Podcasts And Blogs And The Issues They Are Causing Me

OK this is a weird post, but there a couple of things on my mind.  One is (and I think I've brought this up on my blog before) is I have such a love/hate relationship with blogs in general.  I really love keeping in contact with friends and family through blogs, but I feel social media portrays such a "shiny" (oh now that word is just reminding me of the third Hunger Games book. . . .), plastic version of our life that it's hard to take sometime.  As an example, while I was super bored on our three hour drive home from West Point on Friday, I was looking through my instagram photos I had shared on facebook over the past couple of years.  When I was done looking at them I thought, "gosh I wish my life was more like Jenny Nyholm's!"  The pictures seemed to portray a life that isn't entirely true to mine.  A life where we are all smiles all the time, where I'm not stressing over the many blond brownies I just ate (true story for me today!) and how those brownies are not helping me lose the few pounds I've gained this year (OK I guess I have this on my mind today too).  A life where I'm not sad, or worried, or lonely, or any of the normal, human feelings I feel along with the wonderful gratitude, joy, and excitement I feel.

So, cut to a post of a Mormon fashion blogger I occasionally read.  Done by a girl that lives here in Winchester (daybookblog.com).  I've talked with Sydney a couple of times at stake YW functions, but as she is not in my ward I really don't know her, and I have to admit that her blog at times has bugged me (as I'm sure mine does to the people that don't know my "warts and all" parts of my life.  Her blog seems to portray Winchester as this perfectly wonderful, beautiful town to live in when I know that (though I absolutely love where we live) it isn't perfect.  There are  ugly Walmart parking lots and other general eye sores here just as in most cities across this country.  So anyway, I was really pleasantly surprised when I read this post and saw another person's attempt at keeping it all real in a pretty unreal medium.  I was left thinking I've been too hard on her blog :)

So the other kind of unrelated thing on my mind is the horribleness of finding out what my favorite podcasters look like.  Because I listen to a few favorite NPR podcasts on a regular basis, I start to create very specific faces attatched to the voices that I hear so much.  At some point I just assume that is truly what they look like.  My mental images have been blown apart as I have (for different reasons) found out what some them actually look like.

One of the most shocking image busters was Diane Rehm! I've been listening to her off and on since I was pregnant with Jackson (actually sometimes hearing her theme song makes me momentarily feel the morning sickness I had with him haha), and let me tell you I was not picturing that glamour queen you see in the picture (haha OK glamour queen might be a bit strong).  More disappointingly though are the ones that I pictured more glamorous and then found them to be  . . . well pretty normal and plain (I know this sounds so horrible).  I guess the main problem with the whole thing is that I was so comfortable with my mental images and it just doesn't feel good to have to change them.