One of the reasons I started this blog is that people, people about whom I care a lot, want to know about my life in Thailand. They ask me, "What's it like?" "How do you like it?" and other variants of those questions. And invariably, my response is, "It's hot."
What is it about that question that makes my brain freeze up? I honestly can't think of anything to say. Here I am, to all appearances living this exotic expat lifestyle, full of lizards in the house and cheerful, picturesque Foreign Scenes, and I can't think of a damned thing to say about it.
During our trip back home this past spring, I sat mutely through more than one dinner, knowing full well that the people I was with were expecting me to honor them with witty anecdotes about my globetrotting life. And there I sat, mind blank, not knowing where to begin.
On the blog, though, I don't have this problem. I can think about things in advance, carefully extract the Entertaining from the Mundane (or at least that's what I'm aiming for), and present a groomed and vetted version of my life to my adoring readership.
Does this create another problem? Am I Disneyfying my own life, doing the equivalent of excising the nastier bits from "Cinderella" (I'm thinking of the stepsisters' mutilation) for the entertainment of those who won't know the difference?
Yeah, kinda.
But I like it this way--I get to present myself exactly as I choose to, which is a luxury I don't get in Real Life. I get to skip the awkwardness of Small Talk and get right to the Good Part. I get to inflict my (perhaps mistaken) conviction that overuse of capital letters is Somehow Endearing on all who choose to read this blog.
You'll just have to trust that I'm leaving out the Boring Parts.
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