Saying What You Mean

Honesty sometimes doesn’t always work

I’ve had an invitation to try Medium for one month. The email is marked important in my Gmail inbox and it stares at me every time I open my email account (which is every day, all day during most waking hours). At first I was ecstatic—I have so much to say, so much to write! This is a gift from the gods.

And then it hit me: This is bigger than my little blogging world.What I say will be seen by so many people.

Call it stage fright, but I suddenly was paralyzed by the fear that maybe all the things I want to say don’t mean as much to anyone else as they do to me.

Sometimes I think that maybe I shouldn’t be so honest about my life. That it’s boring to go home to an empty house and watch TV or go to the gym just so I can be thin (which I’m not… yet. I keep hoping to find the magic pill or formula or whatever).

Other people think my life is magical because I fly to New York City for the weekend and run amuck doing crazy things that only a 30 year old single girl can get away with. Or I can suddenly purchase a used car because I have no one else to spend money on. And because I drop money on cute clothes and adorable outfits because I can.

They want to hear about my adventures. They don’t want to hear about how I hate to sprawl out on my queen-size bed and I wonder how a husband will fit there (okay… maybe the former isn’t true but the latter definitely is). They certainly don’t want to hear about the lack of future planning on my part because I’m hoping to not have to plan that far in the future. They don’t want to hear about how I long to have to clean up spit up or be in sweatpants rather than cleaning up messes at the office.

But they do want to hear about the bad dates. That’s a given. And the good dates. The prospects.

So I wonder at one point do I really start being honest? Or is the fact that I’m just not telling the whole truth lying? Sure, I’m always one for a good story (and when told by me it’s a great story). But I’m not sure that everyone wants to hear every minute detail. They want the good parts. You have to add in a couple of bad parts to make the good parts sound even better.

So, here it is. The beginnings of my “honesty”. Maybe I’m not honest to a fault; I edit myself more than probably is necessary. But I know that what I say has been thought,edited, and is worth saying.

Thank you for the penny.