May.07.2008 I have my finger on the pulse of society

After my little personal post this morning, conveniently enough, CNN.com posted an article about people using blogs as therapy. Some of these blogs are a little, uh, less whimsical than my tales.

For Stacey Kim, a 36-year-old book editor who lives in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, emotional blogging has become a reflex. On April 11, 2007, Kim curled up next to her husband and held him as he succumbed to a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The next morning, she went online to post about the experience.

“It cemented the reality that he was gone,” Kim says. “I got hundreds of comments back that were all so loving and supportive. It gave me a really tangible sense of community.”

She blogs about life as the widowed mother of 22-month-old twins at snickollet.blogspot.com.

Um…yeah. The article also talks about a chick whose blog was about the 90 days leading up to her committing suicide (though she ultimately punked out and said it was an “art project”…coward). Lost your husband and have to raise two newborn twins? Well…uhhh, my diet cola with lunch was a little flat. So you and I, not so different.

Blogging about personal matters seems to be more of a feminine pursuit. In the 2004 study “Effects of Age and Gender on Blogging,” researchers examined more than 37,000 blogs on blogger.com. Their conclusion: Male bloggers tend to write about politics, technology and money; women are more likely to blog about their private lives and use an intimate style of writing.

…

Thanks. Give me a little warning the next time you slap me in the face with your genitals as a result of “research” and “facts”, CNN. On the plus side, the only way you can define my writing as intimate is if you feel that using the words “cunt” and “fuck” a lot brings you closer to me. And if you do, I love you and you need to take me away to a tropical island.

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May.07.2008 I have returned! Miss me?

I promised a Wednesday return and here we are. And since this blog is pretty much entirely self-serving in every way, I see no reason why my first “real” post back wouldn’t be.

I’ll let you guys in on something I don’t talk about much here: Why do I write this blog? At first, I wanted to make it a gig, like a full-time thing. Make some money off it, maybe a writing career. But I honestly don’t have the dedication or passion to suffer making nothing or the stick-to-itiveness to see it through. I work in a pretty lucrative field and I’m making a decent go of it, so that’s my main thing. I’m totally content to have a couple thousand people a day read my drivel, be it my commentary or personal stuff, and get some mild amusement out of it. I don’t even send my links around to other blogs any more for traffic. It’s like, who cares? If people read (and honestly, the same number of people come here every day regardless, so whatever), great. If not, meh. So why do I write then? Well, primarily I just like having an outlet to be a douchebag. To say mean things, vent on stuff, and ta da! That’s a wrap.

There is a tangible relevance to that background though. That being…I am just a douchebag, regardless of where I communicate my thoughts. This weekend, a relationship I was in ended. And it hurt more than I’m used to. I’m not trying to sound cool and detached but I typically don’t feel a thing when I lose someone, either on their volition or mine. And while I’m not sitting here in my sweatpants with a half-eaten tub of ice cream (as far as you know), it sucked and continues to suck. Clearly with emotive skills like that, you could see why a gal would swoon over me.

But yeah, immediately afterwards, I handled myself nothing short of assily. I was so desperate to not be “That dude” who kind of mopes around like Mikey in Swingers and feels shitty about himself that I went out to lunch with a previous ex the next day (albeit platonically since we ended on good terms, there’s no way that doesn’t make me an ass), had an incredibly douchey conversation with the girl immediately thereafter about how I want to be friends (something I really don’t do so, apparently, I decided to try to undertake that for the first time by going about it in the worst way possible), and I dunno…I just suck. I said things with surly undertones, made things awkward for no reason, tried to be overly affable and then kind of pretended like everything was cool…anything to avoid just feeling kind of down about it. You know, like a normal person might feel about losing any girl, let alone one who was a very good thing for me for a while. To the point where now, if I were her, I’d probably be reluctant to talk to me too. Aaaand if I really know her, if she even reads this, I’ll probably get goofed on for putting all this out there too. Probably well-deserved.

See, I’m not as infallible as my quips about children with cancer or how much X or Y sucks may make me seem! Oh me and my difficult targets.

So yeah, I hope putting it down in writing makes me feel a little less ridiculous than I currently do. And if my posts contain more vitriol towards women or end with me going, “OH GOD WHYYYYYY” and sobbing uncontrollably into my keyboard, that’s why. Though I guess you wouldn’t see the latter. So, uh, it’d totally never happen!

Back to the usual schedule today. Let’s see how long it takes me to fall back into the same ol’ lazy jokes and mean spirited barbs! My guess: I’ll be good until I publish my next post!