{"id":5825,"date":"2010-12-07T18:28:08","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T00:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=5825"},"modified":"2010-12-07T18:28:08","modified_gmt":"2010-12-08T00:28:08","slug":"being-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2010\/20101207-5825.htm","title":{"rendered":"Being Real"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are two kinds of bloggers I hate.<\/p>\n<p>The perfect ones&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>and the perfectly awful ones.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The latter have lives composed of nothing but problems&#8211;they go where they&#8217;re thrown by circumstances.  They emote directly into their posts and never self-edit.  Their blogs are full of disappointment and venom and angst.<\/p>\n<p>I have too much pride (and desire to stay employed) to be the latter, so I choose to self-edit.  I write <i>about<\/i> my frustrations, but not <i>in<\/i> my frustration.  I try to be wise with what details I share.  I wait until I&#8217;ve cooled down to write.<\/p>\n<p>But as a result, I fear my blog occasionally gives the impression that I&#8217;m the former&#8211;that I&#8217;ve got it all together.  Sure, I talk about problems, but always in the past tense.  I fear I&#8217;m like one of the small group members <a href=\"http:\/\/stuffchristianslike.net\/2009\/03\/502-confessing-safe-sins\" target=\"_blank\">John Acuff<\/a> lampoons on Stuff Christians Like for confessing &#8220;safe sins&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Someone will say, \u201cI 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!\u201d So you brace yourself for this crazy moment of authenticity and the person takes a deep breath and says <\/p>\n<p>\u2026 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI haven\u2019t been reading my Bible enough.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, just in case I haven&#8217;t been real enough, I&#8217;m ready to share a less-stellar, but really real incident that occurred about a week ago.<\/p>\n<p>I intended to set up my computer, enter some grades, then go to sleep.  Two hours later I couldn&#8217;t get connected to the internet, whatever I did.  It felt like the end of the world.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d been doing some reupholstering of my computer chair since my computer was taking forever trying to connect to the internet&#8211;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&#8217;t get the newly upholstered piece back into place.  My screwdriver slipped and I gouged my hand.  I was alone and I yelled my &#8220;ARGGH!&#8221; through clenched teeth into the empty house.<\/p>\n<p>Now I&#8217;m crying again, bawling with anger, snot running down my face.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not fair, I tell myself, the world, God, anyone who might be listening.  It&#8217;s not right.  Why does life have to be so hard?  Why can&#8217;t anything go right.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t handle it, I say, enumerating what must be done.  Grading to finish and grades to enter&#8211;except, oops, my computer won&#8217;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&#8217;t know how I&#8217;m gonna get that all done, seems how I don&#8217;t have the internet on the computer that has all my class files.<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s the work I still need to finish up at my other job&#8211;sometime before I leave for Lincoln.  I can&#8217;t work from home just now, since I can&#8217;t get internet on that computer.  And there&#8217;s the matter of the house I have to get clean before Wednesday&#8211;the house I&#8217;ll now be cleaning with bruised and bloodied hands.<\/p>\n<p>Lovely.<\/p>\n<p>My self-pity goes further&#8211;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.<\/p>\n<p>I write in my journal that I quit.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I can&#8217;t do it.  I can&#8217;t.  I really, really can&#8217;t.  It&#8217;s too much.  I can&#8217;t handle it.  I need a break, I need some sleep.  I need life to stop being so stinkin&#8217; unfair&#8211;Yeah right.  I don&#8217;t see that happening.  You know that old saying, &#8220;Life isn&#8217;t always fair?&#8221;  It doesn&#8217;t go far enough.  Life&#8217;s <b>never<\/b> fair.<\/p>\n<p>I hate it.<\/p>\n<p>I really wish I could quit.<\/p>\n<p>But I can&#8217;t.  URGGHHHHH!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That was after I&#8217;d cooled down considerably, by the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are two kinds of bloggers I hate. The perfect ones&#8211; 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&#8211;they go where they&#8217;re thrown by &#8230; <a title=\"Being Real\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2010\/20101207-5825.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Being Real<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[21],"tags":[615,934],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}