There are two kinds of bloggers I hate.
The perfect ones–
and the perfectly awful ones.
The former never have a problem, float through life, always seem perfectly in control, always have a perfectly spiritual answer to everything that comes up.
The latter have lives composed of nothing but problems–they go where they’re thrown by circumstances. They emote directly into their posts and never self-edit. Their blogs are full of disappointment and venom and angst.
I have too much pride (and desire to stay employed) to be the latter, so I choose to self-edit. I write about my frustrations, but not in my frustration. I try to be wise with what details I share. I wait until I’ve cooled down to write.
But as a result, I fear my blog occasionally gives the impression that I’m the former–that I’ve got it all together. Sure, I talk about problems, but always in the past tense. I fear I’m like one of the small group members John Acuff lampoons on Stuff Christians Like for confessing “safe sins”:
“Someone will say, “I need to be honest with everyone tonight. I need to have full disclosure and submit myself in honesty. Like ODB from the Wu-Tang Clan, I need to give it to you raw!” So you brace yourself for this crazy moment of authenticity and the person takes a deep breath and says
…
“I haven’t been reading my Bible enough.”
So, just in case I haven’t been real enough, I’m ready to share a less-stellar, but really real incident that occurred about a week ago.
I intended to set up my computer, enter some grades, then go to sleep. Two hours later I couldn’t get connected to the internet, whatever I did. It felt like the end of the world.
I’d been doing some reupholstering of my computer chair since my computer was taking forever trying to connect to the internet–but one thing kept going wrong after another. The axle slipped from my hand and left a grease stain on my carpet. I was tacking in the new fabric and repeatedly hammered my finger and thumb. Then I couldn’t get the newly upholstered piece back into place. My screwdriver slipped and I gouged my hand. I was alone and I yelled my “ARGGH!” through clenched teeth into the empty house.
Now I’m crying again, bawling with anger, snot running down my face.
It’s not fair, I tell myself, the world, God, anyone who might be listening. It’s not right. Why does life have to be so hard? Why can’t anything go right.
I can’t handle it, I say, enumerating what must be done. Grading to finish and grades to enter–except, oops, my computer won’t connect to the internet. A lab practical to write and study tips to give my students. A shopping trip to complete, an angel food cake to bake, a lecture and a quiz to write. Don’t know how I’m gonna get that all done, seems how I don’t have the internet on the computer that has all my class files.
And then there’s the work I still need to finish up at my other job–sometime before I leave for Lincoln. I can’t work from home just now, since I can’t get internet on that computer. And there’s the matter of the house I have to get clean before Wednesday–the house I’ll now be cleaning with bruised and bloodied hands.
Lovely.
My self-pity goes further–I dredge up all the unfairness of this last year, of the choices that others have made that have impacted me greatly, of the hopes raised just to be dashed.
I write in my journal that I quit.
I can’t do it. I can’t. I really, really can’t. It’s too much. I can’t handle it. I need a break, I need some sleep. I need life to stop being so stinkin’ unfair–Yeah right. I don’t see that happening. You know that old saying, “Life isn’t always fair?” It doesn’t go far enough. Life’s never fair.
I hate it.
I really wish I could quit.
But I can’t. URGGHHHHH!
That was after I’d cooled down considerably, by the way.