It’s time to put down my wheels and idle around the runway for a few minutes of reflection…
I was recently told that one of my family members thinks I use too much “dirty language” on my blog. At first, of course, I felt my feathers ruffling a little bit. It’s myblog and I’ll cuss if I want! And people will deal with it!
Psssst! Hey, Lauren! Remember your last blog? The one about ego? Hmm?
Now, I’m not planning on conforming to every single suggestion that people throw out there, but I did force myself to stop and think about this one. So, I slept on it…and I woke up and read through my blogs again…and was a little disappointed in myself. What have Paul and I been working on since we found out there was a little person chillin’ out in my belly? Revamping our vocabularies, that’s what. We’ve gotten to be pretty good at censoring ourselves over the past year and a half (even when we stub our toes or slam our knees into the baby gate) so why do I seem to lose my filter when I type?
Is it a “public persona” thing? Do I think that people want to hear me swearing like a sailor? (Granted, I wasn’t really swearing like a sailor, but it was sure more than was necessary…) Because I’m pretty sure that the majority of the people reading either don’t want to read a bunch of swear words, or don’t care what kind of words I use, as long as my personality comes out through the text.
Plus, I’m a smart lady, right? I’ve got a bajillion dollars worth of student loan debt to prove that I went to college, don’t I? Why don’t I put them those years of college to use and figure out how to express myself without using gutter-language? (For the record, however, the ‘f’ in FFML was purely demonstrative, and I don’t feel bad about that one at all.)
Also, what kind of message am I putting out (Granted, the harshest words he utters right now are ‘gwee’ and ‘wub wub’…but still.) to Charlie? “Hey, we can’t cuss at home, but if you’re creating content to go out to the masses, it’s okay to sacrifice our personal standards in order to market yourself.” NO! That is not the message I want to get out at all.
Now, I know that my husband is probably reading this with a very kind and loving “Well, I kind of told you so…” look on his face… And, yeah, he kind of did… But this type of realization is something I have to come to myself, even if someone’s been telling me about it for awhile.
So I’ll take on another challenge. I will begin the cleansing of my blog-uage. I will start using my poor old dusty brain a little bit more effectively and start expressing myself without the use of trash-talk. This does not mean, however, that my blog’s going to turn into a Disney movie. Don’t worry about that. I was definitely more of a Nickelodeon girl when I grew up anyway…which is proving, I think, to be a good thing. Seriously, have you watched Disney shows lately? Have you? Have you!? But that, my friends, is an entirely different blog post.