As with most mornings on my days off, it’s a slow roll to wake up this particular morning. I sleepily smile at the text from my boyfriend, reply to it. I pet my perpetually hungry cat, Ned. I browse Facebook for a couple minutes, watch the new Star Wars trailer, realize that Darth Vader’s helmet kinda always looks like the “gritted teeth” emoji. A friend on Facebook has lost a loved one, and I almost comment on the post but decide not to. I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m even sorrier for all the notifications I’ll get if I comment on your post.
Then I check the dashboard for my shitty-ass blog. Oh great, I think, rolling my eyes, Chad’s back.
I started this blog a few years ago to chronicle my experience leaving my job for a year to have an “artistic sabbatical”. Halfway through that year, I had a rough time of it and suddenly the writing got more personal. I knew then that I was making a choice to put my ramblings out into the public domain, and I also knew well enough from Reddit message boards that not everyone would be kind. Take the above comment, posted at 1:04 am to my recent piece about transparency and honesty. Chad’s clearly trying to bring “tool” back. The overall message in my piece wasn’t very controversial, just an affirmation that it’s better to be open than not. But Chad’s had it in for me for awhile: Continue reading