Keeping Up With the Joneses

I was talking to someone on Slack the other day, and I did something I never thought I’d do: use the edit button.

It felt a little dirty, to be honest.

It felt dirty because it wasn’t honest. I wasn’t perfect, but I was trying to put on an air of perfection. How could anyone misspell, or forget to type, a word? Surely the recipient would be offended by my idiocy.

Years ago, I wrote about Kardashian-editing your life: only presenting the positives and self-editing the ugly. It was my most popular post, even now and was picked up by other publications.

Why do I think that is? Well it resonated. In a world of “perfection”, it’s reassuring to remember that most of it is edited.

Post your wild night out, but not your hungover face the next day.

Post your latest pesto recipe, but not the dirty kitchen afterwards.

We live in a world where we’re keeping up with the Joneses, but instead of the Joneses being the family next door, they’re hundreds and thousands of strangers on the internet. It’s kind of ironic that the show that inspired my original post is called Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

None of this is healthy. And I’m guilty of it, too.

How do we change this? Maybe start by editing the old school way, with the good old clarifying comment with an asterisk, and work ourselves up.

Personally, one of the reasons I’ve been posting so often, is because I stopped letting perfection get in the way. It used to take me hours, days to write a post, because I edited the crap out of it to make sure I was presenting the most polished me. Now, I don’t care. Publishing is a two-way door. Typo? Fix and republish. Broken link? Fix and republish. Change my mind? Delete… or better yet, keep it and show that opinions can be fluid. I’m not curing cancer here. I no longer let beauty get in the way of my substance.

I will always believe in, value, and standby, substance over beauty. In people, opinions and life.

If you do too…can we be friends?