foodwinesex

A coworker of mine has caused a bit of a stir in the office with his new blog - foodwinesex. He's 52 and going through a divorce. He has also decided to visit the top 100 restaurants in San Francisco along with other top restaurants in other cities. GC started his blog to talk about his restaurant experiences along with the other stuff going on in his life. I love one observation in this post:

The emotional subtext of the [range of] reactions stem from a couple of phenomena I've begun to understand. When an individual exposes themselves nakedly and publicly, people have a hard time not looking while not looking away. It hits them at a very visceral level. Voyeurism is titillating but I would never let myself be so exposed. Emotional confusion. Another insight...people think they know me. There is a persona that everyone we know has built up around us as a shorthand to understanding who we are and to anticipate interpersonal reactions. When a dissonance, maybe a huge dissonance, is discovered some level of discomfort (or panic) ensues. I thought I knew him. My first reaction is to say "if this offends you, turn it off." Too glib. Instead I'll explain that this is the most basic stuff of my creative life. As I process the changes, turmoil, pain, exhilaration of where I am today, I want to use it to build something, to spin straw into gold. Alchemy.

This is all very true of my blog as well - although I haven't distributed it to as many people as publicly as GC. My brother, for example, doesn't know how to react to my blog. I think it makes him uncomfortable since he wouldn't do it himself - he's too guarded for it (as was I before going down this path). I've gotten comments from others like "good for you ... but I've never do it myself". All very understandable. As I told my therapist the other day, in general, my current philosophy is to be less guarded, to let people see the true me, and see what happens. Perhaps it will all backfire but I suspect more good will come of it than bad.

As an aside, this is post #100 to my blog. Amazing how many posts I've done in a relatively short period of time (4 months) - that's almost one per day.