A Blog About Blogging

Originally posted on my old blog, Get Up Eight, which died when I didn't renew the domain. Reposting entries I enjoyed.

So, let’s be frank here shall we? Blogging…I’m not good at it. Don’t get me wrong, I have all the best intentions. I have moments practically every day where I think “That would be such a funny blog” or “I should really write about this” but then…well, I don’t. Maybe I sit down to do it but then my apartment is too cold to stay at the computer or I’m hungry or I need to pee or what is my cat doing or is there a rerun of America’s Next Top Model that I’ve seen 73 times on television? You see where I’m going.

 If only I had a laptop, I lament, I would be such an awesome blogger. No, I wouldn’t.

At some point while pondering New Years Resolutions, I thought that I might want to really start updating my blog and writing more. I would talk about everything! I would make goals! I would DIY! I would network! I would be funny! I would be touching! I would share art! I would talk about my day to day life! It would be awesome! Look at your calendar. As I’m writing this, mine says January 12^th, which is a full 11 days after the rest of the world had settled into working on their resolutions. Mine haven’t even been written and if I’m being honest, they never will be.

Okay, I did write some resolutions. But I was drunk and can’t read them. Story of my unhelpful life.

If you’ll allow me a moment to get a little introspective, I believe my problem with blogging is this: any blog that I create is based on the notion that people will have to like me, as a person, for whatever reason, in order to read it. This cuts my readership down to about 5 if I’m being generous. Why? Because here’s the deal – I’m not going to teach you how to cook anything. At best, I may share a photo of something I cooked – at worst, I’ve started eating it before the thought occurs to me. I can’t be expected to take progress pictures, who do you think I am? Replace “cook” with “craft”, “draw”, “DIY” and any other common blog topic that involves the process. Obviously, I’m not eating all of that after completion, but you get what I’m saying.

 Did you know I painted this desk? I did. It tasted really great, too.

I’m also not going to give you helpful tips on how to live your life to its full potential or get out of debt or open a 401k like other common blog genres. Why? Because when I’m looking at my electric bill at the same time I’m looking at concert tickets for a concert that’s not even in my state, I’m buying the tickets and worrying about it later. That blog would be called “How To Get In Debt & Stay There.” I also don’t care how you quit your job and are now blogging from beaches in Fiji. Know why? Because in order to have that life you have to write really boring blogs about how other Joe Schmoes can do the same thing and I’m nodding off just thinking about it.

 Full disclosure, I have a 401k. Do you know how it works? I don’t.

I don’t care about SEO. I consider networking just a way to get free drinks. I don’t want to utilize social media to my advantage. I find all that horribly boring and would probably be stomping my way to the computer like Paul Rudd having to clean up his plate in Wet Hot American Summer if I had to read about it without getting paid for it, forget about blogging about it.

Unless utilizing social media to my advantage means getting my favorite celeb to retweet me and fall in love

So, without a niche, shall we say, anything I blog is about me or things I think are funny/interesting, and relies on you liking me enough to read it. I don’t even like me enough for that. I’m kind of smarmy and have a bad habit of getting fixated on things. Obviously, I think my fixations are funny but twitter has shown me that other people may not always agree. That’s right, I was persecuted and unfollowed for professing my love of Tim Riggins and Hanson.

 Professing it 1440 times doesn’t seem like that much to me.

I suppose what I’m getting at here is this: my intentions are to update my blog more. It didn’t work out for me last time because I was trying to have A BLOG where I posted about IMPORTANT GOALS and WORTHY TOPICS and that just doesn’t work for me. I want to be vaguely anonymous in terms of never connecting my social media/blog to my job, and write about that time I dropped my pizza in a puddle and cried about it or that time I gutted a teddy bear to sneak a video camera into a concert.

Welcome to that.