No...I'm not talking about your blog...

I understand that I complain a lot. I have always held that complaining is my way of cleaning out my psyche. If I just let my complaints out into the air, then I don’t have to spend my days and nights holding on to them where they’ll fester and cause me to freak out on some poor, unsuspecting barista at Starbucks. And, to my credit, I think I’m a pretty good complainer. Instead of complaining about the usual, boring stuff (Monday, LeBron James, the weather, not sleeping, Twilight not being half the series that Harry Potter was), I dig a little deeper, and find the strength to complain about leprechauns, aggressive insects, Edward Scissorhands, and people who don’t let me swap out their baby for a cuter one I found on the internet.

But at least I complain. I recently learned that there are an alarming number of people who use their blogs to insist, to all of the poor souls who are reading, that their life is sheer and utter perfection. I have always suspected that blogs were used for this purpose, but I was unlucky enough to be sucked in by one the other day. It was a friend of a friend of a friend – I have no connection to this person – but the entries went something like this:

May 4: I am so lucky to have such balance in my life. I know, I know, it’s hard to do it all: my consulting business, keeping up the home, keeping the husband happy, caring for my precious (and precocious!) daughter and nurturing the one on the way, but I have always said that organization is the key…

June 12: I was reflecting on God’s plan for me today. I was reading my Bible, of course, and was particularly inspired by Genesis 25:30, making some homemade chili with free-range beef and tomatoes and peppers from the garden, and I felt so sad for the women of the world who feed their families from canned chili…

July 17: The hubby, daughter and daughter-to-be and I just got back from our beach vacation. No matter who you are, you should take time to be with your family and rejoice in your blessings. Work should take a backburner to your family. Even though the hubster provides a comfortable home for us, he realizes that this is what’s most important…

Here’s my question: why in the hell would you think anyone would want to read that? We have shown ourselves to be a nation devoted to watching train wrecks, like The Bachelor, and aspirational stories like The Biggest Loser and American Idol. We like the Jersey Shore and a flight attendant who cursed his jackass passengers and hippity-hopped off the plane with a couple of beers in his hands. We may be a nation that admires perfection in a way, but ultimately, Martha Stewart is a whole lot more likeable now that she’s done some time in the pokey than when she was folding her thousand-thread-count sheets with a ruler.

Models are airbrushed. Asian girls with big boobs are generally not that way by nature. Men with lots of flashy shit have small penises (fact). The world is a place where a lot of mistakes are made, and we just make things worse when we try to cover it up with our own insistence that we are the best of what’s around. I contend that we are not. There is always someone who is better than us, smarter than us, prettier than us, more coordinated, charming, friendly, taller, better-dressed, more capable, a better parent, a better human and a better Christian. Or Muslim. Even if you rule in one of these areas, you might be a crappy tipper or have eleven toes, or even fourteen toes, which would be really weird. We are all supremely imperfect, and it makes absolutely nothing better to put on these condescending, fake-as-hell facades that do little but further isolate us from one another.

So I’ll be the first to admit it in my blog: my life is anything but perfect. One of the fish in my fish tank hates me, I don’t like cooking, and become enraged when people take pictures of their food and post it on Facebook, I’m terrible about sharing my chocolate, and I sometimes wish that, instead of living next to an assisted living house for people with Down Syndrome, I lived next to a home full of Mensa members who are also part-time hip-hop firefighters. Hit the road, Down Syndrome people.