Playing for Time

Poor Monday gets a bad rap, the short end of the stick, it’s the redheaded stepchild of the week, g’head, throw your own bad cliché into the pot.  Monday is my official day to uncensor myself and vent, so you’re lucky I have very little to bitch about in any direction.  By this point I have only a smattering of self-censorship left, so if I were to toss my last remaining constraints a whole lotta people who thought they knew me would be bailing out of this clown car.  But riddle me this, don’t we all tend to be colossal stacks of filters from womb to tomb?  And if you, personally, have managed to shed a few layers along the way, does that not feel amazing?

Why does it take so agonizingly long for some of us to realize that we can’t love ourselves if we’re busy keeping everybody else happy?  Why so long to know that our opinions, thought processes, and convictions are as legitimate as anybody else’s, and far saner than many most?  Why are we so … human?  As you no doubt picked up on, BECAUSE YOU ROCK, those are rhetorical questions and you are in no way obligated to send me the answers.

So on this chilly November Sunday (yes indeed, overachievers do today’s homework yesterday) while I track a friend who’s running the NYC Marathon, I’m thinking about relationships.  As a Social Introvert on the chart, my relationships center, in time spent, around people on Facebook and WordPress and the two forums overlap greatly.  My core group of out-there-in-the-greater-world friends are almost all part of the Facebook zoo as well … so as Zucky might want us to say, “It gets complicated.”

I write about Facebook once in a while because it’s such a funny animal.  Age and lifestyle differences notwithstanding, my experience with it seems to be basically the same as everyone else’s — we’re all looking for community, a spot to fit in, people to talk to and listen to, a place to say things so we can figure out what we really think, share funny stuff, and brag about pets, kids, grandkids, fairytale weddings, and vacations.  However, there are some obvious differences attached to the experience:  If you’re in it to troll, ridicule, hate on people, do harm to animals, men, women, children, or anything else that lives and breathes, including Mother Earth, or expose your (clearly amazing) body to the universe … then you and I occupy different worlds, thank god (except I’d take the body).

As with everything else, my personal Facebook and WordPress guidelines are simple:

1.)  Since it’s my life/page/blog, I say/post/read/write/share whatever speaks to my spirit.

2.)  I will never knowingly or purposely say/post/write/or share anything that would wound or humiliate someone.

3.)  If you disagree with or are offended by anything I say/post/write/or share, then I encourage you to take full ownership of your newsfeed or reader and opt to keep scrolling on down the Facebook/WordPress Road.  My brain flies in all directions at once and my tastes are ludicrously eclectic, so I’ll eventually get around to either pleasing or offending you and all the rest of my friends, possibly in a single post.  Or you could talk with me and I promise to talk with you back, not AT you.

4.)  If you’re family, going out as far as that extends … in-laws, outlaws, exes, cousins repeatedly removed … I will likely never unfriend you.  However, if you’re rude I probably won’t choose to get into a discussion with you again either.  Most of you in my gene pool are of the opposite political persuasion so I’m fully aware I can be a trial, but you’ve been pretty patient so far and it’s a matter of honor with me to be fair, to vet what I post, and to stay true to where I am on any given issue.  You also know by now that I consider politics to be some of the most important stuff we can think and talk about since that’s what determines the kind of world we live in, so if you have to hide me, so be it, there are lots of other people here who share my passion.

5.)  If you send me a friends request but never once say hey or talk to me or acknowledge that I’ve dropped in on you, my bullshit detector goes off and I start thinking about sending you to the cornfield.*  So let me make this easy for you:

a.)  Yes, I’m still married to that guy you probably didn’t trust, we celebrated ten years this past summer, and we’re still disgustingly stupid over each other.

b.)  Yes, I’ve gained a few pounds, let my hair go silver, moved to a liberal outpost, and started living.  And that’s okay.

c.)   No, I don’t know why you’re here either, so we’ll probably be saying goodbye soon.  I ain’t mad, bro, it just isn’t gonna work out between you and me.  Really, it’s not me, it’s you, no hard feelings.

*Fellow introverts are exempt, of course.  I know where you’re not coming from, and why.

To all who’ve been part of an adventure I’ve ended up living publicly on Facebook and WordPress, all the friends who were already in, have bought in, and/or hung in … thank you.  You’re a big part of where life’s going — I have tremendous role models among you and find myself incorporating bits and pieces of your personalities, writing styles, mindsets, fashion revelations, food loves, humor, and more.  I’m pretty sure Kim and I didn’t win Saturday night’s lottery, again … but how much could it matter in light of wealth like the above?  Tomorrow the mid-terms will finally be over and we’ll know where we’re headed.  And hey look!  I still have genuine friends at this point, what a gift.