Finding the sidewalk and my blog’s purpose

An odd hobby I have is going on college tours.  Conveniently, I have daughters the right age for this hobby to be useful.  I’m not exactly sure if I’d still tour as often without current/pre-college age children, but thankfully, this inconvenient question doesn’t need to be explored. One thing I’ve learned about touring colleges with my daughters is that the adults enjoy the experience far more than the teenagers.  Adults often sappily reminisce and compare what they see to their glory days 20ish years ago. Teenagers, on the other hand, are a picture of awkwardness. They’re insecure around the older college kids they walk past, about the giant mountain of admissions information and the daunting process that lies before them, and about their annoying/embarrassing/old parents attached to them throughout the entire miserable experience.

Recently, on a lovely day in Austin, I toured the University of Texas with my youngest.  All of the insecurities listed above were fully present. Add to that the fact that the tour guide had given me a large button signifying that I was an alumni of the school and made a fuss about it in front of the large group. The rolling eyes and forced smile on my teenager’s face spoke to who was having a better day.

Fast forward from the whole group slide show room to the walking tour of campus during what appeared to be a main passing period of the day.  Hundreds of students bustled around campus, skillfully navigating each other and the vast campus that seemed to have doubled in size since I attended. Our posse of self-conscious high schoolers and reminiscent, curious parents ambled down a sidewalk in the midst of the tour.  Seemingly in slow motion, I suddenly found myself with half a shoe on the sidewalk and the other half awkwardly grasping for ground that wasn’t to be found. Tilting forward, purse contents flying, tour guide jumping into action to try to soften my landing, en route to a serious face plant on the sidewalk. Luckily, I found my hands in time to break my fall, but the spectacle was no less dramatic.  The small group of teenagers and parents hovered around me to assess the damage. The tour guide was realizing that they hadn’t trained him on what to do in moments such as this, and my sweet teenager was completely mortified.

As quickly as was humanly possible, I refilled my purse and jumped to my feet, eager to recover from the moment and assure everyone that all was perfectly fine. Heart pounding, looking straight ahead, getting back in step with the group walking (albeit more carefully) down the sidewalk, pretending that my palms weren’t aching and that my poor daughter’s chances at looking cool weren’t now totally ruined.

We survived that day.  She even liked UT and asked for a t-shirt (our family’s unofficial ritual when a college becomes a contender). But the most memorable part of the day won’t be the admissions criteria, the tour guide’s words, or the photo in front of the iconic tower.  The one thing I’m sure she and I will both remember were the seconds before, during, and after the great sidewalk disaster.

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I have done some research about how to be a good blogger.  One thing people tell you is to be sure you have a clear picture of your target audience and your blog’s purpose. I’m having a hard time with this advice.  Maybe this is because I haven’t decided whether my blog is for myself or for others. Writing is therapy to me. Occasionally, I’m brave enough to share my words with others. Doing so feels naked, vulnerable, scary, real. But the older I get, the more I am realizing that the world needs more vulnerable, unafraid, and real people (not more naked people, though, please). The response to my last blog serves as proof of this.  Friends, acquaintances, and total strangers shared with me how they connected with my vulnerability and felt empathy for the difficulty faced by my birth mom in those circumstances. Some seemed genuinely shocked that I was willing to share my story with the world. Is this unguardedness truly that unusual? Maybe it is. Maybe it really is scary. But living this way is exhausting. It might be safer, but it definitely takes a different kind of toll.  If we cannot show up as our real selves with each other – sharing our struggles, embarrassing moments, and fears – how much energy must we expend curating the image we present? What is the cost of denying the real self locked behind the facade?

I think I may have found my purpose and audience for this blog.  I want my audience to be the people of the world willing to read my real self and not judge. I want my purpose for writing to be showing the world examples of how I (and others) have been vulnerable and real — and lived to tell the tale. It’s refreshing. It’s terrifying. But it’s the only way I want to be now that I’m in the second half.