Friday is Scrutinize Your Personal Faults Day!
So the Man and I were talking last night about blogs (this has become an unsettlingly frequent topic in our house and it's all my fault...), and he raised a good point about why he hates them. Namely that despite the pleasure I and many other voyeurs get from reading the "diaries" of complete strangers, very few people are ever truly revealing a version of themselves that isn't crafted (consciously or not) with the intent to create a more appealing online persona of themselves... a blogger ego. This is probably fairly obvious to people READING what we write, but maybe not so clear to the writer him or herself. In short: a blog is an ongoing PR campaign managed by the writer and designed to invent the personhood we wish to step into.
I like to think that I am pretty freaking honest with myself, and with those around me (other than remaining totally anonymous online, at least). But I realize I probably do the same shit everybody else does... blueprinting a slightly slicker, more polished take on my reality for me to step into. So, to the end of eradicating this... today I shall take the opportunity to drag out a few choice unslick, unpolished bits of the lame, real-life, boring, stupid, tedious Me.
Glaring Personal Fault Number One: I am a terrible listener.
Being a girl, you'd think I'd at least be a fairly decent listener. But nope. I don't mean that I don't *like* to listen to people (although, when it's some old woman I barely know complaining about, say, why I need to make sure the newspaper prints the correct fucking crossword answers immediately because she might not live much longer... I become an even worse listener, so.). I just have developed a memory like a stoned hamster's for certain things, such as absorbing the shit that people tell me about themselves in spoken conversation. I will not remember what was said in an argument ten minutes after it happens. I will not recall the details of my best friend's life-changing career decisions. I can't recount to you the soul-baring insights my mother has drunkenly confided to me during any of our many late-night revelatory chain-smoking porch-sitting conversations of years past. Write it down for me, and I'll remember it forever after having read it once (which is one of the reasons I enjoy online communication so much more than face-to-face forms). But tell me your secrets and they'll promptly fly right out of my head. This means I am an inconsiderate friend and confidante more than I care to admit. I suck.
Glaring Personal Fault Number Two: I am a control freak.
Ok, not about everything. But when it comes to thinks I feel I could do for myself instead of giving up control to someone else, or that affect my life in some way, I have a pretty tough time letting go. Not only that, but I keep myself on an incredibly tight leash, and have my whole life. For example: when I was eight, I had to go to the dentist to get some caps put on my teeth. They informed me that they had to give me the drugs for this. Even at eight, I understood that these would "alter my mind" somewhat, so I was internally freaking out. As they were giving it to me, I kept asking myself every 2.4 seconds, "am I high now?? How about now?! Do I feel it yet??? Now? What about now?!" The idea of being "crazy" (I thought drugs made one temporarily insane) scared the shit out of me... and then I realized that maybe I was ALREADY crazy. This was also the year the insomnia began, probably not coincidentally. Such a control freak am I that I didn't even drink until I had moved to New Orleans for college, because I was terrified of losing my grip on myself.
Glaring Personal Fault Number Three: I am disturbingly passive and apologetic sometimes.
This ties in to my control freakishness in some ways. Not only am I intensely uncomfortable with letting other people do things for me when I could be doing them myself, but I am often pathetically incapable of asking for favors even when I really need them. Case in point: the night the Hub and I got into a car accident, when a stupid drunk driver totalled my car, I called my little brother, who lives fairly close to where it happened. We had no way to get home, and yet I couldn't even bring myself to ask him to come and pick us up. Not only did I not want to put him out, I didn't really trust him to find his way there (he is infamously poor with directions) to begin with. Even after he offered several times, I kept going 'round and 'round with him until I only succeeded in delaying his inevitable appearance at the scene AND surely making him feel like a worthless flake. Worse still, despite considering myself pretty damned sexually liberated, I am utterly unable to ask for selfish sexual favors... even though I have 24 hour access to the Most Talented Tongue on Earth (por exemplo). For some reason, I have a hardcore guilt complex about my own selfish sex drive, to the point of total embarrassment.
Phew! Ok, I'm feelin' freer than Rubin Carter in a white trash nightmare right now. Not that those flaws are the sum total of the fuckedupedness that is me, but it's a start. So, if you've actually read this fucking far, (you're crazy and) I invite you to do the same and post a few unsavory facts about your own slick selves as well. ;)
I like to think that I am pretty freaking honest with myself, and with those around me (other than remaining totally anonymous online, at least). But I realize I probably do the same shit everybody else does... blueprinting a slightly slicker, more polished take on my reality for me to step into. So, to the end of eradicating this... today I shall take the opportunity to drag out a few choice unslick, unpolished bits of the lame, real-life, boring, stupid, tedious Me.
Glaring Personal Fault Number One: I am a terrible listener.
Being a girl, you'd think I'd at least be a fairly decent listener. But nope. I don't mean that I don't *like* to listen to people (although, when it's some old woman I barely know complaining about, say, why I need to make sure the newspaper prints the correct fucking crossword answers immediately because she might not live much longer... I become an even worse listener, so.). I just have developed a memory like a stoned hamster's for certain things, such as absorbing the shit that people tell me about themselves in spoken conversation. I will not remember what was said in an argument ten minutes after it happens. I will not recall the details of my best friend's life-changing career decisions. I can't recount to you the soul-baring insights my mother has drunkenly confided to me during any of our many late-night revelatory chain-smoking porch-sitting conversations of years past. Write it down for me, and I'll remember it forever after having read it once (which is one of the reasons I enjoy online communication so much more than face-to-face forms). But tell me your secrets and they'll promptly fly right out of my head. This means I am an inconsiderate friend and confidante more than I care to admit. I suck.
Glaring Personal Fault Number Two: I am a control freak.
Ok, not about everything. But when it comes to thinks I feel I could do for myself instead of giving up control to someone else, or that affect my life in some way, I have a pretty tough time letting go. Not only that, but I keep myself on an incredibly tight leash, and have my whole life. For example: when I was eight, I had to go to the dentist to get some caps put on my teeth. They informed me that they had to give me the drugs for this. Even at eight, I understood that these would "alter my mind" somewhat, so I was internally freaking out. As they were giving it to me, I kept asking myself every 2.4 seconds, "am I high now?? How about now?! Do I feel it yet??? Now? What about now?!" The idea of being "crazy" (I thought drugs made one temporarily insane) scared the shit out of me... and then I realized that maybe I was ALREADY crazy. This was also the year the insomnia began, probably not coincidentally. Such a control freak am I that I didn't even drink until I had moved to New Orleans for college, because I was terrified of losing my grip on myself.
Glaring Personal Fault Number Three: I am disturbingly passive and apologetic sometimes.
This ties in to my control freakishness in some ways. Not only am I intensely uncomfortable with letting other people do things for me when I could be doing them myself, but I am often pathetically incapable of asking for favors even when I really need them. Case in point: the night the Hub and I got into a car accident, when a stupid drunk driver totalled my car, I called my little brother, who lives fairly close to where it happened. We had no way to get home, and yet I couldn't even bring myself to ask him to come and pick us up. Not only did I not want to put him out, I didn't really trust him to find his way there (he is infamously poor with directions) to begin with. Even after he offered several times, I kept going 'round and 'round with him until I only succeeded in delaying his inevitable appearance at the scene AND surely making him feel like a worthless flake. Worse still, despite considering myself pretty damned sexually liberated, I am utterly unable to ask for selfish sexual favors... even though I have 24 hour access to the Most Talented Tongue on Earth (por exemplo). For some reason, I have a hardcore guilt complex about my own selfish sex drive, to the point of total embarrassment.
Phew! Ok, I'm feelin' freer than Rubin Carter in a white trash nightmare right now. Not that those flaws are the sum total of the fuckedupedness that is me, but it's a start. So, if you've actually read this fucking far, (you're crazy and) I invite you to do the same and post a few unsavory facts about your own slick selves as well. ;)