Since i don't imagine that many of you are the type that often reads my profile page to scan for updates--and why should you? i never update--i figured it would take quite a long time before, unaided, anyone stumbled upon the second blog i just added to my repertoire. I'd explain it but then, it explains itself.
So, without further ado, i give you beta movement.
Last night the Pawling "crew" assembled at Toro, a Chinese/Japanese restaurant (and sushi bar) on Route 52 in Carmel, NY. After a month (for some) or many (for others) of having not seen these people, it was understandably a great time. Inside jokes and humorous shared anecdotes were the staple of the meal, and as the bountiful plates began to arrive in front of us we savored the culinary artistry of Asia.
As the bill was passed around the table, one of the waiters delivered several handfuls of fortune cookies. A few of the people sitting around me grabbed a cookie and cracked it open, but before i left i noticed there were still two sitting there. Since i'd not yet taken one, i figured two would be acceptable--one for today, one for tomorrow is how i justified it, since i'd had half my meal wrapped to go home to eat for lunch today--and so tossed the two oddly-formed treats in my to-go bag.
I never got around to eating that fortune cookie yesterday, and so as i sat down to eat the leftovers for lunch just now i decided that i would eat both cookies, and that the first one i opened would just have to be counted as yesterday's fortune. I grabbed the one on the left, unsheathed it, broke it in half, and was promptly reprimanded by the message inside:
Don't put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.
Dear Bogert kids,
I came down the chimney, but did i end up in a fireplace? Nooooo. I ended up in your furnace!
This dumb dog bit me.
Tried to leave by the fireplace i located, and guess what?
IT'S NOT REAL!!
No milk or cookies?
Get serious if you wanna see me next year. Now i'm late.
Ho Ho Ho.
Merry Christmas.
I need a vacation
~SANTA~
Just a heads up, i'll be renovating this page over the next week or so. This will become tedious since, as you may have noticed, some templates create a hindrance to basic functionality. So bear with me, and the sparks will be flying in this forge soon.
I promise.
Hopefully.
King Solomon had a journal. The disciples of Jesus of Nazareth had journals. Anne Frank had a journal. And now, with the wonderful World Wide Web, you can have a journal too! But be careful--calling an online journal a journal is not trendy, and will evoke laughter and nasty looks from yuppies with Macintosh notebooks and Starbucks Frappuccinos: you'd best call it a "blog." What is this crazy thing called a blog? Why, that's easy!
Blog: Short for "web log," the phrase blog applies to any of the multitude of private and public journals hosted on the Internet (whether on privately owned servers or public hosting sites such as www.blogger.com) for any or all of a variety of reasons, such as (but not limited to) the sharing of personal anecdotes, venting at a commonly unfair world, spouting of political and/or social propaganda, reviewing any form of entertainment, literature, or art, and threatening to kill and consume a domesticated rabbit.
In short, a blog is whatever you want it to be (unless you want it to be a journal). But as the old man warned us before he got gunned down in the streets of New York, with great power comes great responsibility. Thus, while you are technically entitled to blogging (see what i did there? I made a verb out of an abbreviation!) about whatever you choose, that doesn't necessarily mean you should. Unbridled blog production will very soon lead to boredom on the part of your readership, and very likely boredom on the part of, well, you. Here are some common snares one should expect to encounter while operating a blog:
The Icarus Effect: Someone once said "the sky's the limit." That person was clearly not familiar with the tragic story of the man who aimed for the sun and ended up in the sea. You see, at first the possibilities seem endless: given nothing but a seemingly infinite array of empty pages waiting to be filled with whatever you see fit to fill them with, you will undoubtedly be tempted to boast your existence to the world. "HEY OUT THERE! LOOK AT ME! LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!" And if you're lucky, a few people look at you, waiting for your first trick.
Unfortunately, this is where most people fold under the pressure. Rather than simply starting out with a parlor trick or two and building toward the Houdini material, many people begin to build hype with a list of coming attractions. This is all fine and dandy if you can deliver, but usually the list of what you plan on doing with your blog is more a stream of conscious thought -- "oh, and i'll explore the concepts of quantum physics, and i'll review a book every other day, and i'll write lyrics despite the fact that i've no musical experience whatsoever, all while recounting every slightly entertaining conversation i have" -- you get the idea.
If you can pump out a blog an hour--heck, a blog a day--then more power to you. But most people find that the ecstasy high runs out after (at best) a week of beginning a blog, and soon those promises to chronicle every trip to the bathroom become nothing but the melted wax and scattered feathers of yet another crash-burn-and-drown victim.
That said, the flying machine has its lower limits as well. While trying to maintain a daily blog may prove too stressful or unreasonable for the average blogger, trying to maintain a page with one or two entries a month often results in much the same way. Water builds on the wings and they become heavier and more burdensome to flap. Two blogs a month becomes one blog every two, and within six months there's another ghost town in Blogville, USA.
The Emo Complex: All you ever wanted was someone to care about you. But it's been a month and you still have no comments on the masterful political commentary you took two hours to write in the local bookstore. You plastered your myspace profile with flashing banners that linked to it. You plugged it in your term papers. It was hidden in the source code of the C++ program you submitted last week for Comp 141. But, it seems, no one cares. You tried and tried but...[insert sobbing here]...nobody so much as left you a hello.
Admittedly, the no-comment syndrome is perhaps the toughest to deal with, particularly for beginning bloggers. It takes a while to amass a following and even then you may discover that your most faithful readers rarely feel inclined to post replies to material they feel speaks well enough for itself. They probably don't realize how abandoned you feel amidst their silence; but be careful not to start pleading with them. People dislike nothing more than an angry or melodramatic post criticizing them for their failures to live up to your standards. If they feel like commenting, they will do so. If not, it's OKAY; you'll soon find that the few comments that do litter your blogs pack far more meaning than the drivel and side-conversations that traditionally spawn on well-publicized pages.
Perhaps the best bit of advice is to write something that YOU want to read. There may never be any comments on your page, but as long as you can find enjoyment from plodding through your own archives, you've done well enough. After all, blogging is just another hobby for most people, and a hobby need only make one person happy: the hobbyist.
The Identity Crisis: This somewhat ties in with the previous pitfall. As long as you are writing for yourself, you will never have any difficulties so far as personal enjoyment goes. But the Internet is not a personal playground. You have to share the swings and slides and monkey bars with everyone else, and there's no telling who will run across what you've written. This presents two issues: first, the sort of writing you want to be known for and second, the way in which you represent the people you interact with on a daily basis.
These issues are more of a personal problem than anything else. The moment you realize that people are reading your journal, you are going to change the way you write it. Sometimes this means writing harsher content than you would traditionally write because you know the target will run across your words. Other times this means just the opposite: you don't speak your heart because you don't want to hurt someone else with what you say. Ironically, people have used journals to vent their raw, unbridled emotions for centuries. Blogging, however, forever brands your face with the words of your choosing, and thus requires a level of social tact that you might not exercise on paper.
Naturally these are not the only problems you will face in this new world of web-logging. But just as a good father must allow his son to make his own mistakes, so shall you be allowed to discover these and other hardships for yourself. It's a tough world, no doubt, but with realistic goals and a lot of determination, your blog might just soar.
So i'm not really sure where this is going to end up but my mind is saying 'WRITE!' and who am i to argue with myself? The fact of the matter is, i got lost somewhere and i really don't know how to find my way back because the snow falling outside my window has already covered up the footsteps i left behind me. I guess that sounds pretty melodramatic but it's definitely true--i mean, on my way back from Orchesis this evening i was totally planning on writing a blog on how great the show was, and how stepping outside into the first legitimate snowfall of the year was, cliche or not, magical... But it wasn't long before i just sort of lost the energy. The drive. A few idiotic pictures later and all i'm thinking is "gee, we could play some more Halo now." Six freaking hours in front of the television last night watching Heroes and i had to go and spend my Saturday--my day of freedom--in front of the same thing accomplishing little more than a little bit of a fever and a sore left shoulder. What's more, i'm getting more aggravated by the moment and there's no way to explain it.
It's 3 AM in the morning and here i am, in a closet that they'd like to call a lounge, writing to no one in a form that is neither blog nor journal entry. My shoulder's killing me. I took Excedrin an hour ago but it doesn't seem to be working and frankly i find that uncalled for. But then, there's not much i can do about it. And even if there were, i probably wouldn't. Because that's who i am lately--i identify problems, i even express "serious" interest in fixing them, but then there i go again letting apathy get the best of me. I promised myself i was going to lose weight here--get a daily regiment that involved weight-lifting and jogging and eating healthier--sorry, healthfuller--and i haven't done squat. I haven't cracked a Bible open for months and church is like one of those distant memories that you have when you hear the theme song to a sitcom you watched when you were in elementary school. And yet in the mail is a slew of forms i'm supposed to fill out and expedite back to New York so that i can go on a missions trip to Africa to show people with so much less than i have why they can be happier than i am because of a loving God that i've abandoned so many times in so many ways. It's...well, it's rather sickening, really. I keep telling myself that this is why i need to go to Africa--so that all this laziness that i've been putting off the fixing of for so long will finally get fixed--but then maybe it's just another one of those things i promise myself that never happens.
I don't mean to sound all self-deprecating but i mean...that's really all there is to do right now. I've had such a bad temper as of late and why? Who knows. Maybe it's the whole Writer's Guild thing, seeing how disgustingly selfish the media moguls are that i might end up working for. Maybe it's how i get all angry and up-in-arms about how these people aren't seeing so much as a penny when their own creative content is streamed legally on the Internet by media companies and yet can't muster up the guts to confront my roommate on his appalling habit of downloading movies and music and games and God knows what else without so much as considering the consequences of his activity. Maybe i'm upset because half the conversations i have here are among the deepest i've ever had--spiritually, intellectually, emotionally--while the other half are nauseatingly base and vulgar to an extent i never imagined myself capable of. The thing is, there are too many maybes. But there aren't any answers.
I suppose that's what i'm learning right now. I'm learning that, regardless of what people tell you, life ISN'T what you make of it.
Life's what you let other people make of you.
