IV

Last night, I came home after a fun filled Sunday and suddenly had the need to relax a little bit.  I briefly pondered selecting a new book from my bookshelf and reading well into the early morning hours.  However, I was a little drunk at the time, so I decided it would be best to forgo the four to five hours of concentration and instead, let the more narcissistic side of my personality take control.  I checked out the two blogs I have going online.  I reread my essays, marvled in my overuse of the all-powerful comma, made notes to myself on how I could improve, and called it a night. 

This morning, I was well into my routine when I decided to flip open my laptop and check the weather.  Immediately I noticed the window with my site was still up… and being a very analytical person, I searched through the traffic I was receiving, and noticed there wasnt any.  At that moment, I reflected on my decision for embracing the grotesque cliché of starting a blog… two for that matter.  To be perfectly honest, I don't know if I'm subscribing to this whole thing.  See, I started these two sites because I wanted to reach a wider audience, so I might gain some real notoriety for my work.

In other words, my essays went from Facebook, where almost no one cared… to BlogSpot, where absolutely no one cares.

Smart move Mr. Wright, this sounds like another notch in the “God Dammit Assface, Way to Go!” column.

Even the big JC was disappointed.

Keep in mind; I'm not trying to be cynical, ironic, or “edgy”.   I can’t stand people that portray themselves as such, especially when they’re nothing more than spoiled suburbanites with the keys to a hand-me-down Saab in their pocket and unsubstantiated daddy issues in their head.  What I'm being is honest.  Honest by saying that what I choose to write is nothing more than what I say on a daily basis.  The off change of it being (even remotely) interesting is coincidental.  To me, a worthwhile subject is something from which I can enjoy squeezing out at least a thousand words, and still know that I'm not padding the content.  Whether or not you find it engaging has very little relevance.

But is a blog really the correct outlet for me?  First off, the term “blog” makes me cringe every time I hear or say it.  Whenever that word comes to mind, I automatically associate it with the lowest form of writing… online celebrity gossip websites.  Just the idea of me falling under the same category as someone like Perez Hilton makes me want to hit myself on the nose with a rolled-up news paper.  I feel like an untrained terrier.

“Bad Sparky!  You shat in the living room in front of the Christmas presents! Bad dog!” 

“Bad J.S. Wright!  You're a blogger!  You’ve joined the same club as the biggest effeminate douche bag ever!  Bad writer!”

To be perfectly honest, I’d much rather go to the Henderson’s house and leave a big pile of smelly shame in front of Billy’s unwrapped Tonka truck.  It involves less self-hate and I might even be able to cop out and pass it off as art for fuck’s sake.

Secondly, who the hell actually wants to read the unsolicited ramblings of some prick they’ve never met?  Sure, there are many people out the in the writing world who pride themselves on being “Indie Followers”, but come on now.   It’s one thing to say that you're doing something, but actually doing it is a completely different animal.  Sitting down and taking the time to sift through the endless sea of websites about family trips and ignorant political speculations takes a lot of damn time.

But!  What happens when they actually find a writer they fancy?  They click the “follow” button.  That’s it. The result is a small news feed at the bottom of their screen that occasionally features the writer they found.  This system, set up by the powers that be, throws people of varying talents onto a level playing field.  It’s the ultimate fuck you to talented writers that are just starting out in this area. 

Now that the blogger has a follower, what they get in return?  They get a chronological line graph of their page views, which in many cases is zero.  This looming zero, when it translates to the graph, devastatingly resembles a flat-line on an EKG machine.  It’s a cruel joke to play on a struggling amateur writer.  Nothing discourages someone more than making the importance of their labor remind them of someone that just died.  It seems that the only way to get that heart beating is by pumping it full of meaningless gossip and celebrity up-skirt pictures.

Sweeeeeeet.

That’s the sad times we live in people.  Flash and pizzazz are regularly chosen over quality of content.  Case in point:  A book was recently published by Snooki of The Jersey Shore fame.  A book… a fucking book, with the face of society’s most recent embarrassment plastered all over the cover.  Go figure.  Intelligent and hard-working writers are all over the country.  Right now, they're struggling to create interesting and provocative character developments that fall in line with their carefully crafted storylines, and will ultimately fail.  Meanwhile, this waste of skin vomits a fifth of tequila and a Denny’s Grand Slam onto two-hundred pages, and it’ll be a bestseller next month.  This horrifying fact makes talented people everywhere collectively throw up their arms in disgust.  The next day, some of them may begin to wonder what the cost of living is in other countries.  FYI, if you tell your new neighbors that you're from Canada rather than the U.S., you’ll get a much better response.

This is what I'm up against in many cases.  Yes, I have found a handful of websites that are based on the foundation of great writing, some of which I have submitted essays and articles to.  Hackwriters.com is a good example.  However, the problem is that they don’t get the exposure they deserve.  They’re stuck in the shadows, hidden from the mainstream that is mostly reserved for entities like TMZ.

By the way, have you ever seen TMZ's TV show?  They have a surfer-type kid on there… Steven Hawking’s computer-generated voice has more personality than him. Christ.

Anyways, I guess the only option I have at this moment is to keep doing what I have been doing: writing essays that I believe are somewhat worthwhile to read and have more substance than posting grainy pictures of the latest celebrity to drunkenly stumble onto Hollywood Blvd at 2am.

Not sweet.

That, and keeping a rolled up newspaper nearby so I can discipline myself whenever I use the term “blog”.

*WHAP!*

Baaad writer. 

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Now that you know more about me, learn about the things around me:
Rusted Bolt
Voice of Others