Tag: baileydailey

Two-Faced is Too Much

Bailey GunnLeave a comment

Is it considered mature to be nice to someone you don’t like or is it two-faced and disingenuous?

I would really like my readers to weigh in on this issue in the comments, but of course, you’re going to hear my perspective first. And maybe it will surprise you.

If you grew up female, you absolutely, positively knew one person in your school who “acted nice” in front of someone but tore them to pieces behind their back. And not to discriminate, because if you are a guy, you probably experienced this too. The difference is that you punched that guy in the face and got over it. Us girls, well. I like to say that we’re a bit more creative about our revenge.

Anyway, the person who would raise you up to your face and raze you to the ground in front of other people was generally not considered to be a trustworthy or kindly individual by others’ evaluations. And, undoubtedly, if you were this person, you were on a fast track to not having any friends very quickly if anyone found out about your, shall we say, double dipping. To put it simply, you were two-faced. And to put it in even simpler terms, that’s not cool.

But in adulthood, I think being two-faced is a way of life and a survival technique. And actually, I think it is a sign of maturity. Okay, being open and friendly to someone and then catty and jealous behind their back is not very mature. But I think being nice to someone that you don’t really care for is.

I mean, it happens all the time. The barista at Starbucks could be rude, a co-worker may rub you the wrong way, a family member that you don’t like could be coming over for dinner. Does it really make you less of a person for not flat-out telling them what a horrible person you think they are? Why does no one get points for courtesy anymore? Did “keeping the peace” die out with the Vietnam War?

And okay. I can see the other side, too. Life is too short to be fake to someone. You should be able to be yourself without having to conform to other people’s expectations. And who knows? Maybe your honesty will motivate someone to change their ways.

I mean, it sort of comes down to what you want people to say at your funeral. Oh, she was really, really nice. Like, that’s it? You were nice? No! You want them to say, Well, she could be a total b*tch sometimes, but she said what was on her mind, and she accomplished things. She owned the space that she had been given on this earth.

So, I don’t have an answer to my initial question, and I don’t know what the best policy is. All I know is that we’re faced with the decision to hide our feelings or be honest all of the time. I just feel that we should be able to express ourselves without having to be downright mean and without wearing a mask.

But what are your thoughts?

Lactose Intolerant Living

Bailey Gunn1 Comment

I’ve been sort of living a lie.

I can’t believe I didn’t know that “lactose intolerant” doesn’t normally have a hyphen in it…

Oh, and I’d like to also confess that I am a lactose intolerant individual, and I have been eating cheese  for about, oh say… my entire life.

Until recently. When my body decided that I should cut out the shenanigans and stop eating cheese forever.

I know, I know. How first world problem can you get? Oh woe is me, I can’t eat pizza. Oh, what a world, what a world, I can never eat ice cream in the summertime. I’ll just have to settle for water ice.

But really, I’m used to it. I ate cheese all my life because I wanted to. It was a lifestyle choice. My side effects weren’t fun, but I could live with them. I’d rather stay mum on what they are, but I can tell you this: they are a far cry from the side effects I had when I was younger.

Once, (I say once because when this happens, you don’t do it again) my dear dad gave me a piece of cheese. A morsel, really. When I was just a wee babe, you see. He could literally see my mother pulling out of the driveway. He was holding me in his arms and then…

BLARRHGHGGHHGGHGHG.

I threw up all over him. No problem, he thought. I’ll just put on another shirt. Except I kept throwing up. And barfing. And retching. And yakking. Until he decided that it was worthless to do all that laundry. So, he stopped putting new shirts on. He just allowed me to throw up on his chest for a solid couple of hours. (Yeah, that’s hardcore parenting.)

So, as long as I’m not projectile vomiting, I thought, what’s the harm in a little pizza once in awhile? And yes, I’d love some extra parm on my three-cheese tortellini. Sure, why not? We can grab some fro-yo.

Until recently. I’ve already lost my gallbladder at this point, which I had previously blamed on an overdose of Nutella, but now I am starting to wonder: Have I been killing myself softly with blue cheese my whole life?

In other words, the take-away from my life’s journey as a lactose intolerant American… and by the way, you think you’re special because you can digest cheese? You’re really just a mutant. Humans aren’t supposed to eat dairy so get out of my face with your Got Milk? ads and your delicious cheeseburgers because if I start, I won’t be able to stop… Ahem…

So, the take-away from my life’s journey as a lactose intolerant American: enough is sometimes really enough. You will come to a point in your life that your habits, or the habits of others, are just going to be too much for you to take, and you’ll make a change. I just hope it’s not too late for one of your organs, like it was for mine.

The point is, you can apply that advice to any area in your life. (For me, I applied it to food, which tells you something about me…) There are going to be times that you will need to push through the hard stuff to get to the gooey center of life. But, there will be times that you will reach your limit. And I’m here to tell you that it’s okay to say, “I can’t do this anymore.” Because I don’t care how delicious cheese is (or how delicious your annoying partner is, or how delicious that job is that sucks your soul but pays you good money), sometimes you just have to say no because it will help you in the long run.

But you have to promise, next time you have a slice of pizza, have one for me. I’ll be over here with my rice milk (which is actually kind of amazing) and some goat milk (which is a bit goaty, but also very good.)

You shouldn’t stop yourself from doing (or eating) what you love, just have the courage to know when you need to mooove your life in a different direction. (Oh, c’mon. Like you didn’t see that coming…)

This Blog and Other Lies I Tell Myself

Bailey GunnLeave a comment

I feel a little like Beyonce. I’m dropping a blogpost after months of silence. And I haven’t told anyone.

In case you were looking for me:
I stopped writing because I was looking for me, too. I hoped that the new year would provide me with some insight about where to take my writing next. People kept telling me I needed to do something with my blog. That I needed to dig a hole and find my niche. That I needed to be an expert in something for people to expect my blog every day. So, I drafted a few ideas. I started to prepare myself for OpEd Tuesdays and Poetry Wednesdays, and to essentially deliver a product that people could swallow without chewing. But I never got far enough to actually start posting with my new format in mind. Maybe something in a deep cranial fold of logic or the stained glass transparency of my heart knew I would never be able to fully commit to a project that did not feel organic or alive to me. Or maybe I was lazy. Probably, I was lazy.

Along the way, I found that life has a way of carving you a tunnel where there was not a path before, and the fact that there is an entire world outside of that tunnel is not enough to convince you that the tunnel is worth leaving. Well, that, and I got a job (that I love) that I needed to get acclimated to before I could continue writing. But now I’m here. And hopefully, you are, too.

In case you were not looking for me:
If you are new here, welcome. Please pretend as if I have been a diligent blogger this entire time and that I have been dedicated to the pursuit of savory word choice and hilarious musings. I’m sure we will get along just fine if you can play pretend as well as I can.

The Pale White Lies
But in reality, this blog was a gigantic lie that I used to tell myself. In case you didn’t know, this blog is updated every day (except on the weekends), and I do not usually premeditate my topics. I generally sit down to write in the twilight of my day and slip into my writing like the sun sinks behind the horizon. Yet, recently, I would watch dusk turn into dawn without so much as a turn of phrase to show for it.

For some time, I researched other blogs and platforms to get a sense of what I would want for BaileyDailey in the future. I called this progress, and finally, I called my own bluff. I lived painfully with the lie that, yes, oh yes, today was the day, only to pull the covers on my bed up to my chin at its close and chide myself for another wasted day. I decided, very unceremoniously, that I was not good enough to be a writer, and I drowned any notion of writing. But after a month or so without writing, all I wanted to do was throw myself overboard.

Writing, if it is a part of your life in terms of habit or talent, is not a tumor to be separated from flesh and precious organ. It is more of an urge that is as familiar as a headache or a hunger pang. It presses in until you can let it out. And try telling your shoulders to fall to their normal height or your mind to mind the speed limit as it goes racing and tumbling down every turn in a piece or prose or poetry, waiting to be cradled and cast out by a line or chapter break. And try telling yourself that you can read something without imagining how you would craft that line or imagine that character’s faults for yourself. And try telling yourself that reading other people’s works, while not creating your own, will satiate you for the rest of your life.

And words, words, words. They line my soul and march through me and they stay unyielding in their pregnant forms so turgid with meaning and incorrect use but also flexibility in a way no one has ever caressed them before and I’ve lost all control. of. punctuation. There.

And these are the lies I would tell myself. That I was not good enough, and that I shouldn’t be writing, and that I didn’t have enough passion to continue.

But I told a bigger lie. I told myself that I could live without writing. And now that I am back to blogging, it’s not that I will start to tell the truth. It’s never been about that. It’s always been about spinning gold threads in reality and churning it with half-truths, lies, and perception. (And if you don’t think that perception should be in that grouping, then you must come back tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.)

And with that, BaileyDailey is back.

And with that, so am I.