Last week, I came this close to canceling my TypePad subscription and shutting down the blog. I'm not canceling just yet, but I'm almost there.
It's not a money thing; however broke I am (and I am very, very broke), I can still scrounge $8.95 every month to keep the blog.
It's not that I don't have time to blog, either. Aside from the occasional happy hour or splurging on a $15 movie ticket, I've sacrificed almost all traces of my once vibrant, adventurous social life (another consequence of my hand-to-mouth, middle-class poverty). In the absence of shopping and partying, I have loads of time to write.
The problem is that I don't have anything to blog. Or anything I can blog. Or any desire to blog.
I won't blog about politics because I'm politically burnt out. Bringer-of-change Obama is, so far, not changing much. Watching him win the election last November was like taking 5 hits of E at Disneyland. But each day since the inauguration has felt like the morning after taking 5 hits of E at Disneyland. My serotonin receptors are shot and I can't help feeling that the world is as bad as it's always been. Nothing will never be that good again, at least not without more E (or another election), and the local dealer has changed his pager number. I'm glad we didn't wind up in a K-hole (i.e. elect McCain), but I wish for some reason to be optimistic about the state of the nation—and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride unicorns.
I don't blog about my personal life because it's, well... personal. Life is not reality TV and no, I don't care how many times you went to the gym today, so I'm not going to waste my time and yours by twittering every time I take a shit.
I can't blog about video games, comics, or movies anymore because I signed a contract to brand-manage video games at DC Comics, a company that publishes comics and licenses characters to movies (not to mention that DC is owned by Warner Bros., which is in turn owned by mega-corp Time Warner, so given the incentive, HR could probably indict me for conflict-of-interest for brushing my teeth left-to-right instead of right-to-left). Last year I worked on a book called Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back; this year I'm prohibited from ranting about pop culture because I'm choked by a corporate gag order. Fate has a twisted sense of humor that way.
I can't blog any of the incredibly brilliant comics art that various artists have produced for me over the last year, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who didn't skim the previous paragraph.
I won't blog about food because I firmly believe that describing food is like describing sex; the only way to enjoy it is to try for yourself.
I can't blog about my boy-band screenplay because doing so would devalue the intellectual property that I'm working so hard to craft.
I can't blog about my exciting travel plans because, my honeymoon aside, I have none—and my honeymoon is personal, so don't expect me to blog about that come June, either.
I can't blog about sports because, try as I might, I just don't care.
Strip away all the personal issues, politics, popular culture, and food, and what can I possibly blog about? I honestly don't know, and to be honest, I don't care anymore.
Five years ago, I met an editor from High Times at another banal film festival after-party. I gave her one of my first homemade business cards, introducing myself as a "humble wordsmith."
Reading the card, she asked, "Do you have a blog?"
When I told her that I did not have a blog, she dismissed me as an amateur. Surely I wasn't serious about writing if I didn't have a blog. It took a couple of years for this networking misfire to needle its way deep enough into my insecurity to force me to start this blog, but eventually it did just that.
But that was five years ago. Perhaps, in those days, it would have distinguished me to blog about my bullshit. Back then, blogs were relatively scarce, ergo they had more value. In 2004, I would have been smart to blog aggressively, daily even, to effect a professional output.
Today, everyone has a blog, and I might be more distinguished by not blogging.
I think of time spent blogging—even now!—as time when I should be writing something else, something that will bring me some of this money stuff that I never seem to have. You could cite the Diablo Cody case as an example of "from blogging to Oscar gold," but I'm not a stripper, so among other attributes, I lack the exciting nocturnal anecdotes that brought Ms. Cody her (admittedly deserved) fame.
I mean, really, what is worth my time (and yours) to write about? Apart from renouncing my pledge not to blog about my personal life, I'm really at a loss. It's easier and more sensible for me to just post on Facebook or Twitter as I come across links and stories of interest. That way, I don't give myself a panic attack trying to process the political miseries of this American life; I don't waste my time writing about nothing (and worse, writing without getting paid for it); I don't risk the wrath of a spanking by my corporate masters, who have purchased my soul at the bargain cost of an embarrassingly low hourly wage plus health insurance.
You may get the sense from this post that I'm not very happy. Well, I'm not. Make no mistake, I'm very happy with my personal life, and I like to keep it that way, which is another reason not to blog about it. But I'm not happy about where I'm at with my income and career prospects, and there's a goddamn fire in my belly to do something about it, and when I put it all in perspective, blogging is a superfluous effort.
For anyone who has kept reading until this paragraph, that means you shouldn't expect to see me post more frequently. If I do post, it will only be a procrastination, a moment self-consciously wasted to relight the coals in my belly furnace.
I'm sorry if you enjoyed my previous posts and you think it's a shame that I've no motivation to blog. I think my writing has value. I think this blog does not. Another month's rent is due on the 1st, and free doesn't pay the bills.
Comments