The Last Post

I logged in today, almost mechanically, as if I was going to add something to my blog.  But now that I’m here, I feel like the moment has passed.  There’s really no need to keep going with any of my online accounts, now that the Sheila era is over.  I suppose I could keep using the blog as a journal, or I could start using Facebook to connect with the people I know in the real world.  But it wouldn’t break my heart to just delete my accounts entirely either.  And Tanya and I are connecting pretty well in the real world anyway, even better than we did when we first met and dated.

Maybe I’ll take a break for awhile.  If you need to find me in the real world…well, you should already know how to do that if you’re a friend.

Weathering the sea of randomness

Breaking my new no-personal-calls-at-work rule (not really breaking it because I'm working from home today), I gave Tanya a call.  She probably had a patient in the chair, since she didn't pick up.  I mentioned Sheila's engagement, asking her if she'd heard any developments.

I received a text a few minutes ago:

nope. not really talking to her these days.  want to go to the wedding?

I texted back (yes, my new iPhone has motivated me to expand my avenues of interpersonal communication, even though they lead to the same destination, the same people):

yes, please let me get invited.  would make my day to be at wedding for girl i liked who has no idea who i am.  maybe it'd be just desserts for being underhanded to begin with.

Then this came back:

whatever.  we all make stupid moves.  big whoop.  there's more important things than that.  gotta go, but read this: sea of randomness, 9th paragraph.

http://www.slashfilm.com/philosophy-film-television-narrative-nbcs-community-shatters-boundaries-reality-fiction/  read it the other day while looking up Community articles.

For the record, I think Tanya was actually referring to the 11th paragraph, if you count paragraphs that are only 1 sentence.  But the quote is interesting:

“The universe is an endless raging sea of randomness. Our job isn’t to fight it but to weather it together...It won’t matter what happens to us as long as we stay honest and accepting of each other’s flaws and virtues.”

And that sounds like a good enough reason to let go of the last bit of suppressed annoyance over Sheila, Tanya, and Marketing Mistress (still hanging on as a follower on my Twitter feed).   The powers that be work in random and sometimes disappointing ways.  So forget trying to plan it all out.  We're in the storm, and we'd better hang on to something -- whatever we can get -- until the randomness subsides and we get to have the illusion of control back for awhile.

I think I'll weather the randomness together with LouBob and Don and Chuck reruns.  And with Tanya.  Especially with Tanya.  She's got my back, even when she makes a flawed move, and she forgives me when I make flawed moves.  I can't ask for more than that.  That's authentic.  That's worth keeping.

Choice pics and picky choices

I've realized that posting photos doesn't reveal anything more than posting text does.  Within my first few days of uploading pics on my Flickr account, I've already made a conscious choice to manipulate what people see.  As usual, I didn't want to reveal much about myself, so my first few uploads were generic images that any number of people could have created.  There was nothing particularly revealing about them: plants in the backyard, bugs, the moon.

Trying to be more spontaneous, I snapped a pic at the mall today (with my new iPhone!  It was a gift to make myself feel better after the Sheila business) and put it up on Flickr.  The shot was of a display at the Sunglasses Hut.  The image felt a little more genuine because it was taken spur of the moment, but ultimately, it’s no more revealing than anything else I’ve uploaded.

I’m thinking about what the image represents.  Does it reveal something about my psyche, choosing to take a picture of a sunglasses display instead of something more meaningful?  I have the urge to take down the image before someone sees it and thinks that I'm a detached nutjob.  Of course, I am a bit of a detached nutjob, but I have enough self-awareness to know that I don't want that reputation.  And if I’m willing to hide anything that reveals a part of me, I’m apparently ready to sabotage truth for vanity, which is maybe what social networking is all about.  We're all vain and want the world to look at us in the best light.  Electronic platforms are tools that allow us to build that idealized image.

The contradiction for me, though, is that I'm not even making the effort to build an entirely accurate depiction of myself.  I'm hiding behind the confusion that Famous Tim Burton provides.  I get to act like I'm up in arms when someone confuses me for FTB, but I'm actually enjoying knowing that every Twitter stalker, Facebook Friender, and anonymous blog reader will think I'm him, not me.  I have a buffer.  And it works so well, that even if I say, "I'm NOT Famous Tim Burton," people don't get curious about me.  Instead, they unfollow my feed and go elsewhere.  So why should I worry what people think?  They won’t be forming opinions about the real me anyway.

Flickr me, Flicker me gently

I realized I never really got around to expanding my online presence to include a photo-hosting site, so I signed myself up for Flickr.  (I could use Facebook, but for whatever reason, it's been wonky when I try to log in on Internet Explorer, so I'm opting for something else.)

Why post photos?  Why share an even more intimate side of yourself?  It's more difficult to lie with photos, isn't it?  (Photoshop trickery not withstanding, of course.)  With words, I can direct how I want the reader to react.  With pictures?  Not quite so easy to make that happen.

What will I reveal through sharing various images?  Will I be more authentic?  The answer is here.

Truth?

Is my online self real or just a load of b.s.?  Maybe it’s a mix of both.

I’ve been skimming through my past postings, and I see that I've been very guarded, never giving away too much info.  (And that won't be changing anytime soon.  I like a healthy wall of anonymity between myself and the outside world.)  Yet, even with my careful crafting of each online post, there are points where I've revealed a little truth.  I’ve shared my attraction to a woman and the (often moronic) lengths I was willing to go to in order to make a connection.  All of that has to say something about my psychological makeup.

At the same time, don't believe everything you read in this blog or elsewhere on the web.  I had enough sense to apply a little censorship across my postings.  The whole story is still in the real world.  The electronic version has had some red-eye correction.

Thanksgiving and the day after

Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  I went to my parents' house to spend quality time with Mom, Dad, my sisters and their families, and Grandma Burton.  Family get-togethers around the holidays are usually madness-inducing events.  My three sisters have seven energetic kids between them, ages 2 months to 11 years.  Basically, any holiday is complete bedlam with constant noise and lots of small bodies running around.  While I do love my family members dearly, I don't love them all together in one small house.  It’s too much chaos.  I prefer a nice, non-interactive holiday where families don’t feel the need to assemble en masse, like Veterans Day or National Cornchip Day.  I find the irritation factor goes down when I can focus on interacting with just a person or two, not a full cast.

But even if I was in an anti-social mood, I didn’t want to spoil everyone else’s fun, so I’d smile at the right moments, add a comment here and there, and if someone said, “Tim, you’re being awfully quiet,” I’d just shrug my shoulders and say, “Just tired I guess.  So what’s new with you?”

Everyone else was playing the appropriate role as well.  Mom sailed around the house as hostess with mostess: waves of hors d'oeuvres flying out of the kitchen, classical music playing in the background (somewhat muffled by the football game on TV), and every aspect of the day – from place mats to after-dinner coffee – arranged and choreographed to perfection à la Martha Stewart.  Even the line “Who’d like some more potato salad?” was delivered with a voice as sing-song as a sparrow in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

Dad, meanwhile, put on his friendly, boisterous face for the brothers-in-law (Fred, Ronnie, Tad) and me, setting the tone for the men to talk in loud, assured voices as though we're all assertive dudes, brimming with confidence.

“Did you see that tackle?”

“Ronnie Jr.’s gonna be a sprinter, just like his dad.”

“Yep, my money’s on the Packers.”

“Once the economy turns around, we’ll put the house back on the market.”

“Clients are steady, so we’re not complaining.”

“Can’t wait for Winter to hit.  I’m going snowmobiling with some college buddies.”

“Boom!  Touchdown!”

My sisters, meanwhile, took turns providing prompts for conversation.  E.g.: “So how is little Debbie doing in the gifted program at school?”

Debbie is Tad’s little girl, who is apparently super bright like both her parents – an accountant and a psychiatrist – and will probably be a nuclear physicist someday.  The prompt above allowed her mom, my sister Janie, to talk about how well Debbie’s doing and proudly describe Debbie’s recently completed rainforest diorama.  Janelle and Janine had their chance to relate stories as well.  No child left without motherly bragging.  But I didn’t mind, as all the talk of construction paper tree trunks allowed me to sit back in comfortable silence.  What would I have talked about anyway?  How I’m a Casanova-wannabe who has no clue how to pursue a woman and has had even less luck at successfully doing so?  Nope.  It was better to find a comfortable role, say the right lines, and give a performance that sent everyone home happy.

Today, my sister Janelle came by with Ronnie Jr. (age 7) and Breanna (age 6).  They are tons of fun.  Both kids are really creative and are always up for whatever someone suggests.  I bought a bin of Tinkertoy to entertain them while they were over, and we built little Tinkertoy animals and people.  Or maybe they were robots.  I kind of lost track of our creative goals.

While we were all sprawled out on the living room floor, plugging Tinkertoy sticks into spools and such, I was tempted to tell Janelle the Sheila story, just to see what her reaction would be.  However, I know how the triplets are.  If one finds out something, the other two are in the know within the hour, so I decided to keep that tale untold.  Interestingly, though, our conversation did touch on some of the themes I’d been experiencing with the Sheila debacle:

Tim: Yesterday, seemed to go pretty well.

Janelle: I think so.  Mom really outdid herself this year.

T: Yeah, like Martha Stewart.

J: On steroids.

T: Which is hilarious, since the rest of the year, I’ll hear: “I have to do all the cooking and cleaning because your father couldn't fix a sandwich without a step-by-step tutorial on the home improvement channel!"

J: No surprise.  She must have said at least five times that she’d been working on dinner all week.

T: Which she didn’t have to do.  I know you offered again this year.

J: We’ve all offered.  Actually, have you ever offered?

T: No.  I have no urge to have my house overrun with kin.  I will happily bring store-bought potato salad to someone else’s spread, but you know it would be a psychological nightmare for me to have everyone around.

J: I’m with you on that.  As often as I ask Mom if she’d like to have someone else host Thanksgiving, I’m always relieved when she stands her ground.  There’s enough madness in just coming, let alone hosting one of these dinners.

T: I thought you liked family gatherings.

J: Oh, I like them.  I just wish there was a way to not make them so exhausting.  The traveling and the greeting and the small talk and the nodding approvingly at everything everyone says, even though you know that half the people in the room are ready to crack.

T: (pause) I didn’t think anyone looked like they were going to crack.

J: Please.  Tad took a pay cut at his job, Fred is taking his oldest kid to counseling for stealing money out of her mother's wallet, and Ronnie is petrified about going to surgery for some weird bump that popped up on his scrotum.  Even I’m stressed out over that.

T: (another pause) That is a lot of info.

J: Keep it to yourself.  I’m just saying that we’re all faking it a little.  We put on a good show because it’s what everyone wants.  It’s why Mom goes Little Suzie Homemaker crazy.  She knows that playing the role will keep things normal for everyone, and thus everybody’s happy.  And she’ll save her complaining for that moment in the kitchen when it’s just you and her.


T: Exactly!  She caught me while I was carrying plates from the table and went off about Dad belching all afternoon.  “I'm convinced there's something wrong in his gut, but you know he’s stubborn and won't go see a doctor." 

J: I heard a variation on the same thing.  But otherwise, she’s the dutiful wife and hostess.

T: If she had a Facebook page, her profile picture would show her with spatula in one hand and mixing bowl in the other.  But then she’d private message you about how she hates baking.

J: Wow.  I did not expect that connection.

T: I was making a metaphor.

J: When do you make metaphors?

T: It’s my new thing.  But I actually don’t like doing it.  I only make them to put on a good show when family is over.

Breanna interrupts at this point to ask me how to make a met-o-four with Tinkertoy.  I tell her it looks like a rhino.

So what did I learn from quality family time this November?  We're all being inauthentic, putting on masks and acting out what we think are appropriate incarnations of ourselves.  Basically, we could just as easily be online, selecting buddy icons and posting blog entries that paint ourselves in the best light.

But at the same time, we're glad that everyone is playing along.  Nobody really wants to have to deal with anyone else's problems or emotional unrest, so it's for the best that we're putting our best fake faces forward.

So what did I learn from quality family time this November?  We're all being inauthentic, acting out what we think are appropriate incarnations of ourselves.  At the same time, we're glad that everyone is playing along.  Nobody really wants to have to deal with anyone else's problems or emotional unrest.  Nobody wants to hear about the delinquent daughter because if we do, we'll have to smile awkwardly while we scratch our heads and wonder, "What the heck do I say now?"  Basically, we're not putting up inauthentic sheens just because we want people to think the best of us, we're faking it because everybody else wants to think the best of us too.

Chant with me: everything is fine, everything is peachy.  Everything is as perfect as the perfect me that you see when you read my Facebook posts.

Happy Thanksgiving, and keep your daughter away from my wallet.

We're all being inauthentic

It has dawned on me that social networking isn't going to make us any more "authentic" than we are in real life.  And we're not 100% authentic in real life to begin with.  I say this based on recently revealed details about the Halloween party fiasco.

Still feeling occasional moodiness post the Sheila-is-engaged revelation, I called LouBob and met them for a drink.  Obviously, this whole experience has rewired my brain a little, as I’d normally be holed up in my house, refusing to socialize with anyone.  Instead, I thought it was better to be out and about.  At some dumpy little local bar, the three of us sat around with our beer bottles, talking about football and politics and eventually I revealed the whole P. Stamps excursion (editing slightly to make it sound less stalker-esque).  I casually mentioned the engagement, and LouBob were surprised as well.  I also mentioned that Tanya didn't know either until I told her.

However, just when I thought I'd brought the only noteworthy detail to the conversation, LouBob surprised me with an interesting tidbit of their own:

"Well, it's no surprise that Tanya didn't know.  Sheila's still mad at her for the whole Halloween party thing."

Oh, that Sheila, I thought to myself.  Even with a fiancé , she understands the injustice of Tanya's meddling.

"Yeah, you probably didn't hear.  Tanya had invited her to the party.  Then at the last minute, she told her the party was canceled.  But obviously it wasn't."

Say what?

"Well, Sheila found out about it anyway.  And Tanya apparently didn't have a good excuse why she'd faked Sheila out.  So now the two of them are apparently not speaking."

I somehow managed to choke down a mouthful of beer after coming precariously close to letting it dribble down my chin.  After coughing up the bit that slipped down my windpipe, I blurted out everything to LouBob: my infatuation, Tanya not inviting me to the party, the whole social networking in an attempt to connect with Sheila...it came out kind of jumbled.  There were a lot of interruptions from LouBob, like:

"So the blog came after the Twitter account but before the Google thing?"

"Wait, you're saying that you're on Facebook?  And you didn't Friend us?"

"But then you came to the party anyway?"

"Oh, so the girl was a teenager?  You're not still talking to her, are you?"

"Was the costume the official kind?  Or did you make your own?"

"So wait, is this Marketing Mistress a dominatrix or not?"

After we had sorted out all the details, LouBob looked at me with a sympathetic you-are-crazy-but-it’s-okay kind of look.  I mentioned that it was funny that -- even among friends -- we can’t help but be a little inauthentic once in awhile.

They said: "Well, when are we ever being 100 percent honest?  We all have parts of our lives that we want to refashion in a better light or that we're not ready to share.  So we put a glossy layer on what people see to keep them from realizing the truth.  And the truth is that we're all just a little vain and a little egomaniacal, as much as we'd like to act like we aren't."

And if that's the case with our real lives, how can we expect our cyber-lives to be any better?  If anything, the virtual world encourages inauthenticity by giving us even greater control over how we are perceived.  But maybe that doesn't matter.  If we're not completely honest with each other in the real world, I guess it doesn't really matter that we're not completely real on BloggyFaceCheepCheep÷ either.