The Impossible Task of Measuring Up

I'm a bit of a blog snoop. Instead of folding laundry, or washing dishes or picking up the aftermath of babies at play I will read a blog and click on a link to another blog within the post of an interesting looking blog on a side bar. I can meander for endless lengths of time reading other people's blogs sometimes just passing through, others I stop and "sit a spell." (I have no idea why that phrase popped into my head. Some of those really Southern blogs must have planted a seed somewhere.) Sometimes I'll stumble upon a blog I enjoyed, forget to bookmark it and then have no idea how I got to it consequently loosing it, temporarily at least.

But there's a danger to reading some of those blogs, for me anyway, and from some of your comments, for some of you as well. While some blogs are about people just struggling through life, like the rest of us, some blogs are about families who seem so perfect. The pictures, the impossible menus, the photos of uncluttered floors and uncluttered kitchen counters, I find myself comparing my life to the glimpse of a life I see on my computer screen and I fall desperately short. And being the comparer that I am, I feel unworthy. Unworthy of what? I have no idea really. My children, my life, I really don't know, its a deep seated feeling that buries itself deep only to bubble up from time to time perhaps from years of insecurities.

The bottom life is that this is my life. Its not impossibly sweet and definitely not impossibly perfect! I can only imagine Trace and Ross' reactions if I churned out gourmet dinners along with tulle table clothes and floral bouquets on a regular basis. We won't even mention the younger children's reaction to the proposed menu. I freely admit that I could spend less time on my laptop and more time on my housework but perhaps the real key is more balance.

There will always be someone smarter than me, funnier than me, prettier than me, skinnier than me and some most of things I don't have to look very far to find! The lesson I work on and will probably forever work on is to accept who I am, who my family is, what my life is and change what needs to be changed but embrace the rest. The perfect people can live their own perfect lives. But something tells me that the "perfect people" aren't so perfect after all.