The strangest thing about having a blog is this: readers probably do see more real in me than most.  Because I’m able to write exactly how I feel, and share my most intimate thoughts and worries, readers do get a glimpse of who I really am.  It’s spelled out for them, literally.  It’s not all of me, for sure, but it’s real stuff.  And the strangest thing is, it doesn’t feel real.  I get notes from strangers, notes they want to send to the people most important to them… will I read it and tell them what I think?  Will I please give advice.  I’m a friend and come up in your conversations with your own friends, as if you know me in person.  I hear this, but it never feels real to me.  And that might be because I don’t put enough of me out there in the world.  The living world, not the written one. 

When I worked in advertising, and subsequently gave my two weeks notice, I worried no one would show up for my going away party. I didn’t really make friends easily, which seems so odd to me considering how inclusive I try to be with people.  Helpful.  But at work, I never liked getting involved in politics and mostly tried to keep to myself.  I definitely believe people took that to mean I thought I was better than they were.  Or at least that’s my own perception of myself.  I think people who don’t know me think that, that I’m stuck up or somehow think I’m better.  And I wonder, if I never had this blog, or if people really did meet and get to know me, if they’d feel the same way. 

One of my closest friends from advertising–I’ll never forget this–got a little annoyed that I had a blog, despite encouraging me to keep one, because "now everyone will get to see it so easily."
"See what?"
"What I had to work so hard for."

I was hard to get to know, to break down maybe, or to get behind.  "And now those lucky bastards get to see what I found, what I spent months getting to."  And I remember it, not only because it made me feel special but, because it meant that I was hard, hard to get to know, hard to get close to, and that’s a real to me that people don’t see here, in the written word.  How guarded I guess I am, without trying to be, and how people tend to take it personally, thinking maybe I don’t like them, when really, it’s just part of who I am.  And that’s as real as everything else.