The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection.
The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection - and usually a little judgment.
So, after removing yesterday's post in response to some negative feedback, here I am again after skimming the paper looking for something positive in the news. My offering for this morning is the etch-a-sketch anatomical depiction drawn out by a KC-135 in the skies near a Russian military base in Syria.
Having flown more missions that involved aerial refueling than I can count, I'm confident there was no aeronautical or tactical purpose for this flight path. It's just a big sky penis, looking really happy to be in the eastern Med. Betting these guys are from an Air National Guard squadron. We regulars would've been called onto the carpet for a stunt like that. Well done.
Last night I decided it was time to step back from this open diary, and return to the original purpose of this page in chronicling life at Wyldswood and whatever hare-brained business idea we try to implement there. The reasons for ending these last several months, indeed couple years, of baring my soul like a newbie at an AA meeting, have become obvious to me in the last several days.
First, the content on this page now is as self-censored as all the nonsense one sees on social media these days. Everyone is living their best life on Facebook; this page projects a stream of adventures that crops the sorrows and setbacks from the shot. Back in August, I related in a closing argument at the end of what ended up being a failed trial the old adage that a half-truth is just a lie. Whatever we offer to the world about ourselves always brushes up against that principle.
Further with regard to self-censorship, my ramblings on this blog are out there for anyone to see--friends, professional colleagues, family . . . creditors, ex-spouses, opposing parties and attorneys. Knowledge is power, and I'm placing that power in the hands of folks who don't always wish P and me the best.
And the awareness of those ill winds has led me to pare back on details about life these days. Maybe it's best that not everyone knows where I am on any particular morning, or what toy we just bought or trip we just booked.
Finally, I think the exercise has largely served its purpose of getting me off of social media. This blog began in the fever swamp of the 2020 election, and back then I had the reflexively dumb habit, usually after a couple Proper Twelves, of expressing on Facebook my disdain for the abject stupidity of the MAGA movement. Unfortunately, some of those MAGA people were clients who aren't anymore, or Kiwanis Club members who un-friended their ex-president after I implied their politics reflected a low IQ, or squadron mates who'd served in great times and some rather unpleasant evenings getting shot at, but who now have vanished into the online mists. Better to limit the screeds to folks who arrived in this salon on purpose. Now I scroll through my Facebook page and find it as anodyne and nonconfrontational as the instruction manual for a washing machine. Mission accomplished.
I anticipate there will be at least a couple of my burgeoning audience of six or so people who use this to keep up with P and me, and seeing how the pandemic sort of turned us into hermits, would like for me to reconsider. But we're still around, and I'm happy to talk whenever you'd like, so long as I'm not tied up with work. So feel free to email, or better yet call. Or we'll have lunch one day. It'd be nice to have an excuse to pull on an actual pair of trousers and leave home for a change.
So later today I'll likely ask Issac to help me figure out how to pull down and archive all this content--it's not like I want to erase two-and-a-half years of memories, of truck bed pools and Mange the Rooster and flights through ice and thunderstorms. It's been a ride, and surely we'll miss it and want to touch it one day, maybe in a homemade yearbook we can tuck on the shelf at the farm for those days when we're old and infirm and wistful for our younger, more adventurous selves. The content from here on out will be about Wyldswood the wedding venue, the radical facelift to the physical plant, the old timey farm equipment we're accumulating as props for some future country wedding, and eventually happy couples and their loved ones sharing a space that's like a little slice of heaven for Peg and me.
So, one last look out there at a beautiful Corning sunrise.
Then back at it, getting ready for a hearing in a couple hours, followed by packing and meeting Peg at the Mighty Columbia for what I hope will be an uneventful flight back to the farm. The thought of waking up next to her with live oaks and cows right outside the window puts a smile on my face every time. I reckon it's okay to share that.
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