Don't hate me because I'm cool

First off I want to say that Judy in Eugene has placed an order on our website and Philip is at the store packing it all up! Thank you! (It really makes our day to get on-line orders.)

I spent most of my morning perusing the blogs I usually like to read everyday. But today I got around to reading a few of them I read a lot less often. There are some blogs I can't read every day because they paralyse me with craft-envy. The resulting feelings of inferiority remind me that I am not nearly as mature as I like to think I am. I don't like being reminded of my petty childish nature. (I like to imagine myself as a generous, smart, Florence Nightingale/Ghandi-esque type person who is graceful, creative, peaceful, and can always save the day in a pinch. Uh huh, I know what you're thinking.) The reality is nowhere to be found in that parenthetical.

I can say with confidence that I'm not an evil person.

Anyway, the blog I read the least often is Posie Gets Cozy. I don't need a link to it here because most of you already have it on your own blog rolls. If you don't yet, trust me, you will. So what's the big deal? Why do I find it hard to read Alicia Paulson's blog? Why does it give me a heavy dose of inferiority pangs while most other awesome craft blogs inspire me?

You know how there's always someone out there who is prettier/smarter/more creative/more popular/more accomplished than you are? (I am so sorry if you didn't know that already. Take a shot of vodka, you'll feel waaaay better.) Have you ever encountered a person who is everything you wish you were, times ten? A person who is so much like you but so much better at being like you that you feel you may as well go be someone completely different, like Brittney Spears, because the person you are is being played more brilliantly by someone else? C'mon, almost everyone has encountered someone like that in their lives.

Alright, maybe it's just me. I'm not actually that insecure anymore. I like who I am. I like what I do. I'm creative and I accept that there are always going to be people who are more creative. But it is so maddening to find a person who has become successful, who seems to have an endless well of fresh ideas, and who seems to do everything with panache. EVERYTHING. Alicia is that person to me. I read her blog and see the crafts she's working on, and they're so wonderful. I see pictures of her incredible house interior and I understand how come three different magazines have featured her house in their publications. I see her coat collection and it's what I would have (did have) before I got too fat to wear vintage anything. She cooks beautiful food. She writes thoughtfully, but is never petty (like some people I know). She can write a post that takes an hour to read and a hundred and fifty people are all in tears over their laptops because she's really touched them, like she does every single day. She's like an edgier version of Martha Stewart.

She never talks about thong wearing or distastefully brings up sexual issues. She's classy, stylish, neither too fat nor too thin, everything she makes sells out the minute it hits her website, and how does she think up all those cool things anyway?

I'm NOT feeling sorry for myself, I promise you. But for some reason it drives me crazy that she's out there succeeding at everything I would like to succeed at, without apparent effort. How does she do it? Is she a coke addict? Of course not. She's probably not even on antidepressants. She's probably just got magic fingers.

We have a lot in common. We both injured ourselves very seriously (her foot, my hip). She had a store in Portland, I have a store in McMinnville. She writes, she loves cooking, she loves creating, she's introspective, she loves vintage coats. I read her blog and am always saying "hey! That's my thing!". And today, I had to find out one more thing about her that I have in common: her birthday is the day after mine. We are both Capricorns. Dang it. OF COURSE HER BIRTHDAY IS THE DAY AFTER MINE. And she's probably a better capricorn than me too.

I am like the more childish, less socially likable, somewhat more shocking, deranged, darker, and less successful version of Alicia Paulson.

Now what I'm wondering is; if I were to not let my slip show, like I'm doing right now, if I were to not invite people into my dark thoughts every day, if I were to shield the world from those qualities in myself that are less pretty, could I build a magical world around myself and envelop everyone else in the glow too? Because I'm pretty sure that the biggest difference between people like Alicia and Martha compared to me is that they never let the practice crafts be seen. They never let the dirty laundry go public. They spend way more time on making presentations than I do. They invest energy into being thoughtful in an unobjectionable way. They don't just shove an idea out there to see what happens to it. They don't ask other people's opinions about what they're doing.

Plus they are obviously good business women.

Basically, what I'm saying in my twisted up way, is that I very much admire her but find it difficult to see someone who I have a lot in common with reach goals that seem impossible for me to reach. It makes me feel tired.

Now that I have listened to myself getting this little secret off my chest, I think I might be a lot more like Charles Bukowski. This is a new and possibly deeply disturbing realization. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I'll have to think hard on it while I clean the toilets. Which is totally fitting. (I simultaneously laughed and gasped inwardly in horror when I typed that out.)

But I see it now. I'm pretty curmudgeonly. I drink more like a man than an elegant woman. (Think Homer Simpson). I have a lot in common with grouchy old men. That's why I hung out at Puck's Donuts in Ashland back when it was filled with old men smoking cigarettes and drinking a hundred cups of bad coffee every morning. I loved sitting in there listening to them grouse. My other favorite place to hang out? Not a tea room. I hung out at the Greyhound station with all of the old men who had gotten tired of Puck's and decided to drink bad coffee and smoke cigarettes sitting in the molded plastic avocado green bucket seats while observing the buses come and go all day.

I don't hate Alicia Paulson for being cool. I just find her light difficult to look at.