Giddyup

Here's the thing. Sometimes, I think I should just be this person who writes humorous observations and self-deprecating confessions that make other people feel somehow better about themselves if only because they don't have a personal story that involves eating something out of the garbage.

And then other times I come across as this morose girl with downcast eyes and a grim outlook. And maybe that makes people feel better about themselves, too, but it's not nearly as funny.

And sometimes I admit to myself that I might write entirely different truths if I knew no one else was reading them. I have several other private weblogs that I update on a pretty frequent basis. A few months ago, my web site statistics led me to fear that someone else was reading them, and I got a little nervous. Not just because I'm less careful about typographical errors but because there's some seriously personal and private stuff in them, and I realized I was not ready to share any of that indiscriminately. Sometimes I write things that are so honest that I don't even like going back and reading them as it stings a bit.

And I worry that if you were reading me for the first time, you would say, "Oh, chuck this. This is just some self-absorbed depressed person with nothing to say." So I'm sure to throw in a brief anecdote about how I got lost in the parking garage at the gym and saw the same Asian guy three times in and around the elevator and was sure he knew I was lost and an idiot. Or one about how this girl was getting a neck and shoulder massage while I was at the nail salon, and I've never seen anyone get one at this salon, and from the way the employees were looking at each other and talking to each other (in Vietnamese), I wondered if the girl asked for a rubdown, and her attendant shrugged and said sure, as demeaning as it is to be asked to provide a service that isn't offered on the menu. I looked over the list. Silk wraps. Fills. Acrylics. Airbrushing. There was nothing on there about massage. It made me feel weird and embarrassed. The way I would feel if I went to a restaurant with a friend and they insisted on ordering something not on the menu and not even from the cuisine the restaurant offers. Of course, the rubdown girl didn't come with me. But neither of us speaks Vietnamese. And in that respect, we're both from the same town, if you know what I mean.

I wonder why I can't shut up tonight.