Is there any phrase more useless than "As you may or may not know"? Really, what is the point of saying that?
So, as you may or may not know, on Facebook there is a fan page of this blog THAT I DID NOT CREATE because how obnoxious, creating your own fan page. It's called Pie on the Face. And it's not really even a fan page. I mean, it's never cooled ME down. It's just more all y'all all who read this blog chatting amongst yourselves and throwing memes in there that you know everyone would get, and whatever. Do yourself a favor: If you join Pie on the Face, go to the settings and make sure you don't get notified of EVERY dang thing that happens there, or else you'll hurl yourself onto a knife.
Is there another secret page where you all go talk shit about me? Oh, I'd dearly love to see that page. What'd you name it? "I Got Yer Pie, Right Here."
The point is, yesterday one of you said, "Let's all talk about how we found June's blog" and about 7 million of you said, "I found June when The Nester wrote about her."
The Nester is a woman who has a decorating blog, and she's self-deprecating and talented and so likeable, and when I was in the middle of redoing my house and moving last year, she sent me her new book. I meant to plug it for her, I really did, and then I got caught up in my own dramas and forgot. Now I feel like a DICK, and you know who would never use the word dick that way? Is The Nester.
So without further ado, please go get The Nester's book. In fact, I somehow have two, and I will give one away. Say you're in in the comments. I WILL REALLY SEND IT.
She is a wonderful decorator, and she's had all kinds of money woes and real-life stuff happen, so she can decorate on the cheap and everything looks wonderful and she has the kind of house where you go home and say, My whole life is shit.
You know who'd never use the word shit? Is The Nester. I'll bet the words dick and shit have never even been in her BRAIN. Well, they are now, if she's reading this. HEYYY, NEST! Did I link to you enough to make up for my egregious ignoring you last year? I suck.
But beyond everyone all over yonder finding me there, I also heard that you read my first dumb blog, Bye Bye, Buy, and also that a lot of you read all my archives and that you read every day, and all that niceness and encouragement came at exactly the right time.
One of Ned's people doesn't like me because of this blog. I was just writing my life, as I do, and writing about Ned's life, as I sort of do (I don't put in his every detail as I would my own), and I said something she took personally.
When things like that happen, I feel terrible afterward. I feel like a rotten person.
A relative got offended recently, too, about something I wrote in Purple Clover. After that was when I shut down my Facebook account, because at least it'd be harder to TELL me I suck if you can't stampede to Facebook to do so.
I look back at old posts, from, say, 2008, and I'm bored stiff with myself. I'm over there saying things like, "Oh, my stars" when in reality what I would have said in that situation is "fucking fuck."
I spent years writing this thing trying very hard not to offend anyone, till one day I said, "fucking fuck" and wrote the way I really am. And that's when, I think, I got interesting.
When Marvin and I had marriage trouble, I wrote about it (with his permission). When Marvin met someone else and got engaged, I told you. When I feel depressed, I mention it. When I met Ned, I tried to NOT write about him because one of the .06 male readers told me not to, but I was so excited about him that that lasted maybe two months.
So, my problem is, how do I stay an interesting writer and stay out of trouble? "You can't," said a smart male friend of mine. "If hyperbole is part of what you write, people are going to get angry," said Ned.
Easy for THEM to say. I guess I have to pick between being a remotely interesting writer and being well-liked. I kind of want to be both.
What am I doing this for, anyway? I could just live my life and not write about it, except every time I've tried to do that, it's failed miserably. That's why I have eleven thousand diaries, and my friends have 97 million letters from me, and so on.
I guess I could just stick to "my hair is large" and "I hit 10,000 steps on the Fitbit" all the time, but how long till you hurl yourself on that knife you got out for Pie on the Face?
If I stay with being interesting, I have to risk people not liking me, which, as often as I say, "What people think of you is none of your business," still feels terrible when it happens. But I have to tell the truth as it happened to me, while doing my best to protect the innocent around me, and not invade their privacy as I would my own.
But when it comes to telling the truth about my life, I must remember what my favorite person on earth, Anne Lamott, says:
