I really don't know if it's merely a matter of having thin-skin so much as stress is just starting to break out of whatever chinks it can find in my "armor" as it was. We've been told that Dad might not live out the year, and we're still waiting to find out how severe Mom's newly diagnosed condition is; there is a ton of sibling infighting of late, and my overworking myself is taking a huge toll on my own health (and perhaps sanity). I had a severe over-reaction to a blog comment on AFF the other day; actually it was closer to sheer outrage. It didn't HELP that I was hungover as crap from the first time I'd overindulged with alcohol since I quit smoking.
I wrote a blog on the "other place" about meeting the another blogger (mostly merely in response to her own blog about our meeting), and I posted the picture of the two of us together that she had posted as well. One of the women who had been following my blog for ages remarked that:
I see you are one of the guys that uses a much younger picture of yourself as a profile picture. Not that the picture posted is a bad one..............just a bit misleading.
To say that I was outraged by this would be an understatement; later the next day I pulled all of my pictures down and changed my profile. The picture wasn't even THAT old ...my birthday in '06 isn't exactly "much younger" by any stretch of the imagination. I had even given myself most of a day to think about it before I took the action ...I even asked a couple of the people I had met. Both told me that she was full of shit, and not to sweat it ...but I was still PISSED and just couldn't let it go (which is SO "not me"). The one whom the blog was about said she didn't see anything "off" about me ...the picture I took that day was in direct sunlight; of COURSE the grey was going to be more pronounced than in an indoor picture.
I finally started to settle down ...another friend threw a bucket of cold water in my face about the whole thing on a different level that finally jarred me back into "reality" a little bit at least. The new profile was extremely self-depreciating ...I don't think it quite rated as "bitter and cynical" but it was dangerously close. I went ahead and changed up the profile; I had already concluded from the crap the censors were giving me that I needed to try something else with my pictures. I had decided that NO pictures were better than "misleading" ones, but I was also finally noticing that I was having a pretty severe case of overkill.
After they wouldn't go for the "this is my thumbprint over me at the Grand Canyon" etc, I wanted to superimpose an emoticon over my face, but the resolution just wouldn't work. I finally just made my own "emoticon" and superimposed it (and avoided any nasty copyright issues); I posted a bunch of the same pictures back, only with the "emoti-me" over my face. I was kinda pissed that they wouldn't let me post one of Zeke and I with an emoti-Zeke over HIS face too.At least I could turn it into a joke. Cause that's what we do do in my family ..never let them see you hurt. Try to make it look like it was something other than it truly was if we can. The woman who had posted the original remark backpedaled ...I didn't buy the whole "I was just trying to be humorous" that she tried first, then the second "I had somebody else do "this" to me once" (we've all been there if we've been on the net any amount of time). What she did was rude as shit, but I don't think it was meant to be as malicious as I took it; she just spoke without thinking ...and since I'm kinda "the king" on that sort of thing myself, I'm trying to just let it go.
I'm posting no blog in explanation, and I'm certainly not retaliating. If the emoti-me doesn't catch on, then I'll go back to the old pictures; I'm kinda liking the emoti-me so far though (even if it does feel like I'm kinda ripping off "Jack in the Box" here).
No comments:
Post a Comment