Thank God Day 10 is over.  It was my neediest day on record; everything I did needed to be praised.  Every sentence and phrase was a junior varsity marching band on my desktop, so self-aware and full of pimples they almost forgot they were playing a fight song.  Even using the bathroom required reassurance, “You really hit the bowl that time, big guy!” I’d tell myself.

To top that off, yesterday I noticed that my friends in the fake world of social media are all masters of bumper sticker productivity and success; with the vulnerability of a horseshoe.  They boil everything down to one pithy statement about God or leadership or organization or management.  “3 ways to be more productive.”  “God hears prayers that begin with worship, or the letter B, or Pardon me, but…”  And it seems like most everyone I know has it all figured out, while I am stuck in Tenuous, OH, an uncertain land located ironically on the Chagrin River.

One of my friends is a heart surgeon.  I thought about calling her to ask, “Do you ever wait by their beds in post-op until your quadruple by-pass patient emerges from the anesthesia just to ask them, “How does that feel?  Do you like your new working valves?”  Instinctively I know she wouldn’t understand my question or the need for FEEDBACK.  Because accomplished surgeons aren’t like the rest of us, they are not wired for validation from their audience.  Or are they?

Of course they are.  And so are my easiest friends who produce bumper stickers to explain the way life is.  Their sentiments are little more than a means of self-assurance, and yes, they desperately want you to comment on their brilliance.  And you probably should, lest they cease to produce the half-truths they use to define themselves, effectually muting their existence.  Yes, praise them for their shallow findings or else they may stop searching altogether!  “You’re a scholar, Mr. So-and-so from blogstoomuch.productivity.meaning-of-life.findgodhere.blogspot.com.

So here’s to the insecure way we manage to “hit the bowl.”  And to forgetting the jargon of your electronic type-A friends who have made discovering the meaning of life into a turkey-shoot .  Yesterday, I burned a fantastic pile of leaves and I plumbed the depths of human vacancy and insecurities using myself as the reference point.  While my arms ache from patting my own back, I am alive today to create a beautiful Day 11.  I know that I am alive because I can misquote Descartes, “I need constant validation; therefore I am.

(As first-drafts go, I managed to write something that I did not immediately hate on Day 10.  The best stories are born for the raw exposure of insecurity, I think.  Perhaps I will post it in a couple of days.  Unless I chicken out.

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