A writing exercise
ACTION Words: Stop, start, judge
Adjectives: Yellow, beautiful, disgusting
I’ve told you a million times to stop posting your entire life on social media. It seems like an accessible path to start down, sharing bits of information about the day to days of your life, but after a while, the truth emerges into a fictional world where the real you doesn’t actually exist. Others will judge the food you eat based on the images snapped and posted with the hashtag #bestshrimpever, knowing full well, you’ve never left the desert to venture to the sea, therefore precluding the notion that you have indoctrinated yourself as King of the shrimp tasters. I know, and you know, this is only your second time eating shrimp and it’s from the same location, Big Ted’s Shrimp Hut down on 15th Street.
I’m telling you these things because as much as you want to tie a yellow ribbon around the half dead tree in the front yard, the tree is still half dead. It may look beautiful as if life will return to it now that you’ve scratched about and gussied it up a bit, however inside, the center is scratching and rotting into disgusting hairball meshed together to become layers of termite food. Pawing around with that kind of power is dangerous, and once the cat is out of the bag, there is not putting it back inside. And you and I know, the cat always gets out of the bag.
Social media is indeed a place to connect and grow, but if we stop pretending to be the cool kittens we are not, then we are able to start living an authentic life. True life doesn’t require likes and hearts or emojis to judge whether or not you have a good idea or are in fact a good at heart. You are indeed beautiful as you are. A bright ray of yellow stripes with orange marks of sunshine so radiant that others find your very existence to be disgusting in comparison to the cat boxes they call home.
If I tell you once, I will tell you twice, as my cat, you are a loved public figure. You have more Twitter followers than me, but at the end of the day, it’s me who opens your cat food. Honestly, I have no idea how you manage to take so many selfies with my phone, and I wish you’d cease this cycle.
Yours truly,
The Crazy Cat Lady #crazycatmama @crazycatmama.com
