Real Simple

     The past week felt overwhelming.  Too many responsibilities, follow-ups, and deadlines.  I know you've been there, felt that, too.  Who hasn't?  It's not fun.
     Man, was I glad to come home from work to find this in my pile of mail:

     Real Simple Magazine.  I love simplicity.  I needed some simplicity.
     I scanned the cover.  "Holiday Entertaining Made Easy"?  We'll see about that.  Most of the time, I can't manage to find time to make dinner for myself here in quiet October, and when I do, I'm eating over the sink. You think I can do it for a bunch of people during the most hyped-up social season of the year?  Thanks for the faith in me, Real Simple.  I think you're Real Deluded, but maybe I'm missing something.  Maybe life is simpler than I thought.  That's news to me.
     I opened the magazine to a full-page, full-color advertisement.  I turned the page to another glossy ad, and another, and another, and another.  Apparently Real Simple is actually Real Interested In Selling Me Stuff.  I wouldn't have thought that rejuvenating skin care, hair products, and salad dressing would simplify my life; they sure weren't simplifying my magazine reading experience.
     I started to get annoyed. This wasn't helping my feelings of high anxiety at all.
Finally, I got a non-advertising reprieve: The Letter From The Editor page.  But wait...

     This is the photo of the editor of Real Simple.  

     Hmm.

     I don't know about you, but the only time I may have sat on stairs in a nice dress might have been in high school after being dumped by a boy at a formal dance.  I would not have been smiling.  I would have been slumped over, sprawled out and sobbing.  How is this photo realistic? Doesn't the editor of Real Simple magazine have a Simple Chair to sit in?  Maybe a divan or love seat?  She really has to resort to Simply Stairs?  And where is she?  Is she working from home?  Is she at someone else's home, doing an interview?  Please, God, if it's your house, get your guest off the stairs!  And who thought this was a photo that screams REAL SIMPLE?  There is nothing simple about this.  It is Real Silly.

     I stared at this photo and snorted.  Please.

    Of course I was not going to find simplicity in the pages of a magazine. The tougher truth, though, is that I am never going to find solutions in anything outside of myself. Being overwhelmed happens inside - it's all internal - and the only thing, the only person who can stop it, is me.

     Not easy, but simple.  Real simple.