Humanity

Thank you, each and every one, for all for your sweet and insightful words after my confessional dispatch the other day. Thank you for taking a few minutes to write something thoughtful to me. I appreciate it more than you know.
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I’d rather write each of you a personal note of thanks for sharing your heartfelt suggestions and hard-won advice, but this post will have to do for now. Most of the comments I received came from the bottom of your hearts and offered understanding and empathy, which is all one wants. To be heard. And to feel like they are not alone. I know your lives aren’t always a picnic either, so thanks for taking time to listen and let me have my monologue for a few minutes. In real life, it is so rare to be properly listened to.
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I don’t expect anyone to fix my life (which for the most part, doesn’t need fixing), but really just wanted to vent some personal frustrations and observations. Mostly though, as the writer Joan Didion said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking”. I write to find out how I feel about things, and to help sort out the muddle in my head. Sometimes I don’t even know what precisely is bothering me until I begin.
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I am generally a positive, cheery, and optimistic person who tries to make the best of things. I am a person who counts my blessings daily (and they are plenty) and who finds joy and humour in the small moments of life. I also find a lot of things which sadden me and I’ve witnessed my share of unfairness in the world (which, I might add, has also made me a champion for the underdog!). That reality has given me a healthy dose of cynicism, for which I am proud. I don’t want to be a sheep, and I don’t want to look through rose-coloured glasses all the time. I don’t even care if people get me most of the time, because I have always felt a little misunderstood. I often seem to have different views from the pack. I see the good in the bad, and often the bad in the good. This seems uncommon. But it is just who I am.
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Which brings me to the purpose of this blog.
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After writing my last post (which was enormously cathartic, by the way), I awoke the next day feeling utterly horrified that I had spilled my guts on my pretty little decorating blog. What was I thinking? You see, there is a very big part of me that loves the confessional, the straight goods, the putting-yourself-out-there for the whole world to see. But I spent much of my 20’s and some of my 30’s doing the overtly confessional/self-help/introspection thing and now I am tired of it. When you are in your 20’s, you want to say to the world “look at me, look what I’ve figured out!” but after a while you get tired of thinking so hard and tired of your ideals and just start to accept the world, and yourself, for what it is. Then, you don’t need to share these infinite observations. They are enough to entertain you in your head. You also realize you are not so special. You realize life is big and you are small.
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So there I am, stuck in the middle. I want to write about my life and my innermost feelings about that life on my blog. Yet, at the same time, I want my blog to be pretty and light and airy. I want it to be about the one thing that always cheers me up.
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There are 1000 other things in my day, including headaches and engineering, and all the lovely and annoying people, and the books I’m reading, and my family crises and my weight, and my closest relationships, but I choose to write about something pretty. I choose to write about beauty, which sustains me, and about my home, where I take my comfort.
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So it is a little conundrum. I wonder every day how personal I should be on this blog. Should I post these photos, should I write this? What will so-and-so think of this? It is such a mixed audience too: new decorating friends, old headache friends, other engineers, new and old acquaintances, far-flung family (who must think I am a total flake after all those years of being so driven), my Mom (who must sometimes shake her head), old school friends who probably think I should be more evolved than this. But so what? This blog is La La Land and it is mine.
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So for all of you, my constant readers, who come here to look at pretty pictures and visit me for a minute, even if it all sometimes looks shallow and trivial, thank you. This blog’s for you!
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And from time to time, forgive me if I get a little serious on you...