Check Here

Originally posted at www.myspace.com/ileanaburdine on Tuesday, January 29, 2008

I am a very private person which is why it's been so hard for me to write blogs. I started a blog section on my main webpage, www.ileanaburdine.com, but you can see that I wrote about 3 or 4 meh blogs and then stopped. I have begun a self imposed therapy to take chances a little more, trust people a little more and speak my mind a little more. So get ready, I'm about to go overboard and give you way too much.
As Patrick, my husband, puts it, I don't like nobody knowing my bizness. I don't park on the street when I unload groceries because I don't want people to see if I'm buying fat free organic skim milk or Doritos. I get very caught up in worrying what other people will think and I worry about the quick labels people apply.

Yes, labels can be good. They are the way that we order the world around us from an early age. You start to learn something about someone and you start checking boxes in your mind; likes Mexican food, loves to watch movies, always gets popcorn. And that's good because when you are dying for margaritas, a movie and popcorn, you know who to call. It becomes very helpful. But I start to worry that as people check more boxes, they find there are too many boxes that don't match them so I prefer it if you didn't check any boxes for or against me.

I recently found that I was outsmarting myself in hiding my secret super hero identity. When people ask what music I listen to, I don't listen to music a lot. Whoa, that is a huge box to check for a musician. Yikes. But it's the truth. I listen to public radio. I like hearing local, national an world news. I like learning how to cook things I'll never cook. I like listening to interesting little stories about random people I'll never meet but make me laugh or smile or cry or think. I like listening to people talk. Not talk radio, not yelling, just talking; speaking. It makes me calm. So we donated to KCRW and got these nifty messenger bags! I love bags, not purses; I rarely carry a purse, but bags. Especially messenger bags. So I've been toting this one daily since I got it. All my junk goes everywhere. Nice.

As I'm carrying it one day, I notice a co-worker glances at the bag right about where it's got the KCRW logo on it. Oh my gosh! She just checked the box that says 'Listens to KCRW.' And she's right! I do! Just as I'm nervous about singing my Christian songs- because people might think I'm a hard core religious right conservative- I'm just as concerned about people thinking that I'm a tree hugging granola toting liberal. Truth is, I'm lots of both. But I don't want you to KNOW that. So I start brainstorming as to how I will hide my KCRW logo while still using the really cool bag and I think, I've got it! I'll take the left over sew-on flowers that I have from when sewed those onto my guitar strap and sew them over the logo so you won't be able to see it. You'll just see my sewn on flowers.

Yes. That's it. I'll hide my hippy chick bag by sewing flowers on it. That won't give anything away.