My Promise to You

You know how some people hate seeing photos of themselves? Not you, I'm sure, because you're gorgeous, but you know the kind of people I mean. We photophobes avoid pictures of ourselves at all costs because we don't want to accept the truth. We want to see something different than what's there in that glossy print... dewy, fresh skin instead of wrinkles, one chin instead of two, luxurious shining hair instead of a scalp full of scarecrow straw.  (note: my crummy hair/reference number one)

I used to have a similar problem when it came to keeping a journal.

I first tried keeping a diary when I was fourteen. I was bent on filling my little clasped diary with deep thoughts and poetic musings. My first page, an attempt to describe the Arizona sunset outside my bedroom window, was a big disappointment and had to be ripped out the very next day. It wasn't good enough. Subsequent pages mentioning boys were shredded within hours because I might actually have been wrong about who was the cutest boy at school. Entries about music and art also had to be immediately destroyed as they lacked any signs of sophistication. I wanted to appear eloquent but the best I could squeeze out was dorky, I wanted to see poetic on the page but I was stuck with corny. Deep and meaningful....I just couldn't muster it. This scenario repeated itself throughout the decades. Friends presented me with pretty little journals. I left them all empty and blank because I was afraid of filling them with my flaws.  I would dip my toes in the pages of cheap spiral notebooks but even those I quickly abandoned. It wasn't them I was rejecting but me.  I didn't approve of the me I saw on paper.

One day - thank God for aging -  I finally just gave up trying to leave a paper trail that would some day trick posterity into believing that I was some insightful, sophisticated clever-pants.  I gave myself permission to spill out onto the pages of a brand new journal everything that I am....a total nerd, a lopsided jar of clay, an overgrown 14-year-old, sometimes silly, sinfully self-obsessed, a whiner and complainer with an out-of-control sense of humor, a hamper full of insecurities and possibly some as-of-yet undiagnosed mental health issues.  I have accepted the ugly and beautiful truth.  In these six years since, I have filled four super cute journals with my flaws.  And I gotta' say, fabulously flawed is way better than empty and blank.

As I pour my quirks and faults out on paper and accept who I am as God has fully accepted me, I feel the need to be more accepting of the flaws of others and  to see other people, even the ones who are somehow more annoying than me, as God's handiwork.

And isn't this what we all owe each other, my dear bloggettes? Acceptance of our own and each other's imperfections? In that spirit, I hereby commit to being completely open and honest with you in this blog.

This doesn't mean that I'm going to subject you to every embarrassing or awful thing I've ever done. When you drop by The Crooked Clothesline, I'll have the unmentionables folded up and tucked away in the underwear drawer.  What it does mean is that I won't  pretend to be smarter than I am.  I ain't gonna get all uptight about grammar.  And I won't act as if I have any answers about education or religion or politics or what's up with Miley Cyrus. I'm just going to be my genuine, goofy, creative, clueless, slightly obnoxious self.   I'm gonna wave my dork flag high.

This is my Gold Standard promise to you. To seal this solemn promise, it seems fitting (and really, so meaningful and intimate) to humbly share with you right up front the very pinnacle of my dorkiness.  In my next blog, I shall present ~

                  My Celebrity Boyfriends on Parade:                          Celluloid Crushes through the Decades