I don't want to burden anyone with my epic struggle, but I thought it might be instructive if I enlightened you a little as to what's going on with me behind the scenes, while you're all relaxing and living your ordinary lives, so that you might gain a better appreciation of everything that I do.
Friday (4-17-09) was, of course, blog innauguration day.
Saturday, while you were sleeping off your hangovers from of the galas, balls, keggers, B&D dungeon parties, or prayers-of-thanks gatherings that were celebrated around the globe -- I, typically, was hard at work doing all the unsung things I do to make this world a better place.
Many of you think that writing a blog isn't much different than writing an e-mail, or posting an anonymous comment to some random website.
You couldn't be more wrong.
Writing stupid e-mails and making idiotic comments are merely the computerized version of squeezing a duck's butt. You can do all of those things for as long as you like, but.... well, at the end of your small journey, you're still at the same place you began, and the duck is slightly confused and possibly annoyed.
Writing a blog is completely different. Here, it is YOUR name on the marquee. YOU are the attraction that people aren't paying money to ride.
If you don't deliver the goods, the handmaidens of destiny will seize you by the scrotum, drag you to the scribe's anvil, place your man sack upon the flat iron, and then hammer your testicles into a dismal porridge.
Blogging, needless to say, is not without its pressures.
(This is possibly why there are so few bloggers these days.)
Don't worry about me. Not only are my balls as steely as my mind, they are like Kryptonite to handmaidens. (Untouchables!)
No. I face a different sort of dilemma. One that is self-imposed.
My problem is that I care too much.
I'm the kind of person for whom great isn't great enough.
I've written many pieces that people say changed their lives forever. (Often for the better.)
I receive whelbarrows full of e-mails everyday.
But I don't read them, because I feel a need to stay untainted by the intangibility of the unforseen consequences that might surely come from exposure to the internet-using public's unbridled flattery and adoration.
This is my way of remaining the same humble vituoso of sagacity that everyone has always loved, cherished, and fantasized about.
I'm well aware that most of you operate under the illusion that I am the "perfect" man.
Well, here's some breaking news for everyone: The level of accomplishment one would need to reach in order for most you, in concurrance, to conclude that it had definitely attained what we call "perfection," I would consider to be my "base camp" near the bottom of the mountain. It would be the starting point of my quest. The place where I meet my sherpas and load my pockets with power bars and powdered yak milk.
Most people's pinnacles aren't even close to my minimum standards.
In order to achieve what I achieve, I need to ride myself like a four-wheel drive Ferrari up a mountain that has a herd of hippos coming straight at me. (At first, I can't tell whether these hippos are dead and that this is just just a hippo avalanche, or, if they're alive, which would mean it's a hippo stampede. The split second determination I'm required to make can mean the difference between life and death. The differences between how to best negotiate hippo-festooned mountain terrain during an avalanche vs. a stampede are so vast and varied that I can't go into them here. HUGE.)
Yesterday is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. Friday's first blog, was, by all but one account,* "perfect."
*You've probably guessed already who had the dissenting voice. (His initials are t.o.s..)
The first batch of enthusiastic comments that came in early Friday evening told me that my first blog had serious problems.
"Just perfect?" I mumbled glumly.
Never one to gracefully accept defeat as a "learning experience" and then move on, I made a vow that I would rectify my errors on Saturday.
Up before dawn (she sleeps until 2 p.m. or later on the weekends) I rewrote that first blog from top to bottom -- infusing it with heart, grit, soul, pathos, and wisdom.
When I finished, I vowed never to read it again, because, knowing myself as intimately as I do, I know that it probably take a couple HOURs, at least, for it to ever be good enough for me.
Thinking about myself, I chuckled, smiled, then slowly shook my head at the absurdity of the standards I impose upon myself: "TOS," I said to myself lovingly, but still chidingly, "You could be sitting on a giraffe, atop the Mount Everest of Perfection, and you wouldn't be satisfied unless you were pirouetting precariously atop the giraffe's head."
I have to admit it, I was right.
Well, enough of the backstory. That's history. What about the future?
Sundays, for me, are always weird. I don't know why. They're not weekdays. But they're not weekend days, either. They're just floating randomly out there four or five time a month, untethered and uncontainable.
As for how I'll spend it?
I'm going to a baseball game this afternoon.
I haven't decided whether or not to clip my toe nails myself before I go, or to seek out a pedicurist at the stadium.
That's the nice thing about the future. It's like a mystery where you get to have some say in the plot's development.
Today's message of hope: "Keep on keeping on. It's worth it. Trust me."
1 comment:
So that's what the handmaidens of destiny do.
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