When I Grow Up I'll Be A Blogger...

During the past few months...ok, who are we kidding...the past few years, I’ve been staring at my blogs all the time.  Yes, sadly I have more than one floating unattended out there.   I’m trying to understand my failure to keep up with posting on any of them and my failure to actually form into coherent words everything that is constantly tumbling around in my head.  After all, it’s not like I don’t have the time. I have plenty of time, way too much time, so much free time I’m sickened by it and myself. I also enjoy writing, or at least I used to. I’m not going to say I’m fabulous, I’m certainly no master of the English language and I like to take huge liberties with grammar that would probably make most editors cringe and wring their hands in despair.  But, should this stop me? It hasn’t seemed to stop a lot of bloggers out there.  Hell, it hasn’t stopped a lot of published authors out there.  So, what is my problem?

I think there are a few things stopping me and now that I’ve figured them out, I’m hoping I can slowly overcome them.

First of all, I tend to ramble and then I feel that what I have written is just too long for a blog post. I know from my own experience when reading blogs that I often lose interest if I am suddenly faced with a large page of tiny little print. As the months of unemployment roll by (over a year...wooblahhhh) I feel that I have begun to develop the attention span of a gnat. Blogs, by nature, seem to be something that should be kept short and concise.  Something I am incapable of doing. If I were going to write a novel (one day) if would have more in common with Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez in that it would be long, gorgeously tedious, wonderful, lush, full of words that give weight, meaning and taste to the story.  When I feel that a post will be too long I often nix the idea and retreat to the recesses of my mind feeling that no one will read it, so what’s the point?

My second problem is that I’m really protective of my online identity.  Or rather I’m careful to make sure that my real name isn’t associated with any of my online personalities and this includes: blogs, Twitter, photography sites, etc. Last year I even went Facebook free (it was hard at first...like trying to overcome a horrible addiction to heroin).  I sporadically do thorough searches (it’s the prospect research nerd in me) for my real name and all aliases and then proceed to delete accounts on any site where my real name may be showing up unless it’s strictly work related (ha...work related...like I have a career...).  Now, you might be thinking, “This chick is mad paranoid and must have been born in Communist Russia!”  Maybe I am. However, I believe thinking your personal or professional life will never be affected, either positively or negatively, by what you do online, is highly delusional especially if you’re looking for work.  And, as someone who has worked as a recruiter, let me tell you, a general search for a candidate using Google, is one of the first things people in Human Resources are doing these days and if you’ve used the same email address for your job search as all the other pages you’ve signed up for – you’ve made their job even easier. It’s fast, it’s cheap, it’s dirty, easy and in most cases you won’t get a chance to explain yourself. That’s not to say I have something to hide.  But, let’s face it. I like to bitch a lot, I like to down vodka and wine at alarming rates, I don’t like children, my cats vomit a lot and sometimes I want to strangle them, I love food to the point of obsession, I pop Xanax from time to time, I haven’t even begun to delve into my dirty sexual past, I hate my neighbors and plot their destruction, my mother drives me insane, I sometimes chase children with brooms and make them pick up their trash, I whistle at the cop that strolls my neighborhood and then hide behind the curtains, I have no friends and oh....did I mention I tend to be a lush? Yeah. I’d like that all to be my little secret.  But it seems that when people blog they need to connect with their readers on a personal level and I think my trying to hide is waging war with my desire to broadcast.

My final problem is that often, I can’t focus long enough to write. My mind is going a million miles a minute and I’ve always been one of those people who prefers to write on actual paper (I know...I’m so antiquated) instead of their laptop.  So when my mind is a whirlwind of ideas, sentences, stories, plots, twists, recipes, disgust, self loathing and verbal diarrhea my fingers find it hard to keep up and then it all just grinds to a blinding stop and I give up. Walk away, drink some more and crawl into a ball and let the tumble of crap just toss around until I can’t think anymore. I’m not sure how to overcome this last hurdle.

Actually, I’m not sure how to overcome any of them – especially the long and winding length of my diatribes. I guess all I can hope for is that talking to myself (after all, to some extent isn’t that what most blogs are about) will be therapeutic and someone, somewhere will read this shit....so, I guess I’ll keep plugging along and attempting to make an effort to actually post something at least once a day. Or week. Or month. Hmm. We’ll see....

If You Come Near Me, I'll Poke You

Lately, I find myself waking up in a foul ass mood. OK, let me clarify. I always wake up in a foul ass mood but lately it’s enough to make me stop and wonder what the hell is going on because I literally wake up and the first two thoughts in my head are 1) are you fucking kidding me?? I’m alive again and I have to suffer though another fucking day on this miserable ass fucking planet and pretend to care about my life which I know won’t get better and 2) god, those were some stupid and damn depressing dreams I just had (last night I kept having a reoccurring dream that I was shopping for sunglasses on Canal Street with my douche-head ex-boyfriend who kept telling me every pair made my head look fat. This coming from a man - dream man though he may be - whose head is the size of Uranus).

So, not only am I in my usual heinously evil mood, I also feel like roadkill. And I’m not talking about that roadkill that you pass along the side of the road and you can still recognize what type of animal it used to be. I’m talking about the roadkill that you pass and you think, “Oh my FUCKING god (as you swerve to avoid getting the blood, guts and bone matter embedded in your tires) what the HELL WAS THAT???” Yeah, that’s what I feel like today. Like a MAC truck came at me going 105 MPH along Route 80 and dragged my screaming and bloody body a couple of hundred miles along the blacktop, only to fling my remains off to the side of the road where crows will feast on me and maggots will spawn in my head.

So, yeah. If you come near me today I’m most likely going to have to pull the stick from where it lurks behind my back and poke you with it. I’m way too tired after imaginary sunglass shopping with douche-head to beat anyone with it but I can certainly manage a good poke or two.

Plotless on November 1st

Apparently one late afternoon, back in October, while sipping whiskey and pondering the futility of my rather depressing life, I decided it would be a swell idea to sign up for National Novel Writing Month.

I had to have been drinking or else one of my demon-spawn cats has learned how to use the laptop because frankly, what the hell was I thinking?  I mean it's ironic, to say the least, that someone who has several blogs lurking all over the Internet but who can't seem to write anything for them signs up to write a novel. IN. A. MONTH. But then again, I seem to have made it my life's mission to be the Queen of Irony (a.k.a The Spinster of Sarcasm and the Fool of Fuck-up's).

Now, November 1st has rolled along and all those feelings of panic, nauseousness and giddiness that I've been beating down like a hapless little slug have come crawling back in full force. Especially when...OK...I'll admit it...I don't have a plot. I was toying with the notion of basing the novel on my life (roughly) until I realized I don't have one lately. The highlights of my days consists of cleaning the litter pan, wondering what kind of shenanigans my neighbors will get up and trying to remain calm when dealing with my Mother.  And I really don't think I have the talent to write 50,000 words about "digging for treasure" in the sandbox and watching my neighbor shave his cat.

I'm suddenly realizing this whole experience has the stink of a graduate school paper deadline and therefore, I'm afraid I must treat it like such and apply my proven method of procrastination. That and praying to the gods to send me a Muse (preferably a male Muse in a Speedo because a toga is so passé).

For those that have signed up for NaNoWriMo as well - good luck and may your fingers fly across your keyboard everyday!

As for myself...*yawn* I think it's time for more coffee (Irish of course), crappy TV, pondering and....procrastination.

Small Town Karma

I live in a very small town, on a very quiet street peppered with elderly ladies and young families, on the second floor of a historical house...surrounded by a large fenced yard and an assortment of shrubberies. People usually mind their own business unless you actively engage them (I don’t – I treat them like rabid rhino’s) or have a long standing rapport.

My previous neighbor and I had a love/hate relationship. Basically, we both hated each other but her cat and I had a secret love affair, full of many sweet petting and tasty treats. The day she packed up the final load of crap into her glossy little car and pealed away was a day I celebrated with margaritas in the sunroom and a forlorn feeling when I realized I wouldn’t see Ms. D-the-cat again.

I gave my new (perhaps a month in) neighbors the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that when they were moving in they continued sawing, hammering and grunting well past 9:00pm. But, you know, I’m not one to complain...too much. We haven’t said one word to each other and this has been pleasurable. However, the other day while I was calmly walking to my house, the woman chose to open her mouth and say to me, not hello or “my, it’s a lovely day” but instead, “I really don’t like the color of your flowers.” 

I stood with my keys in my hand and blinked at her. It was too early for me to have been drinking so I really couldn’t rely on myself to be calm and polite but I was, so...yay for me? I politely pointed out that I’m a renter like her and that my landlady takes care of the landscaping. I also stated that although yellow isn’t the most original color for mums I didn’t think they needed to be insulted. Again, yay me. 

Today, I noticed her landlord working on her yard; raking leaves, cutting bushes and low and behold...planting some gorgeous yellow mums. 

When I saw her come home I will not lie. I ran to take out my garbage and told her I really didn’t like the color of her flowers. I might have been smiling but she’s my enemy now.