The Fine Line.

I started writing you something terrifically honest and human at 5.45am this morning. It was partly a thing I wanted to get off my chest, and it was partly an emotional experiment. I thought if I could make myself utterly transparent and vulnerable that would somehow be A Good Thing.

Halfway through I stopped. I realised I was being a crashing bore. You did not need to know all this stuff. I was just doing therapy in public. Oh! Look at me! Gazing at my navel! Telling my truths! It was all a load of total nonsense so I stopped.

I did feel much better though, because a scratching worry was off my chest, so thank you for that, even if you did not, in the end, have to read it. I wrote it for you and I felt released, as I always do when I put true, uncomfortable things on paper. (It was about not being good with money, and the old, lingering shame that still wafts in and out about that. It may be my last shame. I’ve dealt with all the rest, thanks to the Red Mare Self-Improvement Plan.)

Anyway, as I pressed the delete button and thought, ‘The poor Dear Readers, I can’t possibly saddle them with all that buggery bollocks,’ I realised that social media is a most delicate dance. It is, in many ways, like conversation. Conversation should be a beautiful, light, satisfying thing. It should be a true pleasure. And it moves, all the time, like a dance. I can see if I’m getting too intense with someone, or becoming too passionate, or going on too much. So then I change the subject. I’m always changing the subject. Also, they will say something back, and I’ll often double over with laughter at my own folly (I did that yesterday) and that all adds to the spice and the mix and the back and forth of it.

Here, I can’t see whether your eyes are glazing over. I try never to second-guess my Dear Reader, because who knows what you love and what enchants you, but at the same time I must have some kind of sternness. I must have some bright red lines. I must not bang on.

I want to write honest and free, but I don’t want you to lose the will to live. I must tell you real things, but I don’t want my essays to be like someone emptying a bucket over your head. I must walk that fine line all the time, between telling you about the heartbreaks, because we all have those, and giving you the jokes and the show tunes, because we all need those.

I’m so glad I didn’t publish the dull thing about money. All my instincts were screaming, ‘Stop! Stop!’ and I listened to them. I can write instead about the sun beaming through the window like Tupelo Honey (I’ve been listening to Van the Man) and one of my brilliant writers thanking me ‘because my notebook is full’ and my dreams of the north as I get ready to set off on a five hour drive. I’m going pretty much as north as you can go without falling off the end and I’ll send you photographs.

It’s a very fine line. I never really know where it is. But every time I sit down to write, I try to find it.