After an almost 10 year blogging hiatus, with a great deal of joyous/heart-breaking/incredible/incredibly shitty life experience in between that will serve as content for this renewed self-absorbed excursion of mine, I’m back to blogging. Why? Why bother? Why now? A lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that I need to write like some people need food. Or maybe weed is the better analogy? Cocaine? Heroin? No, that’s too extreme. I don’t need to write every day like addicts need cocaine. It just feels good when I do it. So let’s go with weed. Or chocolate. Or sex.
Writing is therapy to me. It soothes the sarcastic, cynical, savage beast that lurks inside of my aging, jaded, demoralized soul. Life can beat you down, especially at my age, when I find myself in this weird middle ground between experiencing the world for the first time again through my young daughter’s eyes, and enduring profound loss — a dog, a father, a marriage, a house, the American Dream — all at the same time. More than ever, I have this deep-seated urge to express myself, get my thoughts out there, empty my head, and expel my anxieties, hopes, opinions, beliefs, and fears. Writing is a mental and emotional purge for me. It’s purgery. (Purgery? That should be a word. Self Note: copyright “purgery” before anyone else sees my idea.) I have mental bulimia. These thoughts need to come out.
I should probably be saying all of this to a therapist. Maybe I will one day, But that’s really expensive, and this exercise really is about more than that. I will concede that in recent years, this need of mine, this itch, has been somewhat satisfied by regurgitating my unsolicited, mostly political, friend alienating opinions and malicious snark on Facebook, a medium that did not exist when I had my site on Blogger many moons ago. But Facebook is constricting. Most people don’t want to read 10 paragraphs about what I think about the asshole currently running the country, why we need another assault weapons ban, or why the unconditional love of a dog is more true and real than the conditional love of a human being. They want to see pictures of kids, food, shoes, foreign travel and Happy Family Branding About My Seemingly Perfect Life. They want fun! Sharing! Escape! Not reality. Not a know-it-all Debbie Downer spewing political bile and too many swear words. Plus, if you’re writing paragraph upon paragraph upon paragraph of your opinions on a status update, you come off as a little crazy. A little imbalanced. A little attention seeking. A little desperate. No, Facebook is not a format for exposition. Writing — real writing — is meant to be read and shared with people who want to read what you have to say. People who come to YOU.
And now a word or two about Twitter, that addictive internet cave where trolls and bots reside, a place where you can cross virtual paths with the rich, famous, and powerful, and shoot them a comment that they’ll never read, or maybe they will, who knows? Twitter is ego meth. A place for little endorphin hits. A way to keep up to date on the latest news while arguing with human cockroaches you didn’t even know existed until Trump got elected. Twitter does have its upside though. It’s quite cathartic to tell our Fake President* to go fuck himself at 7:30 a.m., for example. (Really important to start the day right.) A quick rundown of my Twitter highlights so far: Chris Cuomo, Amy Trask, and General Hertling responded to me once. Judd Apatow retweeted me once. Nina Tanden liked one of my tweets. I once got into a gun safety discussion with Tom Nichols. Amy Klobuchar (I mean, her intern) follows me. And James Woods, he of The Onion Field, he who dates women 1/3 his age, and he who wears tin foil hats and MAGAs for fun, blocked me.
So what I’m saying is, I’m almost famous. I have brushed elbows with greatness. And yet, deep down I know that Twitter is an empty calorie time-destroyer that limits you to just 140 characters because that’s currently how long the prevailing American attention span is, and it’s getting shorter by the day. If anything, I need to spend way less time there.
So here I am. Why did I stop writing/blogging in the first place? Where did I go for 10 years? You didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you anyway, because as an attorney, I believe in a clear record. I stopped writing because I GOT MARRIED and then had a DAUGHTER. To those who have been through it, getting married is quite time-consuming. There’s a wedding to plan, furniture to pack, moves to make, a house to buy and furnish, Home Depots and Targets to visit, grills to grill on, a pool to skim, a lawn to mow (or pay someone to mow), friends to have over, a new life to start. Marriage – a subject I shall be writing a great deal about, methinks – takes over one’s life in many ways, some good and some not so good. Since you’re forming a new identity with your spouse, you tend to lose your old identity, the old you, while forming the New YouZ. Some of things you used to like to do, your hobbies, your loves, get put on a shelf for a while, or forgotten entirely. In my case, this experience was compounded by the fact that the person I married really never liked my blog, the time I spent on it, or the things I wrote about. I always had the sense that she looked down on it and thought it was a waste of time. Or was too sensitive about what I might reveal or how I came across. Because she felt it reflected on her somehow, and this blogging time was time better spent with….. Her. And catering to her marital needs and our marital needs as a couple. The other problem is that good writing is authentic and real. You have to reveal your true self, decide what and how much you want to share with people, and who you want to share it with. There’s always a balance, of course. Reveal too much and you’re looking at public scorn and humiliation. I get enough of that, honestly. Censor yourself too much, or limit your audience to only a few people who know you already, and it’s so fucking boring, cliche, and constrained, why bother writing at all?
Now to be fair, it didn’t start off like this with Ex. (I need pronoun for her, so this will have to do. I have plenty of exes – many are still friends – but only one “Ex,” and she is not a friend. I think she would be flattered by her own title and unique status as compared to my other, lowercase exes.) When you’re dating someone and you first show them your blog, it’s like “Oh wow, you write? How interesting! I love it! You’re so talented! I read what you wrote about ______. That entry was hilarious! HahahahahaILoveYouSchmoopie.”
When you’re dating, no one really gives a shit. As a writer, you don’t give a shit because there’s limited risk and you’re like: “Hey, this is me, take me or leave me. You don’t like me? Fuck it, on to the next.” And you’re thinking that maybe something I write will resonate and make me more interesting and appealing to someone. (“Wow, he’s deep. He WRITES. And not about sports and his boring job – he’s DREAMY!”)
And the person you’re dating doesn’t give a shit either (at first) because they have no skin in the game and yeah, maybe it does make the person a little more interesting unless the writing sucks ass, and even then, you can feel a little sorry for the schnoob for trying to be a Renaissance Man while holding down a full-time job and date someone twice a month. Because at that point the writing is never about THEM, so who cares? Ahhh, but eventually, eventually, EVENTUALLY, if you get into a relationship or get married, well…. eventually the writing DOES become about them, or about you and them, at least sometimes, and that my friends is where the rubber REALLY meets the road and your relationship gets tested. I would like to think that if you’re with the right person, room can be made for all of this, but in reality (a) It’s a lot to ask of a person; and (b) All human relationships are conditional, right? At least I think so. People like to pretend they’re not, but they are. I’ll return to this sometime. Anyway, a fairly common condition of any intimate relationship is trust, discretion, and keeping personal shit to yourself. Personal blogs and relationships don’t mix well.
After a few… let’s call them “Foreshadowing Disagreements,” I found myself censoring my writing to the point where it wasn’t real or enjoyable anymore. My passion for writing got castrated. (So did my personal identity, but that’s another subject). I never consciously decided to stop blogging, but my married life took over. To keep the peace, and because I was happy and had committed to this Forever Until Death Do Us Part Person, and I had a NEW LIFE WITH NEW PRIORITIES, I put my writing on a shelf. In retrospect, maybe I could have figured out a way to write about other things that matter, so it’s really on me, but when you’re starting a new life with someone and want to make them happy, you want to clear the decks of potential problems. At least I did, and my personal writing – my favorite and truest form of self-expression – got swept into the Atlantic. Then my daughter M. came along, and at that point all bets were off because for two years I barely had time or energy to shower and dress myself, much less write. The joys and travails of parenthood are all-consuming, so I’m sure things would have slowed down a bit regardless. But not this long.
Anyway, for reasons that will become clear, these are no longer issues. I am no longer encumbered by these prior concerns. This free bird you cannot tame! I’ve thought about returning to this for a long time, and thanks in part to someone I recently crossed virtual paths with, who saw my old blog and gave my battered ego some badly needed praise, I’ve decided it’s time for me to write whatever the fuck I want again.
I’ve always admired the Creatives — people who write, paint, draw, sing, dance. People who engage in pure self-expression, not as a hobby, but as a LIFE. People who survive on it. I’m way past that point because I’m too old, not remotely talented enough (I never invested in those 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about), and let’s face it, I like the financial security of having enough money to buy a Tom Bihn backpack and a Samsung Gear S4, and contribute to a 529 for my daughter and go to Italy if I want to. So I’m not quitting my day job, and this little space will represent my amateurish, blackened little kernel in the corn cob of human creativity and self-expression. One day, when I’m sipping my corn mash dinner through a straw in an assisted living facility and the world is unrecognizable to me, M. will be able to read this and my old blog and remember how her Daddy used to be and who he was, for better and for worse. I know I wish I had something like this from my father. So that’s another reason to do this, to leave something of myself, my real self, for her when I’m gone.
With all of this comes a pact, dear reader. If I wanted to scream into the darkness, I’d keep a journal on my computer and leave it for my sisters to find when I’m dead. (I actually have a half-assed one – T & J, remind me to give you the password, and please ignore my Google search history). Unless you’re a complete stranger who doesn’t know me, if I share this with you, it’s because I know and trust you, and I think you might enjoy reading what I have to say from time to time. (Maybe not, but no need to tell me, just leave and close the door quietly, please.) If we’re friends or family, don’t throw these revelations in my face too much when I see you. If you’re a teenage niece or nephew of mine, ignore my swearing and do as I say, not as I do, i.e., follow The Adult Hypocrisy Credo. If I work with you, don’t fuck me at the drive-thru (to coin a phrase) and try and get me fired for what I write. Not that I’m dumb enough to violate my ethical obligations as an attorney, but you get my point. If you’re a romantic prospect, I’m probably not sharing this with you at all, because fool me once! I kid, I kid! (Maybe.)
Assuming we have a deal, go ahead and take my metaphorical middle-aged, existentially-crisised, life-weathered hand, and please join me in this latest exercise in self-indulgence.
“I’m BACK! Back in a New York groove!”
