Duality

When I was a kid I was obsessed with the story of Sybil. Well I was obsessed with a lot of things. Peter Benchley’s “Jaws”. Farting competitions aka “Blue Angels”. Beagles. The Jonestown Massacre. Frosted pink lipstick. The Sid and Nancy story. Garish blue eyeshadow. Hawaiian shirts. Big League Chew.

But back to Sybil. I always found it fascinating that one woman could house many fragmented personalities. I’ve always felt exhausted enough trying to cultivate and maintain one.

I needed to break into a fragmented self when I decided to blog. I’m a gal with diverse interests and when I wrote about Buddhism on my first blog, my non-Buddhist friends were quizzical about what the honk I was talking about and Buddhist readers would wonder why I was cluttering up this pristine pixelated Buddhafield with raucous punk rock videos and photos of my dogs.

I needed to split so I became one of those rarities with 2 separate digital personalities. Two Twitter accounts. Two blogs (I went up to managing 5 blogs and now scaled back to only 1). One Facebook account for only my bestest of friends and friendliest of enemies. I do have to admit that some mixing of the ecosystem occurs in these areas. Sometimes the Buddhist peanut butter gets mixed in with the non-Buddhist chocolate. The sweet pithy sayings of Pema, Ponlop Rinpoche and <insert Buddhist teacher, author or spiritual/philosophical notable here> sometimes make it into the ecosystem where they’re allowed to play with my rants on my absolute dislike for the ruling party in Canada, my nerding out over the latest video games, books, films or punk rock songs that have caught my fancy. There are a lot of pug photos too. Oh yes. The pug photos.

Here on this blog, even after many years, I think I’m still finding my voice. Much like my Buddhist practice where each day, I discover something new. In this precious area, I never want to come across as a know it all. Someone who has discovered even a glimpse of an enlightened state. Someone who is better than you. Yet sometimes I’m too self-effacing and too down on myself. I’m baring myself beyond what I do on Facebook or on Twitter because I feel like you come here for some reason or another.

That’s good enough for me to keep on adding these words to this screenspace.

As I wrote that, I heard the Doogie Howser themesong.