So here I am, building my website with the help of a designer because to do it myself would take more patience than I will ever have and is not worth the elevated agitation it would yield.

As a result of this website building and my second and third books underway, I’m forced to think about what is now called “branding” in reference to how I want to appear to the world. This is a relatively new term, and one that I’m not crazy about. For starters, it requires a level of self-scrutiny that can’t be possibly be impartial. I might think I’m hilarious, but I assure you there are people that don’t find my humor amusing and if my brand is funny then I’ve mislead them. Oh, the horror for someone that also likes to think of herself as honest.

What if I evolve? What if the cliched term “irreverence” in reference to my brand dissipates and I’m suddenly respectful of authority and play by the rules? Am I then offbrand and unmarketable as such? Do I have to re-do all my damned branding? Go around telling people to change their minds about me? Um, no thanks. I’m busy writing.

I get that advertising is an image and that some people want to buy into that image because it’s simple and our teensy human minds want to compartmentalize, so we feel like we know things, but guess what? We don’t. We don’t know much about much and least of all who a person is, based on what they want us to believe.

Maybe ye ol’ Ten Commandments were onto something. I seem to recall from my brief stint in Sunday school something about having no false idols and not coveting your neighbors shit. There were some others about not killing, stealing or cheating on your spouse, but let’s stay on topic. Social media and branding are all about idolizing and coveting, right? #GodHatesFacebook

Let’s not diminish anyone to a series of overused adjectives in order to sell them or compare ourselves to images that invoke inferiority. Let’s not present ourselves as something we’re not because dishonesty is painful and holy smokes, wouldn’t it be cool if we could all just be fallible humans instead of brands?