My Blog Ate My Career

By LINDA KEENAN

If this were Facebook, my status update might read this way: "Linda is . . . terrified that her reckless blogging and social networking has rendered her utterly, irrevocably unemployable." In another life, I was a CNN head writer and senior producer. These days, Google my name, and in a few clickety clicks, you'll find a sorry list of intimate grotesqueries I've catalogued about myself for all the world to read.

I would like to work again full time. And if I were applying to be, say, Flava Flav's girlfriend or an unhinged Real Housewife on Bravo, I might well prove qualified. But would I blame a proper boss in this brutal job market for ignoring me because of my online shenanigans? No. The fact is: I wouldn't hire me either. Further, I'm not sure I'd let me in the PTA, or even near my kid. An employer typically looks for someone trustworthy, helpful, courteous. My attributes, etched forever in the digital record, read like a perversion of the Boy Scout Law.

Disloyal I compared some unnamed news anchors I had worked for to my toddler -- discussing their flatulence, their bald spots, their screaming red-faced tantrums -- and declared my toddler more mature.

Sexist I wrote that Sarah Palin's recipe for Middle East peace was Tater Tot Casserole.

Petty I resolved this New Year to fire 10 Facebook friends for non-responsiveness.

Sanctimonious I decided to get my next Pap smear done by a Sikh doctor, in a purely political act, after hearing that other patients were unjustly scared of him and his turban.

Histrionic I accused my husband of having spiritual intercourse with his beloved snow blower.

Disrespectful I surmised that the only thing Hillary Clinton and Rocky Balboa might have in common is that they can both break thumbs.

Unneighborly I said a nearby home with wildly overgrown grass needed what I called a "Lawnzilian," the landscape version of the scorched-earth Brazilian bikini wax.

Insensitive After watching an aging, ailing cigarette addict on YouTube, I declared that while I had done some things I wasn't proud of, smoking through a trach hole wasn't one of them.

Unstable I declared myself an "out and proud suburban pill popper" and joked about helping myself to an "extra slice of Klonopin" for dessert one very bad night.

Lazy/Pathetic I admitted to lolling around, moonily watching YouTube clips of Ice Castles, Yentl, and the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice. Pugilistic/Hyperbolic I accused Al Gore of killing Christmas, for helping to turn my son into a tiny eco-terror. My boy kept shutting off our tree, wagging a little finger at me about wasting power.

Polyamorous I said I would gladly apply to be Bill Paxton's fourth wife on the polygamist soap opera Big Love. I declared my irrepressible longing for comedian Russell Brand, actors Jon Hamm and Hugh Laurie, and legal whiz Jeffrey Toobin. (I know, go figure. The heart wants what it wants.) I said I wanted to have a million of 1982 Bono's babies. (2009 Bono, not so much.) I also said that various women I admired were turning me gay, which proved me to be both polyamorous and cliche.

Just Plain Mean I wrote a satire piece about Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke failing to stimulate the economy and resorting to Cialis.

Now, if I were in my 20s, this might all be filed under the things the "yoots" do these days in the digital era. But I'm old enough to remember analog, Atari, Bill Clinton. A boss has every right to judge me by what I've put out there. So does my son. I can see him, a decade from now, reading this stuff, with that defeated look that you see sometimes on Jerry Springer when kids try to get their dissolute mothers to stop acting like overstuffed teenage tarts. And I can hear him say, "For God's sake, Mom, stop talking about your cervix, step away from that computer, take those horrifying pictures down, grow the hell up, and get a job."

If only I could.

Linda Keenan writes for The Huffington Post and Burbia.com. She lives in Wellesley and invites you to friend her on Facebook. E-mail her at lindaerinkeenan@yahoo.com.

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