...so technically, it's already tomorrow, which means that if I make another one today (and I plan to), I'll have to change the title to "Two-Things-A-Day," but whatever, it's my 'blog and I can do what I want with it...
Ohhhhhh, man... What have I gotten myself into? This feels like such a bad idea...
I guess that I should start from the beginning, this being my first one and all. I've been prompted by a number of people who have known me throughout the years to produce some kind of tangible outlet for my writing. Most of them have recommended I write a book, but the curse that offsets the "gift" of creativity is a crippling fear of any major undertaking that would expose oneself to the public eye, which leads to a lot of wishy-washy excuses and a TON of procrastination. Besides, I don't have an agent or a publisher or any idea of where to get started finding either one. So, right there, the idea of a 'blog has always seemed to be a nice compromise.
There is, however, a problem: 'blogs are such a cheezy, low-rent version of creativity. It seems like a really prepackaged, unoriginal way of doing things, like a virtual paint-by-numbers or a coloring book for interwebbers. I know that it would be incorrect to say that everybody has a 'blog, but most people that do are the kinds of people I don't want to associate myself with. I don't want to be lumped in the same category as some dopey college student in skinny jeans sitting at their local Starbucks, assaulting the world with the melodrama of their lives, desperately struggling to establish their independence of thought and deed on a Mac book that their parents bought for them.
Alas, I digress. The crux of the matter is thus: I need to write. Not only do I need to write, but I need to be doing it so that other people can read and respond to it. Writing is, for better or worse, something I'm (supposedly) good at and if I'm not actively engaging the process, then I'm not doing myself any favors and have no right to complain about how boring and uninspiring my job/life is. In fact, not only am I not doing myself any favors, I'm actively working against myself, getting lazy and sloppy and not challenging myself to stay engaged and work hard and move toward something better and more active and alive than I did the day before. As a good friend once said about engaging his own passions, "If this is really something I'm wired to do, it would be detrimental to me not to pursue it."
And so, here you have it: my 'blog. I call it "Thing-A-Day" because I plan to post something every day. I got the idea from Jonathan Coulton's "Thing-A-Week," where he would write and record a new song every week for an entire year in an effort to push himself creatively. I don't wanna jinx myself by attaching a time-table to it, but I like the idea and I think he was on to something. It still feels awkward and unwieldy and obnoxious and self-centered and I guess I'm just going to have to get over it. It's good for me to do this. I just hope it's not a total beating for you to read it.
Just a heads-up, I'll be tweaking things periodically, like layouts and formatting and colors and such. Also, I'll probably try messing with stuff like links, music, videos, etc. Feedback on things that work (or don't) would be appreciated (I still know so little about this process that I don't know whether you'll be able to comment on this or not. You can e-mail me at undignifiedpairsh@gmail.com and let me know what you think. [again, I don't know if that shows up somewhere on here for you or not. Sorry if I'm being redundant.]).
So, for those of you who (in some way) put me up to this, I hope you're happy. Like, sincerely... I hope it lives up to all the nice things you think about me/my writing and that you'll follow it regularly and that you'll hold me accountable to posting daily and that you don't get in trouble at work for reading it on the clock. (Actually, that last one's a lie: I kinda hope you do get in trouble for that.) For everybody else, I don't know what to hope. I don't really hope you're happy because I don't want to be disappointed if you aren't. And I don't hope you're miserable, because that would be a terrible thing to hope for somebody. I guess I hope to find some waypoint along the continuum between the miraculous joys of humor and entertainment and the poverty of boredom. And I guess I hope that for you because, ultimately, I guess that's what I hope for myself and why I'm doing this in the first place. If I can take you on that journey with me, then I guess it's serving its purpose.
So here it is. I won't promise much, other than to try. If it takes off and turns into something, well... I kinda don't even wanna put that out there for fear of getting my hopes up. I will say, though, that if it fails miserably and they like, shut down the Internet because of how bad it is, it won't be for lack of trying. Ready or not, here goes nothing...
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