Saturday, June 23, 2012

A Lightbulb Moment



Gentle Readers, although you may not have noticed it I have taken a month or so off from blogging. I needed time to think, to regroup, to decide where to focus my energy.

A fortuitous opportunity to spend some time in airport bookstores and watching a little reality TV with my sister finally made me realize something: pastimes in our culture are aspirational. The things most people watch and read are about who they think they are or who they wish they were. We may laugh at the Real Housewives of Wherever, but they are setting trends and selling products and people can't get enough of them.

And let's face it, my friends, nobody aspires to the life of an old maid with a cat. In fact, most younger people probably laugh at my exploits, but laugh in that uncomfortable "Dear God, don't let that be me someday" kind of way. People my own age tend to pity me, and to make suggestions about how I could be more successful or date more if only I changed everything about myself.

People have been asking me since I was a teenager (usually with a degree of irritation) why I'm so hell-bent on being myself and I have no answer for that. In fact, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to be anything but him- or herself, why they would spend a lifetime searching for that mythological something outside themselves that is supposed to make them feel like they are okay. Whenever I've tried that, the results were very bad indeed.

All of which is the long way of explaining why I'm not updating here very often. There isn't much of a readership for an old maid with a cat, even if the old maid has a wicked sense of humor and still gets hit on by men young enough to be her sons.

I'll continue updating regularly over at My Life In Food: A Culinary "Art" Journal, but focusing it more on the silly pictures I enjoy drawing (one of which was recently published in the online food magazine Pork and Gin) and less on trying to make it into a Food Blog.  Maybe I'll draw some cartoons for this blog, too.  We shall see.

I'm just an ordinary person whose ambition is to be as kind, as creative, and as happy as I can be on any given day. It's not aspirational, but it works for me.

6 comments:

The Cranky said...

Perhaps you're right and it isn't aspirational, but it IS inspirational.

Congratulations, btw, on surviving reality tv with all your braincells intact and operative!

Maria said...

Thanks, Jacqueline! I also learned that reality TV is like crack -- it doesn't take much to get you addicted. Fortunately, I have a big stock of Jane Austen on hand just now and it is helping with the detox enormously!

Thrifted Shift said...

I don't think I fully understand, but I support you doing whatever you need to do to be yourself and I'll keep checking out the food cartoons blog!
--TS

Louise Ruggeri said...

I love this post Maria and can definitely identify with it, though I have no cats presently. Maybe I should go get a couple, just so that I fit better into that "crazy lady who lives alone with cats" stereotype - save people some time figuring me out. Thanks for sharing & congrats on the drawing getting published!

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