WHY?

“Why do you share so much publicly?”

“Aren’t you afraid your kids will read this?”

I get these two questions a lot and only rarely do I give them a terrible amount of thought. I already have enough on my mind most days that adding the stress of these two isn’t needed. They are fair questions though, and thankfully I can answer them with a certain level of confidence and it shouldn’t take me 1000 words (spoiler: it takes 712).

I’m not sure when the switch went off and I just started regurgitating my thoughts, but as I have looked back through hundreds of entries, a little bit of this has always been there. I started bloggin back in 2007 as a way to document my swim and even before that I shared a lot longer form posts within the Baton Rouge Triathlon message board (man I miss that thing). Over the last 2 years or so, I’d say it’s escalated a bit and become more of a theme. It started when my dad got sick and then died. It was a way to process. Share the good, the bad, the scary, the bragging. Some people call it being vulnerable, I just call it being honest.

Authenticity is the new buzzword of the day, and me writing honestly may or may not fulfill this trend. I do think what you see is what you get and that my lack of a filter goes to this. Personally, I think it’s dishonest to paint a picture that’s untrue, either willfully or through omission. So to that end, you get it all.

My personal “why” is to try and make people better. From coaching, to feeding you healthy food, to telling you I am sometimes not okay, to pushing you to exercise, to giving high fives to strangers on a run (the other day I got the trash man hanging off the back of the truck to high five me!), to coming off slightly (read:completely) narcissistic, to just sharing something random. I want you to get something out of that interaction. If my oversharing helps just one person, I win.

This of course is rooted in wanting to be liked, I imagine. Helping others feels good and hopefully the net gain against the douchiness sometimes displayed, is that more people like me. Shallow? Maybe, but I’ll admit it and own it. I’ve been this way for my whole life so I don’t think it’s going to change.

As far as my kids are concerned, I want to be a real person to them. Not perfect in any way. I want them to know that life is long, and sometimes hard, and that there will be times of struggle and that is normal. I want to remind them that they, like me, are still undefeated agains bad days. We all get the chance to do it again tomorrow.

From time to time, I’ll ask them if they read what I had written. Sometimes they say yes. I ask if they are okay with it. I think they mostly are. At the least they aren’t terribly embarrassed by it. This is challenge I have accepted and will keep trying to do so. This is the best.

I think that mostly what they see is that I am the same person to them, to you, to my friends and family, to the kids I coach and to the public at large. Consistency matters, even if it’s consistently way different than what they see from other adults and parents.

I know that sometimes this leans pretty raw and can be shocking to those closest to me, and I am getting better at not just writing ad nauseam about my struggles. You want to know how I feel about Jimmy Buffet just as badly (I hate his music, but love his business empire). You want my opinions of food and health sometimes, but not always. You don’t want my opinions on religious things, which is good, Im not well versed, but mostly you seem to just want to know someone else out there is thinking what you’re thinking.

So that’s why. Well that and it’s cheaper than actual therapy :)

To give.

To get.

To love.

To be loved.

#hugsandhi5s