as full-time AirBNB hotel rooms. Still, I broke the rules and in this case, that’s the same as lying.
– I was the victim of a fraudulent PayPal transaction in December. In the appeal I sent on Friday to Citibank (they denied my initial claim), I included in the packet many pages of hard evidence that show, from start to finish how a paper company straight up stole $426.05 from me. Every shred of that evidence is legit, but I omitted a printout of the email I sent them in February when I called them bad, bad, bad names. It was life-destroying. And I didn’t include it.
– Epic fights and tensions with my sisters. That’s probably the worst thing.
I don’t know. Other stuff. Stuff not okay to share in public* and plenty that’s just boring, disappointing, garden-variety lame human behavior (e.g., flipping someone off in traffic, cancelling plans because you’re sick but you’re not, etc.). As I live and breathe, I try to be a stand-up guy. I am an observant, insatiably curious blogger. But you can’t think I just float along because I don’t. I capsize. I abandon ship. I lose true north. I overextend metaphors of the nautical kind. Overboard!
I’m not after a “we’re all human” rallying cry. It just became important to say that I want this blog to be a quality place to be on the Internet but that doesn’t mean that the person who writes it is pure quality from dawn to dusk. There’s no profile picture that shows what it’s like to have a drug-addicted son. You don’t Instagram a picture of a second-warning collection notice. You don’t post that you’re about to cheat on your taxes. It feels way better to present the perfect and we all do this now.
*The above stuff was hard enough. By the way, I’ve never done time.