Posted on by Larry Jones

Another Friday Night

My life is interfering with my blogging.Surfin'

It’s bad enough I’ve moved my site off Blogger. I don’t get the drive-by’s that I used to through the “Next Blog” button. I’m not sure if I ever made any new bloggin’ buddies that way anyway. Well, maybe I found bloggin’ buddies that way, but nobody ever found me and made me one of their bloggin’ buddies. But at least it pumped up the traffic a little. When I think someone is reading it makes me feel better somehow, although God knows why it makes any difference.

That’s bad enough, but then I have to go and write political stuff half the time, and I guess I know that turns a lot of people off. There may at one time have been conservative readers who were just friendly and curious about my thoughts and my soft-core pornography, but I must have pissed them off and sent them packing long ago. I have no good way to keep track of this kind of thing, of course, so all this is in my mind anyway, but in my mind I am rocking softly in a corner, alone and afraid.

I have been alienated in my real life lately. My job, usually known here as “my crummy job,” has taken so many turns for the worse that I just wouldn’t even know how to explain it in writing, not in anything less than 300 pages. As I’ve probably written here before, it’s just a job I fell into, not a career that I sought. I’ve never been proud of it, but as I keep doing it longer, I have come to resent it. I’m surly with most of my coworkers. Sure, they’re stupid and flaky, for the most part, but they’re just as exploited as I am, so why not be nice to them? Every Monday morning I make some kind of resolution to be more cheerful there, help people when I can, keep it light, but by noon I have turned evil again and I just can’t shake the badness. I need to manufacture a better attitude, but I keep thinking “I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place…” and that just overwhelms my good intentions.

And while I am there, making the big bucks, developing ulcers and high blood pressure (maybe), what might have been Real Life is taking place somewhere else, some place where I am not. I am not wearing Dockers in a happy pizza joint with my friends, I’m not driving my new Cadillac and playing basketball, I’m not watching the leaves change in New England in autumn, I’m not playing guitar anywhere, not in a studio, a garage, a bar, not anywhere; I’m not stalking Gwyneth Paltrow or snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, and I’m not keeping up with my blog.

I’ve had a web site since before there were blogs. As soon as such a thing was possible I did it. i sensed that somehow it would be a way to connect with the world in a bigger way than I could do in person, and at the same time in a more intimate way. When I started this blog 19 months ago, I actually began to “meet” people. It was somewhat interactive, but low-key and non-threatening. For the record, I have never felt threatened. I mean it must have been non-threatening to others, because of the anonymity, which is kind of strange because so many of us reveal so much about ourselves in these posts.

But I have become a Bad Blogger. I write once a week or less, and at least half of that is outraged political ranting, which no one wants to read. I don’t get around to comment on others’ blogs, either. So I’ve kind of dropped out.

But so have a lot of my early bloggin’ buddies. I went back through some of my archives yesterday, and let me tell you it was a nostalgic trip. Nineteen months and already nostalgic. Huh.

The nostalgic thing was reading the comments of people who are no longer around. I mean no longer blogging, or no longer in my circle of friends. Maybe they got tired of blogs, or tired of me. I didn’t believe blogging was a fad, like CB radio, but maybe it was. It was geeky enough when “everybody” was doing it. How much of a dork will I be when I’m still writing here and everybody else has moved on?

Anyway, I miss those people whom I never actually met. Adrian, Melissa, Holly, MPH, Red, Kayten, that hispanic chick in Denver, all the rest – you know who you are.

What the fuck. I have issues. Are you saying you don’t?

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17 Replies to “Another Friday Night”

  1. Issues? Me?

    I started a blog in part because I have so many people in my life urging me to write, apparently under the impression I do it well; I thought that having a blog would mean I’d be writing SOMETHING, and that has turned out to be true. I’ve also met some people–like you, for example–whom I would not have otherwise met, and that has been extremely cool. I’m fascinated by the interactions of strangers–we reach out to people we don’t know, which is Safe, in many ways, but I think it’s also genuine, even if the medium isn’t “warm.” I don’t know; I like it. And I like your musings, too.

    As for your job, I totally feel your pain–or, anyway, I used to; I changed careers in part because of exactly that feeling.

  2. Who me? Issues? Ha! I’m steady as a rock. It’s just the ground underneath me that keeps moving.

    It sounds to me like you need a new job. I know. That’s easier said than done. And speaking of jobs – in response to your comment on my post – yes, I took a pay cut. That’s almost… unAmerican. Do I regret it? Not a chance.

  3. Hmph. Two career-changers. I probably shouldn’t trust either of you. Pay cuts. Personal satisfaction, indeed.

    Goldie – I like your writing, so your real-life friends could be right. Maybe you could some day include the address of your blog when you comment here?

    And hey – has everybody noticed the “live preview” of your comments that appear below the comment entry box while you type? How cool is that?

  7. I started blogging when the creative writing web site forum some of my friends managed, on which I posted constantly, “fell into disrepair,” as they say in the faerie tales. I tried to make my blog another co-writing community–as you can see by the number of “team members” listed–but alas, it seems that blogging wotks better as a one-proprieter enterprise. Though I encourage everyone to write lots of comments, and one original member still posts the occasional entry. I wish the others would, too.

    Anyway, I feel daily Work Pain, too. I feel like I’m caged, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Tell me, Larry, do you have a vacation planned? Sometimes that’s all that keeps me going, looking forward to the next adventure. That and saving for a distant retirement. (And, on a longer-term scale, the fact that I plan to ditch this crazy business for a shiatsu practice…someday. Sigh.)

  9. kStyle – You were commenting at the same time as me. Or “…the same time as I,” as Emma would no doubt phrase it.

    Vacation is another way The Corporation fucks with my head. I “accrue” a little bit of vacation every pay period, up to the max I can have. After that, I don’t accrue any more until I take some. But so many projects, launches, initiatives, special events, transitions and corporate hoo-hah’s are going on that I can find no time to take off. It takes three days of nose-to-the-grindstone to catch up for every day I’m away. So each payday, I get to not accrue some vacation, which feels like I’m losing something. And maybe I am: my mind.

  11. PS and what you’re losing is nothing short of your life. Think of life as a finite amount of time you get on this here planet. Motivates you to take that vacation, eh?

  12. “…in my mind I am rocking softly in a corner, alone and afraid.”

    That line made me laugh and feel sad all at the same time. (Hope you’re not offended that I laughed…I tend to cackle, actually!)

    Great line, anyway.

    What is all this blogging business anyway? Hmm. One of my blogging buddies and me were discussing it via email just this weekend. It perplexes me at times. I started my blog because I wanted to write — never imagining the cool people I would meet. And I’m very grateful for that.

    Regarding your avoidance of political rants. Here’s the way I think of it — take it for what it’s worth. Write about whatever you gosh darn feel like writing about. That’s the only way everyone will get to know *you* —

  13. kStyle – Thanks for the motivation. Really. I need it.

    Blue Girl – Not offended. I wish I were funny all the time, but I know I’m not. Blogging is just like writing. I think I do it to see my words in print. I really like feeling connected somehow, so it’s good that somebody reads this. Probably if a lot of people read it, it would be too stressful for me. And thanks for the support on the political stuff. I really can’t help myself. Just voting doesn’t satisfy my need to fight The Man.

  14. I like your political rants, for what that’s worth. And I was much happier quitting my job (pay cut, but picked up enough contract work to pay the bills and have a LOT more free time.) Life’s too short to stay in a crummy job. Good luck!

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