There’s something to be said for grunge.

My life is caught somewhere between a chaotic mess and a manicured ideal. On one side I’m trying to reach that movie-ideal life, filled with manicured lawns, accented living rooms and bathrooms with little baskets of shells on the toilet. On the other I avoid shaving whenever possible, prefer denim and fleece to khaki’s and polo, and seem to have a disability regarding the proper placement of dirty laundry. Even so I want to make it look like my life is far more Disney than Disorganized, and as a result I feel like I’m maintaining a carefully constructed façade.

This is starting to annoy me.

I like honesty, I like plain talk. It gives me a good sense of where I stand and how I can relate to something, yet these days it seems that I can’t find this honesty anywhere anymore. Not in politics, not in the news, not even in myself. Everything has a spin, everything has a marketing message, and everything is trying to convince me in some way to want something I don’t, to be something I’m not, to put forward someone who only exists in my imagination.