Smug bloggers. I can't stand it when blogspot people are super proud of their perfect lives and cyber-wave it in our faces. Happiness I don't mind. Pride I don't mind. Gratitude never goes out of style. Even insecurity masquerading as bravado doesn't bother me. A little bragging? Fine! I have no problem with run of the mill kid pride. I display that all of the time. It's not 'Hey, we're happy here' that gets my dander up.
But it irks me when people try to pass off amazing stuff as par for the course, like 'Of course this fashionable studio in San Fran is mine, and no, it didn't take any work to pull this off. I spend my spare time painting old denture molds to create installation art.' I suppose this is a very specific blogging sin, but it still annoys me.
(Jennifer - I think you know who I'm talking about. You might also wonder why I continue to read that blog.)
So, puffed up on my own judgmentalism, I reread a few of my old posts, and was gripped with a terrifying realization: I sound smug!
Not all of the time, no.
But not none of the time either.
Oh help help help.
Please excuse any whiff of smugness. If you spend time with me regularly, you know I'm not smug. I'm bewildered. I'm not super confident, I just don't mind talking loudly. I don't think I'm better than anyone else, I'm just grateful my mother made me take piano lessons. I take very little credit for anything I can do, except organize my fridge. That I'm good at.
Graham says I'm good at putting quesadillas in the cooker. Annie says I'm good at putting on lipgloss. I think I'm good at collecting long french hook earrings. Is that even a skill?
I guess my simmering annoyance with people who do take themselves (too) seriously is why I loved Mike Albo's The Underminer (here's an old NYTimes review that captures the spirit of the novel, a silly, hilarious second-person put-down.) But I'll try a little harder not to be like the narrator.
5 comments:
Now you've got my curiosity. Tell me which blog is smug (I want to secretly see it) and hope it isn't mine. I hope mine shows us flailing around and calling it normal, hahah.
M Sorry about the sun burn! OUCH.
Smug ha! And I realized yesterday I've read one blog for YEARS just for pure schadenfreude -- I mean, I actually find the author just PURELY annoying, and yet back I go, again and again. Shameful! But the rest I read cause I like them. AND today at the farmer's market I MET the husband and children of one of my long-time blog writers --- I squealed (inside) and tried to be calm while Jason talked strollers with them. The actual blogger was home sick, but STILL --- a brush with fame! And you are NEVER smug, lovely Erin.
I believe I DO know who you are taking about and I stopped reading her blog shortly after I met her because she is just so SMUG that it fills me with frustration and negativity. (Though now I have to go back and see which entry got your goat).
You are not smug at all. Let me repeat that: not smug at all. I also fear that I'm sometimes smug (not a smug blogger, but a smug commenter and occasionally smug in person).
I have never caught even the faintest whiff of smugness from your blog. Nothing like.
You are Erin(imagine italics)--you are unpretentious to a fault.
Plus, your skin looks flawless in that picture.
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