roses are red, violets are blue
after a fucked up night like tonight
wonder if you think I'll hold tight - still to you
Monday, February 10, 2003
Saw these boys in concert last night - fucking awesome. Short - short, concert though. Of course it is always nice to know all the songs - I know, I know, I'm one of those guys who gets drunk and sings along - so sue me. Looked pretty ridiculous when I tried on my concert shirt when I got home and they had sold me a girls petite - Hey were they trying to say something there ?? I looked like Brittany's Trailer Park Back-up Dancer (way, way back!)
Painted my bedroom this weekend - Ralph Lauren "Snowdrift Suede" - awesome. Rearranged all the furniture according to Feng Shui principles - we'll see, we'll see. Really, really happy with the way it turned out though - especially for what a pain in the ass that Suede Technique is. Fairly mellow weekend, otherwise. Finally watched Luc Besson's "The Messenger" - not as good as his other films, but I think theres an interesting statement on the confusion between "pride and ego" and "religious faith" (but then again maybe I was reading in to it). So sad - it went by so quickly.
Thursday, February 06, 2003
....alot of feedback - from many, many different directions on my recent post. Some really inspiring shit was shot back my way. I realize that I am incomplete in my effort to be whole. Yet, honestly I feel I'm trying - sometimes I tug the rope too hard, other times it's sandy musk and red, raw burns just hang on my hands - as if stubborn shadows against a reading wall.
Thoughts like what is self-respect? Give way to thoughts of, what is self-respect as a gay man (chew on the word 'compromise' a few times before you try and answer) ?? There's so much to think about on this path to - well fuck if I know - we'll say personally-enriching, life-affirming, hope-extracting, biggie-sized "Nirvana" - existance.
I don't know who the fuck I am - I can admit that.
So I cross-examine who I've been...
I read up on who I want to be...
and I dream of who I could possibly become.
Thoughts like what is self-respect? Give way to thoughts of, what is self-respect as a gay man (chew on the word 'compromise' a few times before you try and answer) ?? There's so much to think about on this path to - well fuck if I know - we'll say personally-enriching, life-affirming, hope-extracting, biggie-sized "Nirvana" - existance.
I don't know who the fuck I am - I can admit that.
So I cross-examine who I've been...
I read up on who I want to be...
and I dream of who I could possibly become.
"If the United States launches a surprise attack on our peaceful nuclear facilities, it will spark a full-scale war," said Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's main state-run newspaper, in a commentary carried by Radio Pyongyang.
There isn't one word of that sentence that doesn't give me the chills (though my favorite three are "Peaceful Nuclear Facilities")
There isn't one word of that sentence that doesn't give me the chills (though my favorite three are "Peaceful Nuclear Facilities")
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
(deep breath)
...ok...here we go again.
crap, now I feel like I'm gonna paraphrase everything I just wrote and it will lose it's sincerity and it's within the sincerity and shame I feel when I tell this story that I am empowered to forgive myself for having wronged another. This is the first time I've ever told this story. You see I've always believed no matter how good a person you strive to be or become - you should never forget your wrongs, sear your mental flesh with the pain inflicted on another. I've had this misguided belief that this keeps you from ever committing the wrong again. This behavior is limited and is restraining me from becoming a better person.
I realize now though - you can't slay the dragons (i borrow from mr 8LDJ here) if you see yourself as the dragon.
So, in an effort to let go of this I push my internal dragon down on the hardened ground - fire licking and spewing from it's mouth - kicking and screaming, and I slay it with my written word.
One hopes.
The cursor calls out to me - blinking, flashing, warning - to put this down on this vacant, pulsing, white screen is to jeopardize what others may think or feel about me. I make permanent and public a memory I've never shared with a loved one or friend. I do this though to show I'm honest when I say - this blog is about my personal growth - NOT - winning any popularity contests (nod and thanks to Jer here). You may not like the "me" in this story, but then neither do I.
So this is a story from history. My personal history.
A "me" I hardly know now - but maybe see an occassional glimpse of in a rash moment, or heated exchange. For all intensive purposes though - who I was then, maybe just for a few minutes, or a few collective days - I could, I would, never be again.
In my early 20's I was possessed by a streak of anger and self-hatred that was as wide as the blacktop of the autobahn and as dangerous as crossing it on foot. I was burning bright with a blazing red hot anger - fueled by booze and drugs. I had no sense of direction except a spiralling pattern downwards. I honestly never thought I would be alive in my 30's to be writing this - questioning wrong moves and worse mistakes.
I want to evoke the whole evening from that night - a sultry, summer night or a crisp autumn evening - but I honestly couldn't tell you. I've shut it away for so long, not wanting to remember - that I have successfully forgotten all but what haunts me about that night.
Have you ever wronged someone ? Truly - wronged ?
The wrongs that others have visited upon us live in us - until one day we visit those wrongs on another.
I often savor these words, pulling my tongue, scraping my teeth, across them - unable to swallow them, uneasy with their taste. I am not saying this is a mandate, or others aren't strong enough to not subcumb to this theory. But violence is known to beget violence, hate to be beget hate and so on. The biggest error within these words is that it transfers it's life on to others as we wrong them. It does transfer, but it never leaves you - it just grows stronger trying to take it's hold with each wrong you do.
I ran into "D" at Nutowne on a Sunday night. Sunday's were beer bust and by 9pm there were only two conclusions to make about the bars inhabitants - they were inebriated or out to get laid.
I was on that particular night - both.
"D" and I hadn't spoken in years.
He had been the first boy to break my heart. An early and first example of why they call them crushes. It had been a summer romance after graduating high school, when I was 17. He was my first "lover". Though I had already been dating and sleeping with boys since I was 12, this was the first that someone made me feel lost in them - that I wanted to live and breathe alongside their every breath. He was the first boy I fucked and once that started I couldn't get enough. I fucked him every chance we would get. Less knowledgable - more naive. We swallowed, we barebacked - all this in the bedroom next to my sleeping parents. After a few months he got a fake ID and was getting into bars. I probably seemed less exciting than the opportunity to feel grown up. He gave me Chlamydia and then when confronted broke up with me and told me he was going straight. I crashed emotionally - every car on that autobahn left treads across my ripped-open chest.
So here we were - was it 4 years later, 6 years - I've shut that out.
He was hammered and he wanted me. I had filled out, tight, beautiful muscles, evenly tanned. I wore my hair in a hassle free buzz cut. I had matured physically from the wirey 17 year old I had been. I was strong and I had lost any resemblance to the sweet, naive kid I had been. There was an edge to me now - an animal agressiveness. I supposed this all just made him more attracted - he had always been more attracted to the 'bad boy' cliche. He was a career bus-boy, a perpetually-stoned pretty boy, trapped in a high school hey day that had left him behind. He had failed to move on in any way from who he was 4 years prior. The eyes though were still so blue, the lethal combination of surfer blond and high school jock - but the years were passing and "care-free" had given way to "aimless".
I wanted him too.
I wanted to fuck him.
I wanted to hurt him.
We went back to his place - the whole way he was gushing compliments and praise. How together I looked, how hot I had become, how much he had regreted not staying with me - what shit, what fucking - absolute-I'm gonna fuck the shit out of you then spit in your face-bullshit. The anger was welling up in my chest - screaming like a tribal warrior - "let me out" - LET ME OUT!
We were all over each other the second we entered his small one roomed attic apartment. When he shoved his tongue in my mouth - I bit down - drawing blood. He let out a scream and pushed me off:
"Fuck - what did you go and do that for asshole??", he said.
I calmed him down - apologized - said the moment had gotten away from me. I kissed his forehead, his neck, lifting his shirt over his head. I pushed down his jeans and feverishly began to rim his ass. He was past the tongue-biting, moaning, pushing my face into his ass. I shoved him down - hard. He toppled over.
"Take it easy - your being rough.", he said.
Something inside me had clicked - someone had unlocked a door - the chants of "Let Me Out" had been silenced. I was drunk. I was full of hate. I was going to hurt him.
There are times in your life that you are pushed out of your own body - by fear, by anger, by pain. This was one of them. I watched from above - disengaged from my body - unable to find my way back inside.
I grabbed his arms and pinned him down. He started fussing, telling me to stop - I started spewing hateful things. What a fucking pathetic loser he was - that he would die a no one, die alone, what a pathetic whore he was, he wasn't good enough to deserve me. I became rougher - punching him, wrestling him and then fucking him. Pounding my dick into him - never releasing his arms - pinning the weight of my body against him. He started to cry. I was hurting him - He was hurt. Sometime during it - it blurred from consensual - to nonconsensual - and back again. I hadn't even considered a condom - I hadn't seen him as worth it. I blew my load inside his ass. I pulled out, released him. He screamed a wave of obscenities at me. I told him I had waited years to hurt him. I was all the way home before I felt like I was back inside my body again.
This is the worst thing I have ever done to another person. What had been done to me at 16 - I had now done to another man. Did I rape him - I can't say. He gave me his number afterwards - would you give your number to a guy who just knocked you around and forcibly fucked you ? It took years for me to see beyond that moment and see it not for vengeance - but something so indescribably wrong - that I shut it away.
I never called him. I never apologized for what I did or how far I had gone. He approached me a couple of weeks later and showed me the bruises, called me an asshole and walked off. He died a few years later. AIDS. I can't apologize to him now. Let him know the shame I've felt, the disgust I feel for treating him that way.
So a decade has past and it haunts me that even once I could have been that person, so angry, so cruel to have acted this way to another person - no matter how much I felt they had wronged me.
I am not that person - not now.
I never want to be that person again - not ever.
I try everyday - to not ever be again.
We say we want people to know us - to understand us, but then we only tell them the good things about ourselves.
We hide from people the things we've done wrong, the things we have to live with in the dark of night.
...ok...here we go again.
crap, now I feel like I'm gonna paraphrase everything I just wrote and it will lose it's sincerity and it's within the sincerity and shame I feel when I tell this story that I am empowered to forgive myself for having wronged another. This is the first time I've ever told this story. You see I've always believed no matter how good a person you strive to be or become - you should never forget your wrongs, sear your mental flesh with the pain inflicted on another. I've had this misguided belief that this keeps you from ever committing the wrong again. This behavior is limited and is restraining me from becoming a better person.
I realize now though - you can't slay the dragons (i borrow from mr 8LDJ here) if you see yourself as the dragon.
So, in an effort to let go of this I push my internal dragon down on the hardened ground - fire licking and spewing from it's mouth - kicking and screaming, and I slay it with my written word.
One hopes.
The cursor calls out to me - blinking, flashing, warning - to put this down on this vacant, pulsing, white screen is to jeopardize what others may think or feel about me. I make permanent and public a memory I've never shared with a loved one or friend. I do this though to show I'm honest when I say - this blog is about my personal growth - NOT - winning any popularity contests (nod and thanks to Jer here). You may not like the "me" in this story, but then neither do I.
So this is a story from history. My personal history.
A "me" I hardly know now - but maybe see an occassional glimpse of in a rash moment, or heated exchange. For all intensive purposes though - who I was then, maybe just for a few minutes, or a few collective days - I could, I would, never be again.
In my early 20's I was possessed by a streak of anger and self-hatred that was as wide as the blacktop of the autobahn and as dangerous as crossing it on foot. I was burning bright with a blazing red hot anger - fueled by booze and drugs. I had no sense of direction except a spiralling pattern downwards. I honestly never thought I would be alive in my 30's to be writing this - questioning wrong moves and worse mistakes.
I want to evoke the whole evening from that night - a sultry, summer night or a crisp autumn evening - but I honestly couldn't tell you. I've shut it away for so long, not wanting to remember - that I have successfully forgotten all but what haunts me about that night.
Have you ever wronged someone ? Truly - wronged ?
The wrongs that others have visited upon us live in us - until one day we visit those wrongs on another.
I often savor these words, pulling my tongue, scraping my teeth, across them - unable to swallow them, uneasy with their taste. I am not saying this is a mandate, or others aren't strong enough to not subcumb to this theory. But violence is known to beget violence, hate to be beget hate and so on. The biggest error within these words is that it transfers it's life on to others as we wrong them. It does transfer, but it never leaves you - it just grows stronger trying to take it's hold with each wrong you do.
I ran into "D" at Nutowne on a Sunday night. Sunday's were beer bust and by 9pm there were only two conclusions to make about the bars inhabitants - they were inebriated or out to get laid.
I was on that particular night - both.
"D" and I hadn't spoken in years.
He had been the first boy to break my heart. An early and first example of why they call them crushes. It had been a summer romance after graduating high school, when I was 17. He was my first "lover". Though I had already been dating and sleeping with boys since I was 12, this was the first that someone made me feel lost in them - that I wanted to live and breathe alongside their every breath. He was the first boy I fucked and once that started I couldn't get enough. I fucked him every chance we would get. Less knowledgable - more naive. We swallowed, we barebacked - all this in the bedroom next to my sleeping parents. After a few months he got a fake ID and was getting into bars. I probably seemed less exciting than the opportunity to feel grown up. He gave me Chlamydia and then when confronted broke up with me and told me he was going straight. I crashed emotionally - every car on that autobahn left treads across my ripped-open chest.
So here we were - was it 4 years later, 6 years - I've shut that out.
He was hammered and he wanted me. I had filled out, tight, beautiful muscles, evenly tanned. I wore my hair in a hassle free buzz cut. I had matured physically from the wirey 17 year old I had been. I was strong and I had lost any resemblance to the sweet, naive kid I had been. There was an edge to me now - an animal agressiveness. I supposed this all just made him more attracted - he had always been more attracted to the 'bad boy' cliche. He was a career bus-boy, a perpetually-stoned pretty boy, trapped in a high school hey day that had left him behind. He had failed to move on in any way from who he was 4 years prior. The eyes though were still so blue, the lethal combination of surfer blond and high school jock - but the years were passing and "care-free" had given way to "aimless".
I wanted him too.
I wanted to fuck him.
I wanted to hurt him.
We went back to his place - the whole way he was gushing compliments and praise. How together I looked, how hot I had become, how much he had regreted not staying with me - what shit, what fucking - absolute-I'm gonna fuck the shit out of you then spit in your face-bullshit. The anger was welling up in my chest - screaming like a tribal warrior - "let me out" - LET ME OUT!
We were all over each other the second we entered his small one roomed attic apartment. When he shoved his tongue in my mouth - I bit down - drawing blood. He let out a scream and pushed me off:
"Fuck - what did you go and do that for asshole??", he said.
I calmed him down - apologized - said the moment had gotten away from me. I kissed his forehead, his neck, lifting his shirt over his head. I pushed down his jeans and feverishly began to rim his ass. He was past the tongue-biting, moaning, pushing my face into his ass. I shoved him down - hard. He toppled over.
"Take it easy - your being rough.", he said.
Something inside me had clicked - someone had unlocked a door - the chants of "Let Me Out" had been silenced. I was drunk. I was full of hate. I was going to hurt him.
There are times in your life that you are pushed out of your own body - by fear, by anger, by pain. This was one of them. I watched from above - disengaged from my body - unable to find my way back inside.
I grabbed his arms and pinned him down. He started fussing, telling me to stop - I started spewing hateful things. What a fucking pathetic loser he was - that he would die a no one, die alone, what a pathetic whore he was, he wasn't good enough to deserve me. I became rougher - punching him, wrestling him and then fucking him. Pounding my dick into him - never releasing his arms - pinning the weight of my body against him. He started to cry. I was hurting him - He was hurt. Sometime during it - it blurred from consensual - to nonconsensual - and back again. I hadn't even considered a condom - I hadn't seen him as worth it. I blew my load inside his ass. I pulled out, released him. He screamed a wave of obscenities at me. I told him I had waited years to hurt him. I was all the way home before I felt like I was back inside my body again.
This is the worst thing I have ever done to another person. What had been done to me at 16 - I had now done to another man. Did I rape him - I can't say. He gave me his number afterwards - would you give your number to a guy who just knocked you around and forcibly fucked you ? It took years for me to see beyond that moment and see it not for vengeance - but something so indescribably wrong - that I shut it away.
I never called him. I never apologized for what I did or how far I had gone. He approached me a couple of weeks later and showed me the bruises, called me an asshole and walked off. He died a few years later. AIDS. I can't apologize to him now. Let him know the shame I've felt, the disgust I feel for treating him that way.
So a decade has past and it haunts me that even once I could have been that person, so angry, so cruel to have acted this way to another person - no matter how much I felt they had wronged me.
I am not that person - not now.
I never want to be that person again - not ever.
I try everyday - to not ever be again.
We say we want people to know us - to understand us, but then we only tell them the good things about ourselves.
We hide from people the things we've done wrong, the things we have to live with in the dark of night.
Tuesday, February 04, 2003
...at best, I'm hiding out emotionally lately. too many small hurts. people i trust and people I knew to hate. i want to start putting words down on paper again, but I'm processing things I'm worried about saying aloud. I feel like i've stopped saying anything real or important - distracted by the fucking popularity parades on other sites. i worry about ways i've wronged others. times i've failed to be the good guy i've tried so hard to be. people i've done well by - mistakenly - to see what shit they really are.
i look at the picture of the little boy below and I wonder who he grew up to be - and what mark on the world - if any he'll make.
cryptic ? perhaps.
i look at the picture of the little boy below and I wonder who he grew up to be - and what mark on the world - if any he'll make.
cryptic ? perhaps.
Friday, January 31, 2003
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
...my biggest achievement of the weekend was receiving my new dining room table. It's a trip how it changes the dynamic of not just the room between my kitchen and my TV room but of the whole house. I'm reading a book on Feng Shui and have yet to adopt the practices - or buy in to the whole thing - but I do find it interesting that the rooms I feel least comfortable in have furniture that faces directions that don't work with my natural "Year of the Rooster - THE COCK" shui ( pronounced - SHWAAAAAAYYYYYYY). Anyway - it makes my house look so "House-Like" - less the single guy with beer and poppers in the fridge and more the - I think we'll have Duck L'Orange for dinner.
Another stop on the way to Adultsville.
Another stop on the way to Adultsville.
Friday, January 24, 2003
Well, now.
Have I ever been deluged (am I making up words again or is that one real?), bombarded, buried with emails regarding my "Woe-is-me" drunkenly scrawled ramblings of Wednesday night. Every email has been a sweet bitch-slapping, charming butt-kicking, loving hit-to-the-back of head message. I owe responses. But I'm trying to come up with the apropos combination of flirtation/musing/bitchiness/cajoling to answer them back.
The funny - yet wonderful - thing about blogging is that it is all relative to moments in time. Much like life. In one, or a collective series of moments, we can feel inextricably one way. Mostly because we are "feeling" that way. Feelings are fluid. They can possess a viscosity that allows them to slowly move across your psyche, or a fire-consuming like content that races them from tip-of-toe-to-top-of-head in a day. My depressions are a crimson and orange lava slowly ebbing through my brain - my self-loathing’s are more sporadic - a summer-time brush fire, all consuming - but quickly extinguished.
I DO like my age. I'm so glad to be beyond the youthful bullshit of floating checks to get by (more often ending with the sound - BOING!), sleeping around to see if in others - I would/could/should find myself, rubbing one penny by itself (because - it was the richer kids who had TWO to rub together - not me) and the endless insecurities of maybe never being someone my parents could be proud of.
Oddly enough Sunday was a great self-esteem day. Gay Rodeo - men who appreciate men weekend. I got so much attention at Charlie’s that it became a little awkward hoping it wouldn't strike jealousy in my boyfriend’s heart. I felt very appreciated - even if it was as a Daddy.
I HAVE the HAVES. Things you aspire to have by 33. Car, House, Dog, Boyfriend, Friends and a wealth of memories of having done crazy things, illegal things, stupid things, happy things and in all of them "memorable" things. I have success because I beat the shit out of myself to get it. I convince myself that these things complete me, make me or enhance me. So isn't it funny that the people who read me - like me and have never seen or experienced these "Haves" - they have chosen to like me for my written word, my passionate ramblings, and my off-base humor. I am all states of evolution depending on which attribute or characteristic you are concentrating on - in some ways I'm a wise old man, in others a silly, naive, little boy.
Whether slow-moving lava or quick-burning fire - I do know this - I am a force of nature, an element of something bigger - and I evolve as slowly and as quickly as I can.
Have I ever been deluged (am I making up words again or is that one real?), bombarded, buried with emails regarding my "Woe-is-me" drunkenly scrawled ramblings of Wednesday night. Every email has been a sweet bitch-slapping, charming butt-kicking, loving hit-to-the-back of head message. I owe responses. But I'm trying to come up with the apropos combination of flirtation/musing/bitchiness/cajoling to answer them back.
The funny - yet wonderful - thing about blogging is that it is all relative to moments in time. Much like life. In one, or a collective series of moments, we can feel inextricably one way. Mostly because we are "feeling" that way. Feelings are fluid. They can possess a viscosity that allows them to slowly move across your psyche, or a fire-consuming like content that races them from tip-of-toe-to-top-of-head in a day. My depressions are a crimson and orange lava slowly ebbing through my brain - my self-loathing’s are more sporadic - a summer-time brush fire, all consuming - but quickly extinguished.
I DO like my age. I'm so glad to be beyond the youthful bullshit of floating checks to get by (more often ending with the sound - BOING!), sleeping around to see if in others - I would/could/should find myself, rubbing one penny by itself (because - it was the richer kids who had TWO to rub together - not me) and the endless insecurities of maybe never being someone my parents could be proud of.
Oddly enough Sunday was a great self-esteem day. Gay Rodeo - men who appreciate men weekend. I got so much attention at Charlie’s that it became a little awkward hoping it wouldn't strike jealousy in my boyfriend’s heart. I felt very appreciated - even if it was as a Daddy.
I HAVE the HAVES. Things you aspire to have by 33. Car, House, Dog, Boyfriend, Friends and a wealth of memories of having done crazy things, illegal things, stupid things, happy things and in all of them "memorable" things. I have success because I beat the shit out of myself to get it. I convince myself that these things complete me, make me or enhance me. So isn't it funny that the people who read me - like me and have never seen or experienced these "Haves" - they have chosen to like me for my written word, my passionate ramblings, and my off-base humor. I am all states of evolution depending on which attribute or characteristic you are concentrating on - in some ways I'm a wise old man, in others a silly, naive, little boy.
Whether slow-moving lava or quick-burning fire - I do know this - I am a force of nature, an element of something bigger - and I evolve as slowly and as quickly as I can.
Thursday, January 23, 2003
...who are you ? and where have you taken my face ???
it sucks, really - it just sucks. I've built my site on talking about the bigger issues and greater thoughts - i hope - so in context the post I begin to write is self-fulfilled and trite. but honestly at 33 - it sucks to begin to fade. I didn't write the rules - but I knew them - I've always known them. For all the people who disregard you when your young as "pretty" and "smart" - the pretty counts for so much more in the gay scene than you realize. Oh what it is to be a pretty face and hot body! When I was young - I looked - well fuck it - I looked pretty damn good. I thought my set-back was everything else. I hadnt gotten the degree, I wasn't making the $$$, I was driving a pick-up. But tonight - at 33 - hanging with my buddies who were in there 20's it was painfully obvious - that my muscles, my cock, my checking account, my BMW - were nothing. I had bags underneath my eyes that no ORIGINS product seemed to eliminate, I had a hairline that "ran" from me as quickly as it receded from my forehead, I had love handles that grew over muscle and my heart and my spirit hung half as high.
It's vain and it's BS, but it's the life we live in. Where smoother is pretty and tighter is better and younger is well, younger.
I used to own this bar - and now I'm barely taking up breathing room.
it sucks, really - it just sucks. I've built my site on talking about the bigger issues and greater thoughts - i hope - so in context the post I begin to write is self-fulfilled and trite. but honestly at 33 - it sucks to begin to fade. I didn't write the rules - but I knew them - I've always known them. For all the people who disregard you when your young as "pretty" and "smart" - the pretty counts for so much more in the gay scene than you realize. Oh what it is to be a pretty face and hot body! When I was young - I looked - well fuck it - I looked pretty damn good. I thought my set-back was everything else. I hadnt gotten the degree, I wasn't making the $$$, I was driving a pick-up. But tonight - at 33 - hanging with my buddies who were in there 20's it was painfully obvious - that my muscles, my cock, my checking account, my BMW - were nothing. I had bags underneath my eyes that no ORIGINS product seemed to eliminate, I had a hairline that "ran" from me as quickly as it receded from my forehead, I had love handles that grew over muscle and my heart and my spirit hung half as high.
It's vain and it's BS, but it's the life we live in. Where smoother is pretty and tighter is better and younger is well, younger.
I used to own this bar - and now I'm barely taking up breathing room.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
The question is out there again, not "Why would anyone ever give Anna Nicole Smith her own show?" or "Where is there more corruption - the Catholic Church or Corporate America?" (though both are very, VERY valid questions)
But : "Why do we blog?"
I came across something off of my referral log today of interest, an exchange on "Datalounge":
RE: Blogs?
by: anonymous 01/14/2003 @ 11:56PM
Some say that these are just people with too much time on their hands. I say no. The people who follow them have too much time on their hands.
RE: Blogs?
by: anonymous 01/14/2003 @ 11:58PM
"Some say that these are just people with too much time on their hands. I say no. The people who follow them have too much time on their hands."
Takes less time to follow one than to have one, so I say you're wrong
First - I'm pulling this comment out of context, the writer(s) from what I saw read blogs and had favorites and may or may not have been bloggers themselves ( I am in no way jumping on them and hope they don't mind me stealing a piece of there conversation) - but these two sentences just kept bouncing around in my head. I mean so many bloggers sit around wondering why they do this - and then to see what others may think really made me think.
SO: (Oops - dammit I forgot to have a "Second")...anyway....
Uh....bloggers are people with too much time on their hands ???
That's weird - I hit the gym 4-5 days a week, read voraciously (Business Week, Fortune Small Business, Men's Health - for the articles, Nun's Weekly - for the pictures, and even actual books - does 'scratch-n-sniff' count - not the book, me when I'm reading the book), I run every aspect of a successful small business, I invest time in a successful relationship of over three years, I take my dog to the dog park and play soccer in the backyard with her,
I find time to hope,
dream,
laugh,
share,
fuck,
love,
party,
and think.
I spend almost everyday of my existence thinking "There just isn't enough time in the day".
So - nope, that's not true.
Blog readers "are people with too much time on there hands"....nope, don't believe it.
Are we discounting that this is any less real a way to spend time then reading 'Moby Dick' (yes I mean the book by Herman Melville that bores everyone to unconciousness) ? I for one don't believe you could ever - EVER - be a blogger without being a reader. How does almost every blogger become a blogger ? Cause and Effect -baby - by reading a blog that inspires them to write their own - let's think of it as an intellectual virus. I learn so much by reading other blogs. I learn about life in different cities, other countries and how we/I often myopically view our world/our life as universal. I see how others deal with death - beautifully and with courage. I read insights into literature, sports, the arts, pop culture, politics and history. It takes tons of time to follow other bloggers (just like maintaining "real world" friendships) - to choose between those who become friends and teachers that you follow everyday, to those you check in on - that flesh out the enriching and diverse world wide neighborhood you choose to live in. I connect with people I WILL meet, MAY meet and will NEVER meet, but a slice of how they are glows off this screen at you - intermingled with my ramblings, meandering thoughts and eccentric humor.
We seek validation.
We hope to be known.
We attempt to connect.
There's nothing WRONG with that.
We do it every day in this thing called our daily existance. Whether it be hoping the hot frat boy or daddy beefcake at the gym smiles at us while were doing curls, or our dog runs to us first when were standing on the other side of the park, or our parents recognize that we are independent and successful, or that our boss senses that the company speeds along efficiently and successfully due to our exhaustive efforts.
WE ALL SEEK VALIDATION.
Stand on a street corner with busy traffic speeding by - don't you ever wonder what the drivers see standing on that street corner ?
Dance on a box in a dance bar at 1am on a packed Saturday night - don't you wonder what those swaying and dancing and mingling around you are thinking of you ?
Walk in to a crowded boardroom/classroom - do you wonder what first impression you make ?
I blog.
I don't look for "best of" votes, cash donations, naked pictures, hook-ups, blue ribbons or gifts.
I just blog.
I learn more about myself then I knew before I sat down to write...and willingly I share it, just hoping that it clicks with someone who needs to read those words. A hilarious story, a different point-of-view on a current event, a raw painful moment from my past or present or just a picture from my life.
I release my energy on to this computer and somewhere in another city, in another state, and maybe even in another country - someone walks away from their computer carrying my energy with them. Maybe it puts a "pep in there step", maybe it makes them cry, maybe it helps them see something clearer, maybe it pisses the shit out of them - but it's there, it's with them - despite mountains and miles - my energy.
I like to think that they do at least.
(I'll shut up now).
But : "Why do we blog?"
I came across something off of my referral log today of interest, an exchange on "Datalounge":
RE: Blogs?
by: anonymous 01/14/2003 @ 11:56PM
Some say that these are just people with too much time on their hands. I say no. The people who follow them have too much time on their hands.
RE: Blogs?
by: anonymous 01/14/2003 @ 11:58PM
"Some say that these are just people with too much time on their hands. I say no. The people who follow them have too much time on their hands."
Takes less time to follow one than to have one, so I say you're wrong
First - I'm pulling this comment out of context, the writer(s) from what I saw read blogs and had favorites and may or may not have been bloggers themselves ( I am in no way jumping on them and hope they don't mind me stealing a piece of there conversation) - but these two sentences just kept bouncing around in my head. I mean so many bloggers sit around wondering why they do this - and then to see what others may think really made me think.
SO: (Oops - dammit I forgot to have a "Second")...anyway....
Uh....bloggers are people with too much time on their hands ???
That's weird - I hit the gym 4-5 days a week, read voraciously (Business Week, Fortune Small Business, Men's Health - for the articles, Nun's Weekly - for the pictures, and even actual books - does 'scratch-n-sniff' count - not the book, me when I'm reading the book), I run every aspect of a successful small business, I invest time in a successful relationship of over three years, I take my dog to the dog park and play soccer in the backyard with her,
I find time to hope,
dream,
laugh,
share,
fuck,
love,
party,
and think.
I spend almost everyday of my existence thinking "There just isn't enough time in the day".
So - nope, that's not true.
Blog readers "are people with too much time on there hands"....nope, don't believe it.
Are we discounting that this is any less real a way to spend time then reading 'Moby Dick' (yes I mean the book by Herman Melville that bores everyone to unconciousness) ? I for one don't believe you could ever - EVER - be a blogger without being a reader. How does almost every blogger become a blogger ? Cause and Effect -baby - by reading a blog that inspires them to write their own - let's think of it as an intellectual virus. I learn so much by reading other blogs. I learn about life in different cities, other countries and how we/I often myopically view our world/our life as universal. I see how others deal with death - beautifully and with courage. I read insights into literature, sports, the arts, pop culture, politics and history. It takes tons of time to follow other bloggers (just like maintaining "real world" friendships) - to choose between those who become friends and teachers that you follow everyday, to those you check in on - that flesh out the enriching and diverse world wide neighborhood you choose to live in. I connect with people I WILL meet, MAY meet and will NEVER meet, but a slice of how they are glows off this screen at you - intermingled with my ramblings, meandering thoughts and eccentric humor.
We seek validation.
We hope to be known.
We attempt to connect.
There's nothing WRONG with that.
We do it every day in this thing called our daily existance. Whether it be hoping the hot frat boy or daddy beefcake at the gym smiles at us while were doing curls, or our dog runs to us first when were standing on the other side of the park, or our parents recognize that we are independent and successful, or that our boss senses that the company speeds along efficiently and successfully due to our exhaustive efforts.
WE ALL SEEK VALIDATION.
Stand on a street corner with busy traffic speeding by - don't you ever wonder what the drivers see standing on that street corner ?
Dance on a box in a dance bar at 1am on a packed Saturday night - don't you wonder what those swaying and dancing and mingling around you are thinking of you ?
Walk in to a crowded boardroom/classroom - do you wonder what first impression you make ?
I blog.
I don't look for "best of" votes, cash donations, naked pictures, hook-ups, blue ribbons or gifts.
I just blog.
I learn more about myself then I knew before I sat down to write...and willingly I share it, just hoping that it clicks with someone who needs to read those words. A hilarious story, a different point-of-view on a current event, a raw painful moment from my past or present or just a picture from my life.
I release my energy on to this computer and somewhere in another city, in another state, and maybe even in another country - someone walks away from their computer carrying my energy with them. Maybe it puts a "pep in there step", maybe it makes them cry, maybe it helps them see something clearer, maybe it pisses the shit out of them - but it's there, it's with them - despite mountains and miles - my energy.
I like to think that they do at least.
(I'll shut up now).
Monday, January 13, 2003
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
I spend quite a bit of time wondering if my parents know who I am, or even more recognize the man I've become. Though I have to admit to being taken aback (and a bit mystified) when I sat and had a lovely dinner with my Great Aunt Mae (and folks) last night and heard charming stories about what rock stars they use to be (or to use her words - "On the farm we all thought they looked like Hollywood movie stars"):
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