Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls is my Hero

One of my guilty pleasures is watching movies. Morning, noon or night I love to just get away from life for a few hours and sit there with a good comedy, drama, documentary or whatever. I'm on the six-at-a-time plan on Netflix and I never fail to get a decadent rush out of taking some time out of my day to remove a dvd from its red envelope and pop it in my PS2.

Another guilty pleasure of mine is reading blogs. Not necessarily subscribing to them, I would rather just find one, read the entire thing from start to finish (or sometimes finish to start) and then move on to the next one.

My favorite kind of blog, and there are a lot of them out there, are blogs by people who weigh 300, 400, or 500 pounds and are trying to lose weight.

Does that sound kind of weird? The thing is, these are the BEST blogs. If you've EVER had issues with food, if you've been bulimic, anorexic, if you've hoarded food or binged, if you've ever had a parent or other family member suggest you might be getting fat, if you've ever been on a diet, had a job or coworkers you hated, had other people tease you or be mean to you, are bored with your life, depressed, or are in any way less than 100% normal or have issues about ANYTHING, you can probably find something to relate to in the best of these blogs. It's like the way we can relate to Woody Allen's neurosis...everyone is a little neurotic, we can laugh at him and with him because at least on some level, we are like him...we just don't show it as much.

We don't have to weigh 500 pounds, it's likely we have just as many issues...it just doesn't show as much, or maybe manifests in some other way.

I admire these (mostly) women who write these extremely personal blogs that let others out there know that they aren't the only ones who feel that way or who that happened to or who are pissed off about that (whatever "that" is). Of course they are mostly somewhat or totally anonymous, which gives it the feel of maybe finding and reading someone's personal journal on the subway (not that I would do that! Heh.) I sometimes feel like reading these blogs reveals the very essence of human nature to me, or like I'm on the verge of unlocking some secret of mankind.

That's why I like the blog of Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls. Because she ISN'T anonymous. She is like "I am Amanda Palmer, and this is who I am and what I actually think and everything about me warts and all". No anonymity. I think that's great. (And that pic up there is her, she is not 500 pounds...although if she was I'm sure she'd write about that, too.)

I'd love to write a blog like that, but I doubt it will ever happen. I already walk the line between being open and speaking the truth and doing things like risking hurting my mother's feelings or violating my bf's privacy. Still, that's my ideal...to speak with such truth that I feel like people reading my blog can really KNOW WHO I AM. Of course I am also not a celebrity like Amanda Palmer is and my life is not so interesting nor do I have a gift with words the way she does BUT I still aspire to her level of candor. Or maybe I'm just talking crazy today.