{"id":5279,"date":"2012-09-28T17:38:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T21:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/?p=5279"},"modified":"2012-09-28T20:07:37","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T00:07:37","slug":"twofer-a-real-post-plus-retrobruxist-friday-92812","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/28\/twofer-a-real-post-plus-retrobruxist-friday-92812\/","title":{"rendered":"Twofer: A Real Post PLUS Retrobruxist Friday 9\/28\/12"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few words before we Retro it up here. My point with yesterday’s post<\/a> was not that I think I’m an ogre… an ogra… what’s the feminine of ogre? I don’t think I’m an ogress. I think I’m aight.<\/p>\n

And this next part is weird, because from what they tell me, a lot of women experience the opposite, but many times, I’m reassured<\/em> by what I see in the mirror. [Oh, god, am I going to go here? Shit, might as well.] I generally walk around in my life kind of thinking of myself as a slightly greasy, chubby, waddling Oompa-Loompa with temperamental skin, and when I catch my look in the mirror, I almost always go, “Hey, that’s not so bad!” I mean, I definitely have times when my reflection makes me cringe, but more often than not, it’s a relief. Photos too. I’m weirdly<\/em> photogenic, which is nice.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I don’t actually look like this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thing is, I want to be the kind of person who sees the above photo and the one of the fat, ugly, stoned skeptic that Jeff took and says, “Psh, neither is reality.”<\/p>\n

But the fact is—OH THIS IS SO PATHETIC—I don’t. I look at the above and think maybe someone could love that person, and I look at Jeff’s picture and say, good god,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
it’s gonna be me and 15 dogs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What I wanted to get across in yesterday’s post<\/em> was not “Please, everybody, reassure me that I’m beautiful”; it was “I need to stop caring about this superficial bullshit which is not who I am”.<\/p>\n

I want to care MORE that I can live through difficulty<\/em>, write a meaningful story<\/em> about it, have the courage to get onstage and tell it<\/em> to 200 strangers, and do it well enough<\/em> that the audience is moved<\/em> and the judges think it’s the best story of the night<\/em>, and LESS about the fact that Jeff took a picture of me from a weird angle, which made it look like I had some sort of growth on my neck, while I was probably crying and definitely squinting into the bright lights. I can’t control every image that makes it to the internet and every perception that every person has of me. I need to let that go.<\/p>\n

Here was my big plan to pull off this caring-about-appropriate-things thing: I asked Jeff for the photo, and I was going to post it on this very blog on the World Wide Web. Alas, he felt so bad about contributing to my distress* that he not only deleted the photo from Facebook; he deleted it completely.<\/p>\n

So. The best I can do is try to re-create it for you. It looked a little something like<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Or maybe like this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Those of you who saw it, how’d I do?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

*Two things: (1) I used those iMessage screenshots without his permission. I am an asshole, and I won’t do that again (sorry, Jeff!); (2) he was nothing but lovely during the whole situation and really believed that he was honoring me and my story with the photo; and—OK, three things—(3) just so we’re clear, as depressed as I’ve been in my life, I’ve never, ever<\/strong> contemplated suicide. The whole bit about offing myself was pure histrionics for comedy purposes, but suicide is not funny, and I won’t joke about it anymore.<\/p>\n

On to the Retro!<\/p>\n

Three years ago<\/strong>, I was trying to teach my students show-don’t-tell<\/a>. It’s still the hardest thing in the world to teach.<\/p>\n

Redford was already 18 months old two years ago<\/strong>, but he was my baby<\/a>. Still is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Sleepy high-five.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I hosted<\/a> the Monti StorySLAM for the first time one year ago<\/strong>. Crazypants. I can’t believe that was a year ago.<\/p>\n

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few words before we Retro it up here. My point with yesterday’s post was not that I think I’m an ogre… an ogra… what’s the feminine of ogre? I don’t think I’m an ogress. I think I’m aight. And this next part is weird, because from what they tell me, a lot of women … Continue reading Twofer: A Real Post PLUS Retrobruxist Friday 9\/28\/12<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13,5,20,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animules","category-call-me-crazy","category-dating","category-first-world-problems","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5279"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5294,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions\/5294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}