the self indulgent post you can skip

I told a friend about my blog yesterday.
She was quite shocked at my enthusiasm to share private feelings and thoughts with all of Blogville. She is also shocked at social networking sites in general, finding them quite menacing and unnecessary. The thing is, we give as much as we are willing to share. Most bloggers leave out deeply personal reflections. Those are best saved for a handwritten tome stashed under the mattress. I'm just glad I didn't write a diary or a blog in my teens and early twenties. Oh, the self indulgent angst ridden twaddle that would have been !
At 36, I still ( on occasion ) have a propensity towards thin-skinned vulnerability.
I disguise it cleverly with lashings of strategically placed optimism and jovial good humour, the sort guaranteed to grate heavily on the nerves of those around me, from time to time. But like most people, I fall somewhere in the middle of lifes emotional barometer. I am neither Miss.Sunshine nor Miss.Grumpy. I know what's required of me and badger on in a mostly satisfied ( if not ecstatic) state of mind. I would love to be one of those naturally effervescent women, the kind who fizz even when the world around them has gone flat. But, I think I will always have the distant noise of self doubt in my ear. I can link it all the way back to childhood, when my Dad died. I realized then what a volatile world we live in, how circumstances can change dramatically and often in the most random way imaginable. The days of cast iron certainties were truly behind me and the future was a much more forbidding prospect.
I realized that I'd been living in a safe bubble. I envy the untroubled simplicity of children, and hope my girls can look back at a carefree youth, a golden childhood. It's what we all deserve.