A read­er recent­ly sent me an e‑mail. This was the last para­graph:

Lastly and please don’t take this as being bold, I want to keep read­ing and one day read that you are noth­ing but hap­py and ful­filled. I would nev­er post a com­ment because I am too shy and also pret­ty prone to being embar­rassed by peo­ple who are cool­er than me (and I con­sid­er peo­ple who blog as peo­ple who are cool­er then me), but many times when I read your entries I feel like I am watch­ing a pro­tag­o­nist in a favourite movie or re-read­ing Siddhartha. Does that make any sense to you? I’m cheer­ing you on and I’m in your cor­ner.

It made me won­der: if she wants to read that I’m hap­py one day, does that mean that I’m not hap­py now? It forced the real­iza­tion in me that the answer is no. Obviously no. Life isn’t great. But do I only write about the bad stuff? I’ve always believed that you have to suf­fer to cre­ate. I’m one of those, so maybe this is the case. I imag­ine it’s the oppo­site with my Tai Chi or table ten­nis part­ners, who must think my life is per­fect, because of how hap­py I am when I’m doing those activ­i­ties.

It also made me won­der how much of myself is revealed here. Someone once told me that she sees two dif­fer­ent sides of me: one who is seri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing from the things I write, and anoth­er who is easy-going and relaxed over the phone.

So what comes through in my words? Certainly not every­thing. But it’s the same as any­thing else, because it’s hard to get a total pic­ture of some­one, unless, per­haps, you spend an appro­pri­ate­ly uncom­fort­able amount of time with them.