Talking about the thing I don't want to talk about...

Thursday night I was pumped. And while I had plans to make this post about the thing that someone said and did that led to me working on a thing that made me over the moon happy, it also would have to feature a picture of an awesome and totally insensitive plaque that even I, who I acknowledge struggle with empathy, know would be uncool to post given the high-profile suicides this week. So I'm gonna save that for next week and probably make the "too soon?" joke that will cause you to agree that I have zero empathy.

Instead, this post is about something totally less interesting, but maybe more important to me, because it's in the spirit of breaking down one more totally unreasonable social media persona. This one I probably perpetuate online myself, with my photos from baseball games and selfie after selfie of me doing cool shit with my beloved son. But it's this behavior, the posting of all the good shite, that build something dangerous. They build a world where we all see each other being badasses that never fail... and on good days I love to see that. I love to see my friends and families being amazing and realizing their full potential. But on our worst days, seeing that shit doesn't help. I'll be the first to admit, that on rare days I see something like that it doesn't inspire me. Instead, it's poison. It's a rare day indeed, but it does happen. When I'm in that bad place where I know I'm run down and just want to drink an entire bottle of rose, seeing that makes me feel like I'm not good enough.

If we're battling real depression or social anxiety (which I'm not), I could see how this might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. It doesn't matter who you are, how much money you have, how famous you are. We all stack ourselves up against unrealistic expectations, and we're all guilty of building those in our social media lives. It's the ourabouros we carry around on our pocket computers. Our avatars are fabulous. We drink champagne and globe trot, we go to fun events wearing wigs and sequined dresses, we sometimes volunteer for worthy causes. I'm GUILTY. I did this an hour ago when I posted a picture of a friend with a freaking amazing bloody mary with bacon and a huge freaking beer battered onion ring hanging off of it. (Because, behold the bloody mary with an onion ring. It is a thing of beauty.) And when we read on Facebook that someone has done self harm, do we look to their avatar and wonder (possibly for the first time) what those people were really like?

You bet your ass we do!

So how do we battle that? I don't know. But since I don't have real depression, I'm gonna follow the lead of someone I love and respect from afar. I'm gonna follow Jenny Lawson, who writes hilarious books about taxidermy and generally being an embarrassment to herself, but who also does the world a service by writing about her own struggles. She does great things by being brave and telling the world that depression lies and being real about hard it is to be a human in the face of all this perfection.

Read her books and her blog. They're hilarious and real and makes me wish that she lived in NorCal so I could meet her metal chicken Beyonce.

She's brave and we can all do a part to be real, so in the spirit of breaking that down, I'm going to do a thing that terrifies me. I'm a real mom and I'm gonna go full kimono on real working mom paranoia. And god help me, at the end of this, I'm hoping that I'll feel less like a dumbass who makes mountains our of molehills and more like I've torn a brick out of the fucking Berlin Wall of unreal mom Facebook fakery. Because it takes a village and maybe this little brick will lead to another. Because check out my profile... maybe I think I'm flawed but you see the perfect working baseball mom... one who exists in a totally ZFL (zero fucks lifestyle) space and kicks ass and takes names without any guilt or feelings of self doubt. But I'm her, and that version of me doesn't exist in real life.

<enters confessional>

On Thursday, I want to celebrate that I did legit good mom things. But to do so, I have to come clean and say that to do so caused me to acknowledge my over the top sense of I'll-never-be-able-to-look-the-stay-at-moms-in-my-kids-class-because-I-don't-do-enough paranoia. I took a precious afternoon off work when shit is legit nutballs to spend some time celebrating the end of third grade with my bunga... and in doing so, I got up the courage to go to an after school party where I might have to talk to actual other parents.

But it was hard and I just wanted to send regrets.

In the spirit of talking about things that are hard and not pretending on the interwebz that I'm a paragon of working mom bad-assery, I'm gonna come clean. I'm terrified of the stay at home moms at my kid's school.

I don't know why. I know a few of these women and they're always lovely to me. They're sweet and funny and very on top of it. They probably never drink champagne in the morning by themselves or shout the f word in polite company. And even knowing that, I kind of always brace myself for the moment when I'll overhear one of them talking shit because I didn't answer the call to help kill plants in the garden (because I have the brownest thumb ever) during that uber-contentious recurring Tuesday afternoon slot. You know the one. It's that one meeting that you actually hate because nobody understands you and they did the thing that RUINED the project and you're super stabby. Killing plants with third graders would probably be a better use of the hour. 

I'm not deluded. In my brain I know that nobody would ever really call me out (Victorian dueling style at dawn?) for not gardening at the school. The kinds of people who give up their careers to room parent are far too polite to do that to your face. But I still wait for it to happen by accident and it causes my ridiculous levels of totally unnecessary anxiety.

This anxiety isn't caused because I think I'm a bad person for working and having a child out there wandering the earth. I'm super on board with that. I know who I am and that I'd be a terrible mom if I didn't have the super valuable outlet of architecting the houses of information at Super Evil MegaCorp. It's just that I generally don't want to disappoint people... even perfect strangers. And I don't want to disappoint people who my kid is spending nine years of their life with.

Note: I still have moments of thinking I'm doing it wrong when I see pictures of SAHMs chillin by the pool while I'm working on JSON models. I'm still super jealous. But then one text to Nicole reminds me that we're bad bitches and that we're crushing glass ceilings and I feel a little better...

Working moms, maybe you're with me? I'm sure I'm not alone on this, even if we don't talk about it... and while it's not as heavy a weight as depression or suicide, I do think it's a super taboo topic that we don't discuss in mixed company. It's just not polite.  

In my head, I know it's super stupid to be afraid of these selfless women, and being paranoid about anything doesn't jibe with my goal of being all ZFL, but it would seem that guilt and paranoia don't really listen to my mantras, now do they?

Anyway, the point here is that shit is hard and we all battle with our own devils and maybe life would be easier if we all had blogs with limited readership where we can rant and be real and sometimes talk about hard things, even though we'd rather be talking about our pet projects or drinking champagne while wearing awesome sloth shirts. 

<Takes a moment to shamelessly rock out to this Lindsey Stirling Tidal playlist. Her electronic violin mashups are FIERCE!>

I know that I generally avoid  mixed working mom/stay at home mom situations because of my own bullshit. I can write checks all day long but a basic conversation sends me scurrying. And I don't know why, but this shit is real and I'm SO relieved that one little pool party didn't break the dam, sending in a tsunami of crushing guilt because my kid wanted to hang with his buddy. Nobody took me to task for not giving enough volunteer hours or make me feel bad for being the selfish woman who values her work over the development of her precious child. And if they do that in the shadows, I think I need to learn to be cool with that and still be grateful that they do make the time. They deserve their off days too. We all make choices.

If you know me (or have read a few of my posts) you've probably gotten a sense of how I parent. My limitations in the mom participation department are not as well documented on the social medias, but have occasionally shown themselves on this blog. I parent fail all the time, but I think it's also obvious that so much of my crazy is wrapped up in loving this kid the best that I can. Whether I show it through embarrassing him to death when he's having serious Fortnite conversations with his buddies over the Xbox or by yelling at him on the ballfields, whether it's by showing him this beautiful planet through tireless globetrotting, reading besides him at night, or talking politics with him over the dinner table, there is one thing that's certain. I'll always feel some sort of mommy guilt. Maybe instead of working to ditch it entirely, I need to change the game, but if I can't, it would help to know that I'm not alone. 

I'm not an example of someone teetering on the brink, but maybe we know someone who is, and being real and vulnerable and less in-your-face perfect all the time might help them. If you know a person (and I might), then even telling them that they're worth the trouble might help. And they may not listen, but that's okay. Depression lies but there is help.

Many good blog posts live in Jenny Lawson's "depression lies" archive here. Hope you all have an awesome weekend!