Wading in the Velvet Sea

It’s worth noting that Friday marked the three-year anniversary of blogging for yours truly. It’s not worth noting because I expect massive fawning and the receiving of emails of you in your skivvies or anything, although, between you and me, that would absolutely rule. No, it’s worth noting only that, if you take 36 months to consistently document your life, you can look back after those 144 weeks and get a pretty good feeling for how you were like during times you’d probably forgot already. Especially if you drink as much as I do. And drop tabs of acid like I do. And inject gasoline into your veins like I do on a bet with some snotty ten year old, and boy you showed him eh?

To look back is to look at a line graph, with “Time” as the X-axis and “Overall Happiness” as the Y-graphic, and to watch that line go more schitzo than Tyler Durden. Good lord. You could sum up the six 6-month periods as such:

• Period 1: Wow, this blogging this is cool. Still have no idea what “blogging” is, but it makes my tingly in all the naughty places. Also? Spell-checking is for p#ssies.


• Period 2: Whoa, got my first big link from MSNBC. I am the World’s Greatest Writer! All I have to do is sit back and let the magazines trip over themselves trying to hire me.


• Period 3: Hrm, no fame and fortunes from that link yet, and now I’m single, closer to 30 than 20. Someone hold me.


• Period 4: Wow, who knew that so much free time could lead to 4,000 word analyses of Bob Dylan records that somehow relate to my life? In related news, still waiting for that hug.


• Period 5: Well, almost got the hug, but instead got pushed off a cliff and landed butt-first in a briar patch. Write 4,000 word entries about the hopelessness of this existence. Come to the conclusion that hugs are overrated.


• Period 6: Nevermind last six months, nothing to see here. Happily dating and the Red Sox are World Champions. Sorry about all that, really. Just sorta woke up on the wrong side of the bed for the majority of the year. Write 4,000-word entries about “Mansquito”. Hugs galore.

So that’s the history of my blog in a nutshell. Not sure what to make of that fact that Periods 3 and 5 seems to have the most response, if response can be measured by comments. May not be the best barometer, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Seems to indicate that people read but don’t reply to pop culture/comedy, but respond to the personal/semi-tragic. Something about pain and misery compels us to sympathize/empathize, and that’s a good thing I think in moderation. But just as reading those type of entries can get weary, writing them can be equally burdensome. There’s only so many ways of writing the equivalent of shaking your fists at the heavens before you exhaust the possibilities. I mean, I’m not that deep.

I think the Period 3 and 5 stuff stands up, and I don’t regret writing them. I just don’t think Period 6 should be the “Summer of Love” period, where I lavishly detail how much more in love we are than anyone else on the planet in an effort to make all of you feel inadequate. (And if you think I’m talking about your blog, you’re probably right, and think about why you thought that for a sec, OK?) You’re not here to read about my happiness, you’re here to read what I write. Important distinction. My writing can detail happiness, it can evoke happiness, but what it can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do is simply relate something that happened that was nice. Gag. Cough. Hack. Le puke.

For instance: Who the eff cares what I had for dinner last Friday? I’m only going to tell you about dinner if the waitress looked like Jennifer Garner or if two ninjas hopped out of a cheesecake. I’m not going to tell you what I had, tell you how romantic it was, and then adorn the paragraph with an emoticon. Although, to be fair, if they created emoticons more applicable to my style of writing, perhaps I might employ them. This “laughing out loud” and “grimacing with great vengeance” emoticon crap has to go. Some examples of emoticons I’d like to see:

• Giving the middle finger
• Getting one’s balls electrocuted
• Pointing out to a skeptical girlfriend the awesomeness of surround sound

Just for example.

The point? Lord, if you haven’t figured this out for three years: I don’t have one. Usually don’t. I go from point to point, topic to topic, in a way that I hope entertains, illuminates, or at least provides at least one visceral reaction a day. Make it “anger”, I don’t care. Better than boring you. This is the best way I know now to keep myself going as long as I have---just letting the fingers go as fast and as far as my mind will. I’m glad to have the record I do right now, even if some entries are pretty painful to read (some for the emotion, most for the typos, youch). Wish I had a longer record, since I’m forgotten three times what I can remember.

But I’ve got this, and that’s good enough for now. Kid-tested, mother-approved, “Mansquito”-loved: “Wading in the Velvet Sea”. There ya go.