Over casual (drunk) conversation recently, a friend looked me dead in one of my four eyes and said, "you suck at blogging." Ouch.
But it's very true. The last time I posted was when I took November off to participate in NaNoWriMo. I cheerily waved at all of you as my writing adventure train pulled out of the station, and I confidently blew you a kiss while shouting, "see you in December!"
That, as you know now, was a filthy fucking lie. I did not see you in December at all, nor have I been around much in January either. It doesn't mean I didn't miss you. I just got caught up in being lazy in terms of posting. That, and I don't think I was particularly clever or witty (read: worthy) the last few months. When I get in those moods, I slink about life pathetically sloth-like, eating cookie dough ice cream and sobbing "I don't word good" over reruns of All My Children. (Is that still a show?)
As for NaNoWriMo, did I succeed? Depends on what you consider finishing. I was supposed to write 50,000 words. I wrote 26,842 words of a story that I grew to resent so much I wrote scenes of the characters getting tragically injured in bat shit crazy ways to punish them for not translating on paper correctly. So then I started over somewhere around the midway mark (liberating but unwise) and wrote 32,014 words of another story which also turned out to be very sucky.
I suppose I could have combined the two pieces of shit and had my 58,856 words of super turd to submit, but that felt so embarrassingly wrong. I'm glad I buckled down and wrote on the daily, but I'm so displeased with what came out that I wanted to bury it deep in my most humiliating of memories, past the place where I got on the wrong bus in first grade, past the awkward perm I sported for two months, even past the time I got drunk at a work function and threw up on my boss after accusing him of being a spy.
Less depressingly, during November I was a guest author for the infamous and amazing Clark Brooks and it was completely badass. You should check it out, along with the other guest bloggers and of course, Mr. Clark Brooks himself. (He's solid gold, that guy. Oh, and hilarious.)
December and January were filled with very mundane twenty-something year old things (and my birthday, more on that later) which brings us right up to that breezy Tuesday night when, under the glow of flat screen TVs playing Sportscenter and through the hazy blinks of too many beers, my buddy blurted out "you suck at blogging."
Well. Yes. Yes, I do.
I am not consistent. Admittedly, I'm not that funny anyway. I still haven't decided if I like jump-breaks or not.
I don't know what a Creative Commons License is. I don't know if I should have some kind of "don't steal my work, motherfucker" page. Or badge, or whatever. I never know what to write in "About Me" sections and the page here is no different.
I don't really understand the templates on Blogger. I just know I like purple and I managed to get some stuff to be purple. I use tags that make no sense, and therefore, are not very helpful.
I am horrible at
Sometimes my grammar slips. Sometimes I end a sentence with a preposition. Sometimes I start a sentence with the same word three times in a row.
I talk about my friends and family more than anything, dangerously toeing the line between "creative firecracker" and "whiny kid with a Livejournal account."
I am not concerned with monetizing, page views or going viral. The last one just sounds gross anyway.
But this, the awful organization and the awkward formatting; the shitty homepage banner that took me an hour to make and still looks horrendous because I don't understand Photoshop; the late night rambles and rants and painfully articulated memories; the journeys through the clusterfuck that is my agonizing thought process; this, this mess, this is for you.
And even though I sometimes seemingly don't try very hard, it's still for you. Because I like when you think. And I like when you argue with me. I like when you like it. I like when I get to make you laugh and above all, I like when I momentarily trick you into forgetting whatever stress or bullshit you're dealing with in your life. Have you thought about your overdue car payment in the last ten minutes? You're welcome.
So yes, I suck at blogging. But I hope it's a good kind of suck. The kind of suck that makes you want a cigarette when it's over, even though it was sloppy and forgettable. Because when I get on here and blow my load, it's for you.
Asshole.
