Who are you-really?

I had an unpleasant surprise yesterday. I casually emailed my editor at one of the publications for which I write and found that I had an editorial due-yesterday! After some posturing (emails flying back and forth in which I said I didn't know and he saidoh, he was sure he had told me) we negotiated today as the new deadline. Once again, I realized that I am occasionally organizationally challenged (see yesterday's post on washing the kitchen floor). If that is the case, then I need to institute safeguards, like keeping a calendar on which I pen when articles and other minor neccesities, like bills, are due.

If anyone has any clever ideas on how to manage deadlines in a way that is not too demanding or painful, please post them for the rest of us!

For some reason, I began to think about the gulf in the selves we present to others and the persons we allow ourselves to be at home. Surely you have a work persona and a home persona. But is there a gap between the person you are with your wife/husband and kids and person you are when you log on to your computer at 1:00 in the morning? How far do you let it go? I thought about this when I got one of those pop-ups on the kids computer yesterday, telling me that I needed a drive cleaner to get rid of all the adult sites I'd visited-and how to get rid of them so no one else would know. Before I took a few minutes to think about the reality, which is that I don't visit adult sites (partly because I have no desire to be plagued by endless stupid ads with half naked women), I felt a wave of panic. How did they know? Imagine how you would feel if you really did spend a lot of time surfing Internet porn.

Which is why, over and over again, I try to be the same person in public as I am in private. Sometimes my dear ones want me to be a little less...authentic.

How about you? Is there something you are hiding- a secret someone that only comes out late at night and flees reality for fantasy? Perhaps you might consider prayerfully laying that person down at the foot of the cross. It must be a terrible burden for you to carry.

Perhaps you don't wish to link your early morning alter ego with your regular life... reality can be so much more rich, complicated, and risky.