impression management

Something very strange happened to me yesterday.

302 people visited my little blog. Yes, you read that right. 302 people.

That’s quite a bit more than the typical 3. And I’m not a numbers person when it comes to blogging. For reals.

One of my professors from college, Dr. Weatherly, linked my “Bible College Pet Peeves” post to his Facebook page. And seeing as how he has 2,207 friends to date, and people respect his opinion because he’s uber-smart, some of them ventured over to little-ole-Anne’s blog. Also, understand, I wrote “Bible College Pet Peeves” coming from a conversation with a Bible College Graduate, that now teaches Bible for a living, and never attended Bible class. So you get the irony.

I was casually changing my settings when I noticed the bar at the top said “147 visitors in the past hour.” At first I thought, “Something is wrong with my settings,” then I clicked on the Facebook link and saw the streamline of “likes” and comments. AHHH! What!? I frantically scrolled through my past posts, realizing the one RIGHT BELOW it is a photo of myself with incredibly greasy hair, also disclosing details about my lack of personal hygiene. On second thought, maybe that was not the most impression-management-savvy post I’ve ever written. And because my mom, a few friends from other states, and my best friend are the only ones to read my blog (I know, I’ve checked), that didn’t matter 2 days ago. But yesterday, probably 100 people saw that photo. And all my other personal biz.

The pastor in me says, “It’s good to be transparent and open with people about your everyday life.”
The human in me says, “OMG!!!!!!!!!!! I JUST WRITE FOR MY MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

But, guess what? No one blasted me (too hard). And everyone has already forgotten about it. I guess it was a good dose of humility that really, my life doesn’t matter that much, and even if 100 people saw the photo of my greasy hair… they were sitting at home with the same style. So there.