Revealing one’s inner self is intimidating. Some of us are an open book, some of us never reveal anything about ourselves, and most of us, like myself, only reveal their truest feelings, deepest thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams of those we know, trust and love.
As a lurker in Facebook, various blogs and web sites, and has been an obsessed Internet user since the early ’90s, (hence the name of my most recently lost beloved little dog, WorldWideWillie), I have preferred anonymity as opposed to notoriety.
Over the years my younger sister, Julie, a TV producer in Los Angeles, has asked me to appear in one of her many shows. In life, I am lively and animated. In front of a camera, I somehow turn into a stone statue with a curious forced smile that makes me (and others) cringe.
Twenty years ago, she talked me into appearing on an episode of a gardening show she was producing. With sweaty palms, heart racing, and voice quivering I got through it. I was so inept as a performer that I was unable to watch myself on the video she sent a few weeks later, hiding it from Tom, throwing it away a few months later. With angst, I awaited its broadcasting, fearing friends and acquaintances would see it and call, pretending to enjoy my “performance.” Thank goodness, no one called.
Us lurkers tend to enjoy the quiet seclusion of our non-public lives, preferring to spend our social time with long time friends, neighbors, and family. Oh yes, at times, we can be quite the social butterflies, preferring to flutter among the familiar garden we have harvested over a lifetime.
So, here I am, writing for anyone in the world to see, about a very personal dream, its adjunct expenses (discussing money was always a “no-no” in my little world), my relationship with my more popular and outgoing husband, my fears (zip lines, vaccinations, bungees, bats, guano, being trapped on an airplane on the tarmac, stuck on a chairlift or tram and on and on).
Also, I will be compelled to deal with the vulnerability of exposing the many mistakes we’ll make along the way, which invariably will fall upon me, as the “official world travel planner” in this pairing.
Reveal, I will. As hard as it will be to say here, that when we showed up at the supposedly lovely stone house we rented for a month in France, for which we paid in advance, is actually a freestanding 300 square foot vacuum repair shop in the industrial district, next to a chlorine processing plant. We’ll take the hit and we’ll take it here. Stay tuned.