Measuring Up

Have you ever compared yourself to someone else and found that you don't measure up?

Well, stop it, you fucker.

Looking at your life through the distorted mirror of the lives of people you know is a dangerous trap, and it is one that will drive you insane-- slowly or quickly, depending upon your current mental status-- and such comparisons have the propensity to damage not only your self-esteem, but irreparably harm relationships that you hold dear.

I suppose that it is human nature to do this. I suppose we are all conditioned to compare ourselves to people of similar ages and see how their situations in life compare with our own. I'm married, are my unmarried friends happier? I don't have kids-- are my friends with kids more fulfilled than I? I sit behind a desk all day, are there other people out there whose jobs are more rewarding? Are there people out there who socialize more (99.4% of the population, probably), drink more (ditto there), laugh more, write more, get paid more, have more sex, do more drugs, take more chances, get more applause, see more continents than I?

Well, yeah. Of course.

The thing is, though, I don't care.

I hope you don't care either. I hope that all of us can walk through the doorways and into the rooms of our own lives and throw off the blanket of insecurity that threatens to smother us as we think about the choices we didn't make, as we look at the people we know, as we think back about decisions and actions and inaction, as we remember. It's not easy, I know. After all, there are people who went out on exciting first dates last night and got laid, and it wasn't me. After all, somewhere in some alleyway in some town somewhere, a dashing young cop chased a gunman down during an intense foot pursuit, tackled him, threw the cuffs on him, and removed the danger from society. And it wasn't me. After all, some lucky bastard just acquired a literary agent, and some luckier bastard just toasted the release of his new book, and neither of those lucky bastards were me.

My question is, "So?"

What can I do? What in the hell can I do about any of that? Can I sit in my house and look at my wife and my dog and my mortgage and my choices and resent them for preventing me from becoming what I feel I might have the potential to become? Who would I be if I did that? I don't want to be that, whatever that is.

The unfortunate thing about Generation-X, which I think I'm a part of, I don't know-- it's hard to keep track, is that we were raised to believe that we can be anything, be anybody, do anything. We were all raised to be trophy-winning athletes (present company excluded) and we were all told that we are special, our bodies merely vessels for infinite possibility. Regrettably, what that breeds is contempt for the status quo within us. That sort of attitude fosters an unquenchable longing for the libation of overachievement. Our current relationship cannot possibly be enough-- we're better than that, aren't we? We need a better car, a bigger house, a cooler job, smoother skin, a newer fucking iPhone with 3G, then 4G, 5G-- God only knows how many G's there will be over the course of the next few years. We're constantly checking out "the competition" never realizing that they're far more valuable as our friends.

I'm realizing every day that life is short, and that it really doesn't matter what you accomplish in terms of publication or approbation, noteriety or piety-- as long as you're good to people. I don't always succeed that that, but I try. Would the world have been that much different if I had been a cop, or a lawyer, or a professional writer or an actor? Maybe, but I doubt it. And who cares anyway? I'm just me-- tall, awkward, skinny, rambling, frequently embarrassed, painfully shy, usually inappropriate, married, dog walking, PT Cruiser driving, overdressed and underpaid me.

And why would I wish for anything different? I don't believe in comparing myself to others, just like I don't believe in unicorns, faeries, or Oz.

I do most definitely believe in spooks, though. They come out and scare the bejesus out of us every time we cast doubt on who we are.

Am I An Angry Blogger?

Sebastian, one of my precious few male readers, asked me that question in an email today.

"Are you an angry blogger?"

And I looked at those words, at that interrogative statement and I thought, "Hmpf. Am I?"

In the end, I suppose, the question really isn't for me to answer-- it's for you to answer. I certainly don't sit down at the computer and say, "Okay, Apronbitch, let's let some anger fly!" The only thing I try to be is engaging-- interesting enough to compete with a sea of online media content-- iTunes, YouTube, Hulu, porn, and let's not even talk about the scads of other blogs out there that you could be reading instead of mine. I mean, Jesus-- why would you bother?

I don't know why, but you do, and I'm very happy that you do. See? I'm a happy blogger.

It's easy, I suppose, to see why some people might think of me as "an angry blogger." First of all, I swear a lot-- and that can definitely come off as angry, mean or hostile. Because I use profanity frequently, I view it as just another component of my vernacular-- no different than my tendency to overuse the word "ameliorate" or my unfortunate propensity to utilize run-on sentences that drives my wife crazy because I oftentimes write like I talk and there just isn't always a decent place to put a comma or a semi-colon and I'm not even sure I know how to use a semi-colon correctly anyway.

The Open Letters and the Dear Apron posts appear angry, sure-- but, really, I'm just trying to explore an alternate viewpoint-- especially in the Dear Apron columns. Dear Abby is so patently ridiculous, so prim, so uptight that my eyelids hurt when I read her advice to people. Some bloggers like to make the claim that they're unique for "telling it like it is." To me, that's bullshit for "I speak from my own point-of-view, which may be different from yours, or it may be the same."

Certainly there are times when this blog is angry, and it's usually when I'm angry about something. But please don't label me an "angry blogger." As the yellowed, torn poster from the 1970s that hangs up outside my office implores, "Label jars, not people."

Then again-- maybe I deserve the label. Maybe I am an angry blogger-- whatever that is. I mean, if you say so....

I really do thank Sebastian, though, for asking me that question. Sometimes you've got to ask people tough questions-- it's good for them, and it's good for you, too. All through middle and high school, I was obsessed with dating a certain girl. I talked about her all the time and obsessed over her the way I do about most things. Finally, I went out to dinner with another friend of mine, and she and I were talking about this girl I wanted to date/bang. Well, we weren't actually talking about her-- I was talking about her and she was humoring me. Finally, after I had completed Monologue #863 about this girl, my friend put down her fork and knife on her plate, wiped a crumb off her chin and she looked at me and said,

"What is it about her that you like?"

And I immediately rattled off a list of attributes about this girl that I found desirous and that deemed her worthy of suffering the entry of my penis on a regular basis. Only trouble was, all of those attributes were physical.

"Okay," she said, "she's pretty. But what is it about her personality that you find attractive?"

I thought about that. Nobody had ever asked me that before. I had just assumed that I wanted the whole package, I had never even given any thought to what it was, intrinsically about this girl that attracted me so. I was silent, looking at my partially-consumed steak. I was, at first, panic-stricken, and then I sort of internally sunk with the realization that the answer was, really, nothing.

"I... I guess.... not much, really..... I mean-- I.... nothing."

"Good," my friend said, taking a swig of water from her glass, "now you can finally shut the fuck up about that at least."

I've always been grateful to this friend for calling me out on this particular point-- and she did it with grace and intelligence-- all she did was ask a simple question. Sometimes that's all you need to do to people to get them to stop and think for a moment.

So, thanks, Mr. Seb. In answer to your question: "Are you an angry blogger?" I guess I'd just have to say, "I don't know."

But at least you've got me thinking about something.