Honesty

It’s not just an 80’s Billy Joel hit. I wanted to come up with some legit reason I flaked on my blog yesterday, but the truth is I forgot. I got busy working on a few projects and didn’t really look up til about 2pm and then I got distracted again. I aim to be a woman of my word and I really do think of myself as an honest person, but I want to tell the occasional little white lie to smooth over the rough edges of life.

Why is being truthful so hard?  We see small untruths and much bigger ones all around us. We can start with politics which provide never-ending examples of misrepresentation, misdirection and flat-out lying. Now, Trump thinks some parts of ObamaCare are okay. Now, he’s keeping an open mind about Climate Change. I’m personally pleased that the his harsh campaign rhetoric is being moderated by the cold reality of facts and the complexity of policy. But at the same time, I’m mystified. Have we reached a point in our country where we want and almost require politicians to lie to us to get elected?  Seems like we demand such simple answers to such complex problems that we basically force them to lie.   Shame on us.

Closer to home, I kept telling myself yesterday that I was going to take a break from work and go for a quick walk.  The downside of working from home is I get tunnel visioned and go for hours without even standing up.  But I looked outside and it was kinda rainy and cold and, well, yucky.  So I went back and forth all afternoon.  The truth is I didn’t feel like walking. And I would have saved myself all those mental gymnastics if I’d just confessed to that. Do it or don’t do it. But don’t lie about it.  Especially not to myself.

I am really am trying not to lie, even the small ones, to others. Christmas is a great time to practice this. We all get lots of invitations to do things and some of them we don’t want to do.  I’ve finally come to grips with the fact that I hate the Nutcracker, for example. So I no longer need to sit through that creepy ballet or make some lame excuse to avoid it.  I simply decline the invitation and move on. It’s so much cleaner.  This is also a good time to practice editing commitments and keeping the ones I make.  I try to be where I say I will be when I say I’ll be there. No flaking out because I’m tired or its dark (that happens, as we all know).  These are little acts of truth-telling but they help keep me on the straight and narrow.

This topic also gives me a chance to say that I won’t be posting a blog daily. I enjoy writing and love getting into the good habit of sharing my thoughts with you first thing every morning.  The beauty of technology is that once I write a blog, I can edit and post it from my computer, my phone, on the train, etc. It’s awesome.  But if I don’t get a chance to write something good, I don’t want to feel obligated, especially if I have nothing to say (rare, I know, but still). So my promise is to keep blogging when I find something interesting, inspiring or noteworthy to share.  As I thought about this last night, I came up with a list of five blog topics so you won’t be getting rid of me anytime soon.  I’ll continue to share them on LinkedIn and Facebook, and you can also get each new post emailed to you by signing up below.  I hope you’ll keep reading, commenting, liking and sharing the BooneDoggler!!  Many thanks.