I’ve received the comments, the emails…..the carrier pigieons’ messages with the smidges of bird doodie on the corners .
Why am I not blogging as much, you ask.
Well, kids for starters, I don’t love blogging like I used to. It takes a great amount of time and neediness to keep a good, compelling blog good and compelling and current. I am either fresh out of the desire or just plain too lazy to make the effort. The spirit is gone. So is the need for a “they like me…they really like me” pay off. The reward now, is no longer needing the reward.
You see, when I started this effort in mid 2007, I was a bankrupt soul. Broke, sad, lonely, emotionally corrupt , needy, terribly insecure. I was very angry, bitter and so goddamn vulnerable.
I latched on to the blogosphere and liked it for a while. It filled several voids, especially at a time was I was unemployed, had no where to go and no clue as to where to find it. But I did something I normally don’t do…I joined something. Or rather, I aligned myself with a faction from the seedy, squirrely, nerdy blog underworld, which distinguished itself with with misplaced narcissism and daily pseudo-intellectual semantic battles with rival blogs or those that include different ideologies. Different is another word for wrong with these people.
Picture if you will, a gangly pack of socially awkward, knit-trousered, pocket-protected four eyes, vying for readership, links back to their sites and the attention of some nebulous female blogger who with the help of a 40 year old thesaurus, uses logorrhea to seduce to the word- starved masses. Word play is foreplay to these folks. Use “ennui” correctly in a sentence and you’ve got three male bloggers, two women and one as of yet gender unknown, all vying for your undying love, And uh….by the way—the photo used in the profile belonging to that ’hot blogger of the month” who’s claim to fame is growing armpit hair in support for non unionized garment workers in Latvia, well that pic is from 64 pounds and 27 years earlier. Call me Sherlock, but the Flock of Seagulls haircut was something of a clue.
I was once one of the blogging ambitious. Writing about things I pretended to know about. Claiming I LOVE Puccini and Verdi, all the while thinking this was actually the name of a new lunch combo at ‘The Olive Garden”. There is incredible pretentiousness among bloggers. I was just as bad. I was just guilty.
Many bloggers think what they have to say should extend beyond print. So, they start podcasts. I abhor these things. THINK: Do it yourself Pirate radio stations on your computer with no edge, just ego. I hated listening to them and I hated being on them. I agreed to panel on a few and always pretended smack dab in the middle of my segment, that my line dropped. I’d just hang up and never explain what happened. And after a while of themselves their own explanations—- the damn dirty phone or spotty Texas cell service —reasons, they finally figured I wasn’t interested. I was never asked to return as a guest, either.
Yeah…..
This blog brought me some joy, it’s brought me a lot of misery. I thought having it and maintaining it and playing the blogging game with others would embolden me, make me stronger. Nah….it just proved how porous and vulnerable my resolve actually was. And sometimes, vulnerability isn’t such a bad thing. But in battle, its everything.
Iv’e cut back on my Facebooking time, too not appearing there for months at a time. I got tired of hearing about everyone else’s perfect children and wonderful spouses, and perfect trips to exotic ports of call, and new homes and new haircuts and latest photos of these people and their uber fabulous lives that really don’t exist beyond the borders of the computer screen in front of them. I mean hey if you are happy, right on, but can you also keep some of it to yourselves????
I sound bitter, right? I’m not. Everyone should have a chance to sample public adulation, but like everything else, that too eventually gets old. And right now this blogger feels her age, this blogs looks its age. We’re tired. So please note that. I appreciate your inquiries, but I’m just following the government’s lead and shutting down, slowly, surely and eventually, completely. Georgie H. sang it best.
I’m not saying goodbye completely. I’ll continue to write, just even less. Soon I will, as I have for the past two years, produce those weekly signature recaps of American Horror Story which sees Season Three premiering on FX this week. I will from time to time, continue to use this forum to admit what others wont admit. That Molly Ringwald’s prom dress from the movie, “Pretty In Pink” was atrocious….that Tina Fey’s once very bright and shiny apple has lust some of its luster recently and while Michael J. Fox’s new show on NBC is well done, watching him act in the throes of his Parkinson’s is uncomfortable. Sorry , it is for me, but it’s not enough to get me to change the channel. He has to live with Parkinson’s every day. I should be able to watch him deal with it, and work in spite of it, for a mere 23 minutes (minus the commercials) per week.
It’s been a slice and will remain a sliver until (read with your best feigned Italian accent) ‘she’s a totally uh gone away”.
Ciao.
