I've got a secret...lots of them...

I haven’t dated a lot of women in my life. I say it is because I am picky, I have standards, and I am a relationship kind of guy. These are all true, don’t get me wrong, but the lack of leading ladies in my life has more to do with my social interaction techniques and my personality. It takes me a while to warm to people and by then, most the women I meet, end up being friends or end up dating one of my friends. This is sometimes compounded by the fact that my dry sense of humor and sarcasm are things which many people do not understand and do not take lightly.

But, my ability to find and hold a mate is not the point of this post. The point that I am getting at is that with every girl/woman I have dated, I have taken something away from that relationship that has enhanced my life. For example, the longest relationship I had gave me many gifts during and after it ended that affected my life. I learned a great deal about what some woman go through to try to enhance their outer beauty. Manicures, pedicures, waxing, hair coloring, make-up, clothes, and even underwear were all areas of study that were augmented by dating this girl. I now know more than I probably should about highlights and lowlights, but this makes me a better rounded person, so I tell myself. My first serious girlfriend in high school was Baptist. She was almost oppressively Baptist, but I admired her for her beliefs…until she tried, recklessly at times, to convert me. These religious clashes pushed me to learn more about my own faith, Catholicism. I dare say she’s the reason I became a youth minister. The last girl I dated was active and an environmentalist. No, I didn’t become a tree hugger, but instead proudly drove my truck several times the short block over to her house instead of walking. But she got me interested in kayaking and my brother took it further to kayak fishing, which I now look forward to doing more than anything. She also introduced me to something that has become a guilty pleasure for me. PostSecret.

PostSecret is an ongoing community mail art project, created by Frank Warren, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on a homemade postcard. Select secrets are then posted on the PostSecret website, or used for PostSecret's books or museum exhibits. The website where these secrets are posted is like a blog once a week. Every Sunday I get a new batch of twenty to twenty-five postcards on the web to read and look at. These are not just plan postcards either. The people who send these in often decorate them with stunning and ingenious art work. If you just got the pictures from the cards themselves without the text you might be convinced it is a modern art website. But, you get the text. From the funny, to the embarrassing, to the depressing, and any range between, these people put what is their biggest secret on a postcard and send it to Frank to have it posted on a webpage. It is a whole culture. Frank takes the secrets and organizes them into categories that he has made into books. I have the latest book on my coffee table right now. PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God is a journey through some of the most horrific and most triumphant times in people’s lives condensed to a few words and put on a postcard. Instead of sending in their secrets, many people take their postcards to a bookstore and discreetly hide them between the pages of a PostSecret book. This spin-off activity means that the eventual purchaser of the book gets an unexpected secret to keep. Warren has stated that he includes a secret of his own in each of the PostSecret books. His "secret" is not anonymous like most; Warren signs his. PostSecret has collected and displayed upwards of 2,500 original pieces of art from people across the United States and around the world between its founding on January 1, 2005 and 2007.

The simple concept of the project was that completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they had never previously revealed. No restrictions are made on the content of the secret; only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before. Entries range from admissions of sexual misconduct and criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes and dreams. The secrets are both empowering to the author and to those who read it. The postcards are inspirational to those who read them, have healing powers for those who write them, give hope to people who identify with a stranger's secret, and create an anonymous community of acceptance. This kind of reaction and community is what brings me back to the site each week to read the posts. I have even contemplated what secret, if any, I would consider sending in. There are so many things that torture my subconscious on a daily basis, but I don’t think that sending a postcard to PostSecret would soothe that pain.

The fun thing about it is that you feel like it is your own little inside thing. Not very many people talk about PostSecret. You don’t see them on the news or have to ignore their blinking banner ads when you go to another website. It has that underground, rebellious feel that makes you want to put a dark coat and shades on when you read it. So why am I sharing this on my blog? Because I have fewer readers than most, last time I checked there were maybe two of you, and those two of you may or may not find PostSecret interesting. The point is, if you do check it out, it may change your life just slightly and I will have passed on this gift I got from the crazy environmental scientist on to you. Thus, the world keeps turning.

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/