Some of you know me on a more personal level. More of you don't. For those that don't, let me tell you a bit about myself as a PERSON. That's right: you now get an unadulterated peek inside of the inner workings of my mind--not as a writer, but as a real-life, (sometimes) thinking human.
I'm gross. There, I said it. I. Am. Gross. I enjoy toilet humor. Farts make me laugh like an obnoxious, braying ass. I'm not afraid to admit I poop. It's a little known fact, but everybody poops, even women. More little known facts about women: we don't glow; we sweat. We also get indigestion, bad breath, and are slightly superhuman in that we bleed like stuck pigs for days on end without dying. These are all common things...and I laugh at them.
That being said, there is an appropriate time and place for my atypical sense of humor. I sometimes forget that. Today, I most certainly did.
So you know that invisible line that separates a writer from an author? Yeah, it's not big. It's a simple matter of leaping from "I write stuff" to "I publish the stuff I write." I haven't crossed that line yet, but I am working on it. I still hold in reverence every writer that has moved to the other side and can proudly point to a link or a hard-copy of their work. But, in all honesty, that reverence has pretty much become a self-imposed illusion now.
In the digital age, the advent of social media has pretty much bulldozed all aspects of privacy and even a lot of common sense. Ten years ago, Facebook hadn't blown up yet, and people weren't Tweeting their every thought or Instagram-ing pics of their every meal. On social media, people willingly spill their darkest secrets and interact with anyone that will reply. That being the case, there isn't much separating the lowly dabblers from the masters of the craft.
I ran into this issue today on Twitter. I follow Lauren DeStefano, author of The Chemical Garden series. I find a lot of her tweets hilarious; today's was no exception. Below is a screenshot of the conversation:
Do you feel my shame? FEEL IT! Burn inside like I do.
This woman does not know me. At all. And I shared my gross humor on a completely inappropriate platform. The sad thing is...I could have stopped at the first one and just laughed at her response before going about my business. But no, not me. I couldn't quit until I needed to cram BOTH feet into my mouth, sit on my hands, and disappear into a crack. Apparently, my common sense went on vacation for the day and didn't notify the rest of the brain.
That being said, I am dubbing this incident #MindOverMayoJar. I am making it even MORE public so the rest of you can learn from my mistake. I'm sure I'll laugh about this in the future, but for now it's just a solid pit in my stomach that keeps jabbing up into my Regret Factory to make me cringe every five minutes or so.
From now on, when I catch myself or others in some stupid shenanigan of epic proportions, I will make it known. Even in the digital age, we can still have some common decency and respect.
...Above all, I'm still kind of surprised she replied to me. Social media, man. There is no spoon.
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