Avoiding You

It's true, I've been avoiding my blog! Writers block? Blog confusion?

No, no. Just a big secret.

I'm a horrible secret keeper of my own secrets. I hate keeping secrets! Especially good news. I want to tell everyone, all the time - strangers, friends, everyone. I'm really bad at secrets. Which is funny, because I married the human equivalent of Fort Knox: what goes in never comes out. Yet I am horrible at this. Horrible.

I am not inviting any of you to guess. Instead, I will try to distract you (and myself) by talking about another sudden realization: advertising does no one any favors. The truth is that every stage of my life has resulted in some disappointment on my part because it didn't look like what I thought it would: it some how was not reflective of the edgy black and white photos that represented this phase of life on blogs or in catalogues. It's my version of that phase, so it's usually messier and filled with more tears (I'm a crier) and a really dirty kitchen floor (no seriously how does anyone keep their kitchen floor clean?).

I did not look like this on my wedding day. And you probably didn't either. 

I've always known that consumerism and advertising doesn't do anyone any favors, but I never realized how much. I never realized how much it is meant to breed discontentment: because no one's reality can look as perfect as staged photographs. I'm buying into the concept of a life that doesn't even exist anywhere, for anyone - it's made up. It's made up for me to feel discontent, so that I'll go searching for my satisfaction in products and fads and newness.

That's a basic truth that I'm just beginning to wrap my head around. The fullness of life isn't lived through pictures or anyone else's perception; the fullness of life is lived by following one's own call and living that to the fullest. I did know this, I just didn't full wrap myself around it and embrace. I thought I was secretly copping out because I was too weak or lazy to achieve what those advertisements sold. But I'm breaking out of that now - I don't want that cookie cutter-ness anymore. I want what's mine: I want my life, fully mine, fully good, fully True.

I'm excited. It makes me want to unplug all these supposed sources of "inspiration" and just go off actually looking and touching real things. I know I can't totally do that - it's not in the nature of communication anymore - but I dream of it. I dream some day of people saying "Oh, her? Yeah, you have to mail her a letter! Doesn't even have a phone. But she loves it when company drops by, that's for sure."