The Parable of the Skunk

A few weeks ago, after sharing the news of my new calling with my internet-savvy sister, Emily, she forwarded a few links to blogs that contained Young Women ideas.  It was a helpful gesture, of course, and those blogs do, indeed, contain many fun and wonderful looking activities.

They also completely paralyzed me with their freakishly perfect authors.   I've been blogging for four and a half years now, and I'm well aware of the concept of spin.  Blog material tends to rely heavily on the good stuff going on and for good reason too!  It's a nice counter balance to all the gloom and doom the media presents as the reality of life.   But when you don't know a person, and they have dizzying talents displayed on their blog,  it's easy to fall victim to the they-are-better-than-me comparison.

This very thing happened to me and I just haven't felt up to casting my not quite as spectacular pearls before blogland.  It seems to me that blogs have transitioned from their humble beginnings of social voyeurism to springboards of talent discovery.  The world is filled with unbelievably talented people and I've watched people with a eye for photography launch their photography careers through their blogs.  People who bake or cook discover there is an audience for their methods and recipes.  The list goes on and on.  Jewelry design.  Interior decorating.  Clip-Art.  Scrapbooking.  Quilting.  Knitting.  Furniture making.  Etc., Etc., Etc.   Many have multiple talents such as this Young Women's idea blog whose author not only shared her ideas for successful programs and activities but was also an amazing photographer (with her own watermark design to identify each photo as hers), dessert designer, visiting teaching hand-out maker, Halloween craft idea supplier, and cleaner extraordinaire.

It's not like I feel like I'm talent-less.  I have talents.  I can sing.  I'm pretty good with a book in my hands.  I'm an excellent floater.  But I can't present a tutorial filled with professional how-to sequential photos, or open an etsy shop with any of them (although if anyone can figure out how I can turn my extreme buoyancy into cash, I'm all ears) and that seems to be the point of writing a blog these days.

While driving around in my I'm-not-worthy-to-blog state last week, I frequently drove past a stinky road-killed skunk.  There are lots and lots of skunks in my area and they make the worst roadkill.  It's not just the usual gore and guts to gross me out but the mile before and after of stench that I have to endure for at least a week  At one point, I thought, "Even though it is stinky and less obvious with its purpose, a skunk must serve an essential role in the circle of life."  And feeling a certain kinship with an animal possessing what I hypothesized were less glamorous talents, but talents nonetheless, I set off to discover what those talents were.

Turns out, a skunk is pretty much just a stinky, rabies carrying, food scavenging rodent.  There isn't much that it does to endear it to the rest of mankind.  It does eat black widow spiders, scorpions and other even less desirable rodents, but that's about all it has lined up in its pros column.

The surprising twist to the parable is that my discovery about the skunk did lift me out of my blogging funk.  Because I am not a skunk.  I am a human being and considerably more talented.  I don't carry rabies.  I do not possess malodorous anal glands.  And while I many not reduce the black widow or scorpion population by eating them, I can certainly buy something or pay someone to kill them.

Plus....I can float.  Really, really well.