The Secret Life of Bs

Everyone has a blog, right? I have friends who have two or three blogs for their personal life, jobs, hobbies, kids, etc, etc, etc. While I was living in NYC I started blogging so that 1) I could comment on a friend's posts because I didn't understand how comments worked yet and thought you had to have a blogger account and 2) I could share what was happening in my life in the BIG CITY. Except, not much happened in my life in the BIG CITY. I mostly ruminated on why I was still single, what I should do with my life, why it was so difficult to make friends after college, and why I didn't have a job that I liked -- the basic stuff of today's facebook statuses. Then I went back to school and, lo and behold, got married. I wanted to have a place to write about marriage and share struggles and victories and information about what's going on with us but it just didn't seem right to share about S on a blog that didn't include S.

S has a xanga. 'Nuff said. It's time to move on.

So now here's my gripe about blogs, facebook, etc, etc, etc. It's f-a-k-e. It's all, "my life is so great! Here are pictures of my perfect spouse and my perfect kids and my perfect vacation and if I'm sad it's because of some great injustice, say, my job or the person that didn't give me exactly what I want." Side note: this is a gross over generalization. I, of course, have friends who write about real things and share their real lives with the social network, but you understand what I mean, right? But what people don't talk about is how they have doubts and marriage is hard and things aren't always clear. If they do talk about these things it's in more of a "my life sucks so let me tell you about it in a tweet" manner that leaves the reader going, "uh..."

I live far away from my closest friends and family. My best friend doesn't live around the corner and we can't share our daily worries and frustrations and help each other know that it's okay, I feel that way too. When I do have the moments with friends I immediately feel centered, grounded, normal, like I'm not the crazy in the corner while everyone else goes about their happy lives without a worry in the world. I haven't exactly run this by S but I'm hoping that this blog can be a place where we can share normalizing real-life experiences. We don't want to get into TMI territory but maybe let cats out of bags like the fact that we go (wait for it...) to see (wait for it...) a marriage counselor (shock! awe!).

Oh yeah, and we'll also show you pictures of our dog and tell you about the homemade doughnuts S has started making on a weekly basis and whether or not our tomatoes were a success this year.

Speaking of which, I leave you with this.

Hi Buddy :-)
photo by Carrie R. Richardson
carrierrichardson.com