POPular

You think you'll leave it behind when you graduate from high school.


You think it won't matter once you are happily married.


You believe that you'll be able to convince your children to be above it all.


But it's a bunch of lies.


It matters. It always matters. The question is not if it matters, the only question is if you decide that you care about it or not.


Maybe the cheerleaders are no longer making you feel frumpy and tragic. But the number of Facebook "friends" will let you know a bit of your popular value. Is nobody liking your status? Nobody comments? That's so sad. If they had a thumbs down option, I'd be giving you one right now.


Do you tweet on twitter? Because the amount of followers you have should at least double the amount of people you follow. The more valuable your popularity, the smaller the percentage of the people you follow to those who follow you. Oh, and hopefully people retweet your tweets. Otherwise, just let it go.


Are you on Pinterest? Does anyone repin your pins or follow your boards? If it didn't matter, they wouldn't put your activity and # of followers so prominently on the left-hand side of the page. It matters, pinners. But don't pin too much or you get ridiculous and we all will stop following you.


Do you have a blog? Those are so old school. Unless you are a cute 20-something that posts pretty pictures. You can quadruple (x10) your readership within two months of starting your blog and get people to sponsor your space of internet. And then you should totally write a post about how those stupid other bloggers can get more people to read their blog and make money/get free stuff like you do.


Get on etsy, make a video and put it on youtube, take nifty photos on your iphone and post them to instagram; but not if nobody is going to see them and buy stuff from you.


Maybe it's just me, but the pressure to be popular seems more suffocating now than it did in high school. And I was sure it wasn't going to get any worse. Now it's global. Transglobal international universal. 


I've been to the library before. I have seen how there are HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of books that I've never heard about before. Those authors were all stoked to be published. They were going to be popular. 


Then I tell my kids this line about how it doesn't matter if they are loved/revered/popular. What really matters is that they are good human beings and kind to those around them. Which I wholeheartedly believe. Whole. Hearted. Ly. But when I see their friends all hanging out together knowing that my child was not called, I break a little. It stings a bit. More than I remember it stinging when it was me who wasn't called.


So, I take down my followers gadget on the blog, I stop tweeting, I pin for me alone, I facebook only when I want to, I write posts like this that are guaranteed to make people more weary of me (but truer to myself), I write the book that I want to write and not the one that I think will be most popular.


I make a better dinner. I hug that left out child one extra time. I try to think beyond myself (and then act).

I go outside.

"Do not forget no matter how much you may give in money, no matter how you may desire the things of this world to make yourselves happy, your happiness will be in proportion to your charity and to your kindness and to your love of those with whom you associate here on earth." ~George Albert Smith

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