In the wee hours of the evening when everyone in this house is either sound asleep or otherwise occupied, I usually find time to poke around on the Internet. As I’ve said before, I am utterly ASTOUNDED by the sheer number of people blogging and the number of sites that exist for that sole purpose. My buddies all set out fearlessly ,wrote with abandon, putting themselves out there and were rewarded handsomely. Followers, advertising, accolades. I dipped my toe in (as is the cowards way) and toiled away in happy obscurity telling NO ONE , that I had even attempted typing a sentence much less a crappy little blog. It just seemed so….self indulgent. Real writers pen books, I told myself. Besides, you need to be raised Italian or Greek to properly cultivate the creative neurosis of a Sedaris or Notaro. That shit doesn’t come easy, you need to suffer for it. I see blogging more on the level of journal keeping with a twist. This keeps the writer out of harms way and impervious to criticism, because as I just found out, no matter how hard you scrub you can’t remove the stain of failure. It permeates your clothes and eventually your soul.
Tonight I spent some time on blogher.com and tossed a previously unused entry of mine over the fence to see how I felt about it. www.blogher.com/mensa-mean
I guess I’ll see if it still seems like good idea in the morning.
