Post No Bull

I spent a good deal of time writing a new post that would have appeared here about. . . now.

It was an experimental post that encouraged you, dear reader, to find me disgusting. Sort of a George Constanza reverse experiment. Since I have had a hard time throughout my life making lasting friends and having people like me despite my personality disorder, this was an attempt to do the exact opposite of what I usually do.

That is to say, by coming across as a complete ass, you dear reader would find me cutting, edgy, interesting etc.

And, frankly, I had a ball writing it. I thought it was cutting, edgy and genuinely tart.

Knowing that because of my condition, my perception is quite often skewed, I had my wife look at it first.

She didn't laugh once.

I think, in one respect, she doesn't like seeing me put myself down so savagely, even if it is done ironically.

But she also said it was particularly mean spirited at times.

A big part of what I write has to do with my experiences growing up with an undiagnosed mental condition and talking about my family is a part of that. But this time, my wife felt I laid on the snark with a particularly huge and nasty trowel.

And deep down inside, I know she's right. It was meant to be.


But, again, this is part of the process of trying to understand and control my behavior. It's a perfect illustration of how I tend to offend: what seems funny and edgy to me might be repulsive to you, the reader.

It can be something I write or say. It really doesn't matter. Perceptions are everything.

So I'm going to let it sit in the queue and stew for awhile and come back to it later, possibly for a re-write but knowing that I often get a very different feeling about something from one day to another. Tomorrow, or some other day, I might look back on what I wrote and think 'good God, I almost published that shit.'

The takeaway is that, for many of us, we get to the point where we don't trust our own instincts. And I don't trust mine anymore. It's a byproduct of bipolar.

I won't lie - it hurts. But I would rather follow the advice of someone I love and trust than possibly wound the blog - which has helped me as therapy through writing - than stubbornly insist that everything I write is golden. When I have been wrong before, I've been spectacularly wrong.

I guess it's progress that I can recognize and admit this.

So maybe someday you'll read it in the proper context or maybe not. But I didn't want to hit the hay tonight without writing something about The Post that Wasn't.

Because for me, it's all about working it out in print and learning from the misfires is a part of that.