By Maureen Sharib
I've been reading Penelope Trunk's (not her real name) Brazen Careerist (where career issues and life collide) blog for a couple months now and am amazed at the frankness and forthrightness she offers us. I read July 20's "My own marriage and the myth of the stay-at-home dad" in which she starts the riveting confession with:
"For those of you who don’t know what's going on in my marriage, please read My First Day of Marriage Counseling, and maybe you will want to leave a comment about how if you were my husband, you'd divorce me for blogging about my marriage."
"My husband, in fact, has brought up divorce for other reasons. I am not totally sure which ones, to be honest, but I think it is career related since I have a great career and his sort of stalled when he became a stay-at-home dad and then went to hell from there."
Within a day she had 62 comments, many of them affirming along with a few judgmental casts doubting what Penelope's possible motivation could be in writing about this part of her life. The reason I am writing about this here is that I realize Penelope (not her real name) is either in cahoots with a smart husband who realizes if he goes along with the ploy the two of them can make a million zillion dollars out of their "unhappiness" or this woman is truly a perceptive and amazingly willing contributor to our own "situations" in life and is keenly in tune to the misery of the masses.
Immediately I turn to Bob, my husband, and point out the opportunity. "Look, honey, we can monetize our unhappiness if you'd just let me write about how miserable we are…" I say, half-kiddingly.
"No way! See that eighth word in the first sentence of her second paragraph?" he asked. I had to count in eight words to see what he was talking about: the "D" word, as in "My husband, in fact, has brought up divorce…"
"Oh, stop," I said to him. "You know what I mean…" I trailed off as he again, and most excitedly, interrupted me.
"NO, I DON’T know what you mean. What do you want to write about our private life for? It’s gonna get you in a lot of trouble," he warned. "WITH ME."
Red flashing lights.
"How? For being REAL in what I write?" I snap back, sensing a gauntlet being thrown and taking his cue, feel myself flush. Suddenly, I could see that this was a HOT BUTTON kind of event and realized I'd better take a closer look at Penelope's responses. Doing so, I could definitely sense a gender bias in the responses - the women more affirming and the men more questioning of what/why/how of what she was doing.
In spite of what Bob (and some others say) I still believe we can all learn from this kind of extreme personal transparency. What do you think?
Maureen Sharib
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maureen at techtrak.com
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