back in the saddle again

In the past month, the below three points have conspired against me, leaving me impotent.


1) At Christmas my brother-in-law Chris casually mentioned that he liked my style of writing and that if he were in that end of publishing he'd try to get me a book deal. Chris works for Wiley Publishing, who publishes among other things, the For Dummies books.

I have never had aspirations to become a writer. I’m too lazy and uninspired. So for someone to say that, even in passing, is ludicrous. Plus, any book that I might write would have to be centered on Oreos, boobies and the frustrations of living with Himself since this is the only thing I write about with any degree of knowledge. And really, who would read that book?!?

It felt good to have my words validated but on the other hand it paralyzed me. I felt as though I needed to impress the professional in him. Which in retrospect is absurd since he publishes computer books.

2) Like a fool, I shared my blog entries with my mother. We sat and read them together, Christmas night. She loved them. I cringed every time she read a post where I used “fuck”.

She turned to me the first time she read one and looking over her bi-focals quietly said “You weren’t raised to talk like that.”

“I only use it for emphasis.” I replied untruthfully.

Again, it felt good to have my words validated. Even if it was from my mother, who is obligated to tell me how wonderful I am by the mere fact that she my mother. Even so, I was left with the unsettled feeling that I had shared too much, while my mother was left with the feeling that she really must get a computer if only to read my blog.

3) I flamed someone. Anonymously, of course. I am not a complete idiot! But this chick had written something so asinine that she had a hostile comment coming.

As expected, she took immediate offense, erased the entire entry from her blog, wrote a big long “why is everyone so mean to me” sob story threatening to leave the blogging world and went dark for several weeks.

In the meantime, she got tons of comments, reviling the horrid person who caused her such pain. I know this because, against my better judgment, I kept going back to check her site. I don’t know why I subjected myself to her blog in the first place, except that I liked to read it and then pass it on to Sanna so we could laugh at how melodramatic and generic she was.

What amazed and saddened me was that over 50 people posted comments telling her how wonderful she was and how she should not give up blogging. Couldn’t any of these people see what I saw? The drama, the constants bids for affirmation, the poor spelling?!?!

And let me say, admitting that I flamed someone feels oh so gooooood



After much pondering and several aborted attempts at drafting a blog, I sat down and had an internal discussion with myself. We decided that I was letting these issues in particular #3, weigh me down. So we drafted a plan that would set me free.

This is what we did:

1) We thought back to Christmas Day and replayed the conversation with Chris again and determined that while Chris’ was comment was indeed complimentary it was uttered under a Prednisone high (he has asthma and is allergic to cats and my in-laws have THREE indoor cats) and shouldn’t be taken too seriously and that we should go back to writing about whatever strikes our fancy and stop trying to impress him. Except of course, for our vocabulary of which we are VERY proud.

2) When Mum finally does get her computer and has it all hooked up and learns how to navigate the internet, she’ll have to find Nejyerf all on her own. We’re not going to send her the link. This should take months.

3) This point, the point that caused us the most angst turned out to be the easiest one to remedy. We don’t know why we didn’t think of it sooner. DELETE. DELETE. DELETE. We did some housekeeping on our RSS feeder and eliminated several blogs including hers. We are also keeping our visits to certain spaces to a minimum. It's better for all concerned. By avoiding these spaces we can keep our sanity and go backing to talking in the first person.


Days later I’m feeling psychically lighter.

Thus this monster post.








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