Like me, like me, please like me

I have been thrilled with the response to this blog so far. I didn’t know what to expect, but I have gotten heartfelt messages from a bunch of you saying that you relate to the things I am putting out there. I hope that by talking about stuff that is not always easy to talk about, we can all feel less alone and be more real with each other. I originally started the blog because of popular demand in response to my “funny catastrophe” posts on facebook, but it seems that the serious topics are the ones that are connecting in this medium. That’s fine with me, because the pressure to be funny on cue is incredibly difficult. I honestly don’t know how comedians do it. But I can be real on cue.

So now that I have spent a few weeks figuring out what I want to say, it’s time for me to start growing this blog to reach people who don’t already know and love me. So I made a facebook page for it. That way, if one of you posts a link to the blog on your facebook wall, friends who like it can also follow me on facebook. To those of you who have already posted links, I say thank you thank you thank you. You are inspiring me to move forward and make this blog more than just a place for me to get my writing ya-yas.

The process of creating the facebook page involved asking all of my friends to please “like me.” So yeah, that’s fun. As of this writing, 29 people like me. Of note, my husband does not yet like me. Neither do my brothers. Maybe if my husband believed that I didn’t move the new thermostat in my fit of cleaning for company, he would like me. But he does think I moved it, even though I TOTALLY DIDN’T. And even if I did, which I didn’t, it didn’t belong on the top of the entertainment center in the first place. Aaaanyway, asking people to like me is pretty much an action designed to make me as insane as possible. Self-promotion is already at odds with my natural tendency to self-deprecate, and then putting it in terms of “like” rather than a less loaded word like “follow” triggers all of my social weirdness.

Most people who have only known me for a few years are surprised to learn that I was super shy when I was younger, and that I still have a healthy (unhealthy?) dose of social anxiety. Among the other crap I learned in grad school, wire mothers and whatnot, I also learned how to fake social ease. I learned to schmooze and network and speak in public. But I still hate all of those things. I want to hide in the corner with the 3 people I already know and talk about easy things and be completely myself.

So now my challenge with this blog is to come out of that corner and be completely myself with everyone else. To be open and exposed in public, not knowing whether anyone will like it. Whether anyone will like ME. Here’s hoping I can at least get my husband on board.


P.S. If you haven’t already, please like me on facebook. Here ya go. Click “like” right here.