Secrets

We’ve been in Arizona spending time with my husband’s family, and besides the fact that we are no longer human but instead have melted into piles of sweat, it’s been going well.

The most interesting part of the trip has been a conversation I had with extended family about social media.  “What is a blog?” “What is this Facebook thing all about?” Many questions, many perceptions.  It reminded me that I can make a living at something, in this social media world, and that many people have not a single idea it really even exists, past hearing about it in the news now and then.  They didn’t even want me to begin trying to explain Twitter, because it was just THAT out there for them.

These blogs, these communities, these relationships that all mean so much to us.  Seem trivial and probably a bit silly to outsiders.  The lives we reach with this network of writers, bloggers and readers, has touched my life so much, it’s amazing that it seems to still be my little secret.

Another part of the conversation centered around having your personal life “out there” for people to know all the details about.  What you write on your blog specifically, will always live online and be able to come back and bite you.  I made a decision a while ago to have my personal blog be also my professional blog, all those lines are blurred for me because of the writing, working, etc that I do.  My Twitter name is both lives, my Facebook account is the same.  I don’t have the time or energy to be two people, so it’s all just out there.  Where my filter lies is before ANYTHING hits the webpage, instead of on this or that account or screen name.

All this to say that I share very deep, raw emotions here on my blog with all of you, on Twitter, and elsewhere.  They are my life, my story of my own world, and that story includes my own roller coaster moods and emotions, it includes living with children with autism, parenting them, becoming a mother to them.  It includes the things I love (reviews!) and giveaways (my thank you to all of you for visiting my “house”). It includes social media, it includes talking about being a digital mom and the companies I work with.  It’s the whole ball of wax, because I apparently don’t do enough multi-tasking at home, I need to do it here on my blog as well.

However some days, like today, I wish I could tell things that I can’t tell.  I could tell you if you called me up (actually no, I don’t like talking on the phone, so scratch that), but I can’t write about them here.  That filter that knows that despite how open and real and raw I am on this blog, also knows that I can’t always tell you everything.  No matter how big and all emcompassing they are.  And especially when they are painful.

So I leave you with this: when you are powerless, helpless, and must sit and wait to see if the future will be amazing or heart breaking, what do you do to pass the moments?  How do you keep time from standing still when all the obvious ways of prayer, distraction, and relaxing have stopped working?