BS

Sometimes I surprise myself with how totally capable I am at BSing. Seriously. I write articles as a little sideline job. It doesn’t make much and that doesn’t really bug me because I tally it up as being pure profit because 1. I don’t have to buy any special clothes for the job, I could do it in my pjs and hair curlers if I really wanted to (Yeah, I said hair curlers, I am totally in to the whole 50′s housewife thing. That was the 50′s when they did that right?), 2. We don’t have to own a second car for it and 3. I don’t have to pay for childcare because I am home and can do it during nap time or after the boys go to bed. Therefore it is pretty much the perfect job. The not so perfect parts about it is that it doesn’t pay really well and I have to write a lot of articles about things that I am not so interested in. I also have to write articles about products that I don’t use or procedures I think are dumb. Things like that. What I have found out though is that I can write about these things in a totally convincing tone like I actually care about what I am writing about. How do I know this? Because people actually accept my work. I guess that is a good thing. It’s a good thing because I get to keep the job. As I was putting the finishing touches on my latest article, which I happened to enjoy writing because it was actually about something that I care about and the person who ordered the article actually gave some leeway for artistic interpretation, so not a completely brain-dead type of job. Anyway, as I was finishing this article I had to chuckle to myself because I felt so full of BS. There are times in life when it just seems like the situation calls for some measure of BS. And I don’t mean being fake. I mean just plain (And this is where the whole equating the article writing to what I am about to talk about ends) “fake it ’til you make it” jazz. There have been so many times in my life where I did not want to talk to one more person or play one more song or drive our 1970′s bluebird converted house bus to one more place with new people and I just plain had to BS my way through it and through that I ended up not only tolerating life but “livin’ it large” to quote a young man we met at the beginning of our travels. I get tired of seeing people call it quits just because they don’t feel it any more. I have seen so many people quit things just because they were difficult. Marriages, jobs, ministries, organizations, family, eating healthy, exercise, breastfeeding and sometimes even life. Now I know you might thinking “you can’t BS your way out of those kinds of situations!” and you are right. I can’t just BS my way out of things. First I have to face the facts. I have to call things what they are. I have to realize that the articles are not something I can really believe in but that they are a real way that I can bring a little extra in to our little family that doesn’t have much (Haha, the example is back in full force and with renewed applicability!). Then I have to take my feelings about those things, whatever they might be and find a way to give them expression. And then I BS. I fake it. Really. I act as if. I act until my emotions catch up. Because they will. The key is honest evaluation. Calling things as they are. No BS.