Re: Poor Tammy...
I signed up! Yep, that's right I now have a blog... Don't quite know what I am going to do with it, yet.
Tammy,
Your misfortune in acquiring a blog has prompted me to step from the shadows once again, to share with you a story about... a dude I knew.
He was a writer, and for a long time that was his only problem. Then he heard about this strange, apparently amphibious fantasy creature called "Blog". He wrote a short-story about said amphibious creature. Editor rejected story with short note: "Blog not amphibious creature. Blog electronically syndicated personal serial. Please no more short stories serving no purpose but to high-light author's cultural ignorance."
These words stirred something deep within my friend. It felt like love - but after his ensuing experiences with "Blog", he decided it was last night's chili.
My friend spent the rest of his day at the computer, growing more excited and more exasperated as he first downloaded an indecipherable program called 'movable type' which he believed to have some mystical connection with 'Blog', and then failed to understand the incredibly explicit directions at blogger.com. By midnight, however, he had achieved by the sweat of his brow a blog he could call his own. It felt like home - until the janitor showed up and asked him why he was still in the Library which closed at ten, and could he please turn off the computer and depart unless his ass was glued to that chair?
When he got home, he immediately signed onto his blogger account again. He couldn't think of anything to write. So he typed a small message stating that this was, indeed, his blog in case you wondering, and that, could you believe it, this was his first post, and further, that more posts would follow. He pushed the publish button, and wrang his hands watching the clock icon going round and round and round...
And then... there it was! His first post. He was in business. He had a daily editorial, an immediate forum for his exalted opinions. It felt like Nirvana - until he lay down in bed and realized that he was now obligated to write something tomorrow... and the day after that... and the next as well, endlessly, into the black hole his future was swiftly becoming.
But he put that thought aside with another: think of the masses that would read his blog, who would never touch his books. Or maybe they would... Maybe his delightful web-presence would inspire them to wend their way to a local Barnes & Noble and acquire his poor first book of Short Stories. It was exciting.
But time took care of that.
Sometimes he would sit all day staring at the familiar blinking mutilation of a stick figure which stood out like an oasis in the desert of glowing white that was his non-existent post, trying to think of an exalted opinion. But his thoughts did Russian Ballet around the idea of his Aunt Foo-foo.
And what was worse, the masses never showed up. The only hits his blog recieved were his own anxious ones.
To make a long, dreary, and tragic story short, which my friend, you know, would have liked - being partial to short fiction - he committed suicide.
In his note he made the following points:
(1. Blogs are parasites for a writer. They make him feel guilty if he doesn't give them his most valuable time. They inspire that terrible latent passion for editorialism which lies at the heart of his ego.
(2. Blogs aren't worth the trouble they demand. Perhaps your opinions really are exalted, interesting. But if they are, why are you wasting them in a medium for which you don't get paid, and no one will read anyway? If you're a writer there are better ways to spend your time.
(3. Blogs are habit-forming, and there are no support groups and medications to ease withdrawal. My friend still listlessly works on his blog - errr.... would if he was still alive.
(4. Finally he pointed out (curiously enough, considering it was suicide note) that he was referring only to the special case of a
writer enamoured of the
idea of a blog, who 'didn't quite know what he was going to do with it yet.'
So beware. This path lies before you...
~ R.Q.