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(Before I ramble at you, make sure you head on over to this blog post to enter all my Vlogmas giveaways if you haven't yet!)

Sometimes I struggle with what to share and what to keep back online. Mostly, I think it's ethical to share personal information, especially to people who may purchase things I've made.

I want you to know who I am and where I'm coming from. And in turn, I hope you feel comfortable consuming my books and content and courses because I've given you enough information to trust me.

Sure, I don't give you 100% of the behind-the-scenes details. But you do get a lot. I have a yoga pants decision matrix to help me choose what I share.

See, women generally have two kinds of yoga pants. There's the pair that fits nicely and looks good. They aren't see-through, and if you pair them with a hoodie, you have a fine outfit for going to Aldi to purchase a bottle of wine for $3.99.

Then, there's the pair we don't wear outside the house unless the house catches fire and that's what we're wearing when we jumped out the window. The pair I have are a little threadbare on the butt, they're mostly shapeless at this point since the elastic is so worn out, and they're generally covered in a fine layer of dog hair from couch cuddling with my favorite mutt.

You, my friends, will always get the Aldi wine yoga pants unless there's an emergency, and then you will receive the dog hair see-through pants, but only to give context to why I'm behaving a certain way or unable to show up the way you expect.

What I don't understand is the people who roll up in the dog hair see-through pants on the reg. And this isn't a judgment on them. I just don't get it. I think that maybe to some, there's a layer of emotional vulnerability to the dog hair see-through pants, and maybe it makes them feel more relevant as an artist. Or like they've earned the title.

I know I share a lot of how the proverbial sausage is made, with the stuff I do. But I do that because I always want to know what other people are up to, and watching people make stuff is my favorite. (Check out Studson Studio on YouTube if you want to be wowed by what a person can make out of trash.)

At the end of the day, we're all little broken teenagers on the inside. We're all healing from betrayals from people we thought were our friends. And we're all learning to navigate the world as adult professionals, knowing full-well that on the inside, we just want to cry while writing into our notebooks and listening to Brand New's Deja Entendu on repeat in our headphones.

I try not to take sides, but I'm human. And just like all the little broken teenagers of the world, I want to find a sense of community in the misery. I want to feel righteous because I'm surrounded by other people who are just as broken as me and angry and sad in the same directions.

But to find that community, I have to show off my dog hair see-through yoga pants. And at the end of the day, I don't want you to see those. Or, really, the underwear under said yoga pants, because that's how see-through they are.

So, to keep this metaphor going on a freight train past the point of no return, I've seen the underwear of a lot of creatives from under their yoga pants lately.

And the thing is, I didn't join their communities. I didn't want to commiserate with them. I didn't want to be their broken teenager friend.

I recoiled.

So maybe showing off our dog hair see-through yoga pants is a bad thing. Because the underwear isn't making me want to join in.

Even though Dawn Dorland commissioned Bad Art Friend to vindicate herself, it just made me mad. I think both she and Sonya Larson are writers that I would've never heard about had that piece not gone viral. And at the end of the day, while I respect literary writers for their strict adherence to a narrow definition of success, I really hate how that definition puts them in competition with one another.

(Hello. High art is the most capitalistic type of art, even though those artists tend to resent us low artists for actually making money for what we do. I'm happy to elaborate on this some day, if anyone wants to the unrelenting screeds of an unhinged woman.)

And if you're part of the writerly world of productivity, I'm sure you've heard of Sarra Cannon, and by now, seen this video. It blows my mind that this is even happening, but honestly, not that much. I think Sarra is just the victim of someone trying to show off the underwear beneath her dog hair see-through yoga pants. Because that person has really rallied her Facebook friends (not followers, because she's not making accusations on her page, just her extremely public profile) and together, they are being emotionally broken teenagers together at Sarra's expense.

(By the way, Sarra's HB90 Course is starting on December 12. I'm a huge fan of the course, and if you're trying to find ways to wrangle your time and energy so you can build your creative empire, you need to check it out. You can find out more here.)

I don't know if I have any advice here, and honestly, I'm not the best person to come to advice when it comes to stuff like this. I mean, I openly admitted that I have a yoga pants decision matrix for emotional vulnerability. This is not something that should make anyone think I'm qualified to give advice on this sort of thing.

But what I will say is this: If one person in the room can see through your yoga pants, so can everyone else. And not everyone else is deserving of that, nor do you necessarily want their support when you're in that sort of place.

Keep your yoga pants close, friends. And your dog hair see-through yoga pants closer.

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Marisa 

MarisaMohi.com

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