The psychological disaster of late afternoon naps

I am still puzzling over the perception that I'm "putting myself out there" on this blog. Many people confirmed in email (not in the comments section, because they didn't want to put themselves out there) that I do do that. But there are just so many topics that I feel I can't even touch with a ten-foot pole. I'd really love to complain about family and friends on here, but I can't. (The therapist that I went to last fall/winter, I'll call her M. going forward, would say "I won't" which is of course more accurate. I could easily go buck wild about all kinds of annoying stuff the people around me have done lately, but I don't want to. And harkening back to the first or second post, I don't think it's even out of kindness or a sense of decorum, but because I don't want people to be angry with me. And the anger itself isn't even as pernicious as the awkwardness that would ensue.)

I've looked at blogs where people go into great depth about their husbands or coworkers or parents, knowing those people don't read them. Must be liberating. Wouldn't it be great if there were a place you could just say anything at all that no one would ever see? Like some blank pages bound together that you could hide under your bed or something? Maybe even have a little lock on there.

It is so much fun keeping a blog. But...just the idea...even the word makes me a little uncomfortable. There's this whole weird world to it. Like giveaways. There are millions of these mom-type blogs that are full of contests for Organic Baby Kimonos and Facial Care Regiments. What is that? I don't get it. And pictures of "Tyler had apple sauce for the first time today" with 74 comments underneath. I like the idea of getting these thoughts down I've had rattling around in my head the past few months. One semi-legitimate concern I have is people catching me in some inconsistency because I've written this stuff down (put it out there). I'm sure pretty soon if I haven't already I'll completely contradict some earlier statement and they'll have the proof right there and I'll have to go in and delete any related posts and do that cartoon "doo da doo" whistle that means "There's no funny business going on here".

When my dad's mom found out my dad had published a book on gambling she said, "Myron (forgot last name) has 500 pages published on the internet." Anyone can publish on the internet, we wanted to tell her. (Then again, anyone can publish off of it, a fact unfortunately proven ad infinitum during my tenure at B&N.) But this was the woman whose greatest compliment to my dad in the 64 years she knew him was that in a photo for the cover of a local newspaper his face was clearly visible. She certainly wasn't going to commend him for being the first author on a self-help book. At least she didn't handle the actual hard copy like hazardous waste, the way one of my dad's friends did when he gave her a copy.

Anyway, I wouldn't, for example, go into details about my relationship with Alex, or tensions that arose on a visit home with my parents, or really inappropriate dream fragments. I'd hesitate to get into the force field I feel I confront when going out after it gets dark in the afternoon in the winter. Here M. was way off -- "Are you scared of the dark?" No, that is not it at all. Maybe dark like in the Cedar Mountain Wilderness in Utah at night, but not walking in front of Duane Reade on 8th avenue. It's something else. Something feels so primordially terrible about it, until I get outside. Similar to going to sleep in the light and waking in the dark. The psychological disaster of late afternoon naps. I'd hesitate to get into certain crazy patterns I got into when trying to sleep train Wally and my whole history of intrusive thoughts. Actually, I'm contradicting myself already, a few of these are things I really want to get into, I just "haven't had time" yet. (Quotes around that because, as you can tell from earlier posts, I think that is one of the worst lies we tell ourselves so I'm going to at least put quotes around it from now on when I tell it to you.)