Not Everyone Lies On Facebook

March 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Sigh. Where to begin?

I’ve been reading MANY posts lately about the lies people tell on social media, how we scrub our lives and portray only our most beautiful moments. It’s a social media backlash that I honestly take a little personally.Lies Kids

I post pictures of my kids doing adorable things. I only post pictures of myself when they look good. I share anecdotes of my small children saying amazing, profound things. And I am not ashamed of my life shared on social media.

Here’s how you can interpret my social media activity:

  • I post cute kid stuff maybe 3-5 times a week. Other than those moments you can assume they have been in timeout for knocking each other around like barbarians.
  • You will find pictures of me, usually with my husband, about once a month because doing my hair and makeup for anything other than work (and usually not even on those days) only happens that often.
  • I share articles and stories that inspire, inform, or make me laugh so hard I snort coffee. Since this is most of my posting, you can infer that I read a lot and care about politics, world events, the great irony of reaching middle age, and art. To name just a few.
  • I “Like” a lot of my friends’ posts because I like my friends and their kids – both human and animal. I genuinely like seeing their fondest memories, reading lists, and musings about life.

You see, I don’t lie on Facebook. In fact, it’s a pretty accurate highlight reel of what my life is like. Would it make my friends happy to see 4 pictures a day of my children crying, whining, or giving me the evil eye? Would they rather see pictures of me the moment I wake up with puffy eyes, standing over a toaster making waffles willing the coffeemaker to brew faster?

Life will always be a series of highs and lows. I have faith in my social media friends that they can read between the lines of my “perfectly Instagrammed” life and know that I am well-rounded, equally disturbed, and a majority of the time completely unraveled. I know that I believe the same about them.

If you love social media and want to continue the fun, please feel free to share this rant. Who knows, maybe it will start a counter-revolution.

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Sometimes you just need to have diarrhea.

April 16, 2012 1 Comment

Pull up your figurative Depends and follow me on this one.

There are times in life when the cautious, filtered approach to communication just doesn’t work.  It’s time for verbal diarrhea. You need to get mushy and stinky and roll around in the crap in order to move forward. (For those with a visual imagination, I apologize.) These are the moments when you need to let the words fly out without warning, premeditation, or any thought at all.*

It’s not advice for every day, and certainly not for performance reviews at work (however tempting that may be when your “boss”, who may be at least 10 years your junior, is giving you advice on how to be a better you).  Regardless, it’s good advice for those moments when candor and truth are necessary at any cost.

Think about your last ugly cry.  You know the one – crazy eyes, snotty nose, sweaty forehead.  It was probably related to the romantic other in your life.  If I look like this after an encounter, it is guaranteed that stuff came out of my mouth that was at times completely incoherent, but brutally honest.

Let me put in a small aside here.  If this is the way ALL of your romantic fights look, then it may be time to stop reading this post and find some Imodium STAT.  For the rest of you, please continue.

It isn’t until I reach “hot mess” that I say what I really feel.  It doesn’t always end the way I want things to, but it always ends the way it should.  My verbal diarrhea comes shooting out, and sometimes they can hack it, other times they can’t.  Either way, we both have a better understanding of one another and can decide if another round is worth the effort.

Bouts of cleansing diarrhea are not only good for high intensity stand-offs.  They are equally beneficial when doling out advice, particularly in cases where the advice seeker is a repeat offender of frustratingly ridiculous behavior but still believes “I didn’t do anything wrong.”  A good friend, after 15 rounds, will just let it fly. Trust me, it feels so much better after.

I am discovering that the only situation that this proverbial diarrhea may actually be a welcome recurring affliction is when I write.  Blog post that took me less than 30 minutes to write, were riddled with grammatical nightmares, and included numerous incomplete sentences, were the only ones that got read.

I am at 29 minutes. Let’s see if the theory holds true.

*Yes, caught that in my brief editing review. Left it in for your pleasure.

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