Just today, while eating breakfast from my emergency glove-compartment
peanut butter jar* (I’ve tried to prefer almond butter, I really have, but
after several attempts the consistency doesn’t appear to be compatible with an
all-terrain vehicle that occasionally gets rained in because I’m [too lazy to
put the top up] too much of a badass to care), and informing all of the
commuters within 50 yards on George Washington Parkway that I've been looking so
long at these pictures of you, that I almost believe that they're real (which
was actually no one because nobody drives with their windows down in [a swamp]
DC in the middle of June, but just barrels along in their air-conditioned space
capsules not benefitting from my excellent taste in music), I mused on the fact
that I have not been able to write a blog post in the same amount of time that
it takes my mother to make a person.
These musings developed into a list of admonitions to future
bright young things that might be considering embarking on a blogging career,
because that was of course easier than finding fault with myself.
The list is
as follows:
1)
If your enormously witty title and general hilarious
theme is centered around the place where you live, do not move away. No matter
how hard you try, no one will ever be convinced that Washington DC is the
South, and those canned boiled peanuts that try to pass for the real thing at
the Giant are a SCAM. DO NOT BE TEMPTED BY THEIR SIREN SONG.
2)
If your most popular posts involve bad dates,
don’t let yourself be sucked into a good relationship. Nobody wants to read
about how your boyfriend brought you a dozen roses and a latte at six o’clock
on the morning of your birthday. And in fact it could be dangerous to divulge
too many details at the risk of spreading jealousy and discontent. Although
maybe you could tell them that he doesn’t eat mushrooms and jealousy would be
replaced with disbelief and solicitude.
3)
If you write under your real name – well, just don’t.
Pretend you are simply an extreme fan who feels the need to share every post
through social media. Or better yet, hire yourself as your promoter. This does
the triple service of giving you a job, making you (the author you are
pretending not to be) seem more legitimate, and preventing people whom you’d forgotten
are still friends of yours on Facebook from reading your blog and recognizing
themselves (update: we are no longer friends on Facebook). My mother always
told me I could keep a diary if I only wrote nice things about people, so of
course I never did, because I got too bored simply thinking nice things about people, let alone writing them down.
Now, as with all things, I am recognizing my mother’s infinite wisdom in this
regard.
4)
DO NOT LEARN TO COOK (see 2). Although, “learn
to cook” may be generous, considering that I don’t think I will ever get the
smell of burnt curry out of my denim shirt. Or my flowered scarf. Or my hair.
5)
Do extreme things that could be productive of
writing material. For example, in the interest of rehydrating my own well, I decided
to climb Mt. Rainier this Friday. Yesterday. **Disclaimer: If you decide to
follow this advice, do NOT read other people’s blog posts about climbing Mt.
Rainier. Upon further consideration, I fear that I might have taken “extreme” a
little too seriously.
6)
Do not start watching Tears for Fears music
videos when trying to write. You will come out of that rabbit hole weeks later
smelling like stale garlic and cigarettes with leaves in your hair.
7)
Broaden your scope of topics in the event of
numbers 2 and 4. For example, literature. What is your favorite book? Have you
ever cried in a book? I cried in Little Women. Not because Beth dies, but
because Jo doesn’t marry Laurie. That’s the kind of person I am. Although I may
not have felt the same way if I hadn’t been exposed to the Christian Bale’s
Laurie at a very impressionable age.
8)
Do not use Facebook as your main method of
promotion, because then when you get it into your head to revive your blog that
will also necessitate slipping back into the suffocating grasp of that post-modern
Hydra.
a.
That analogy is really not great because I don’t
know if the Hydra is so much known for suffocation as it is for all those
heads, but I’m out of practice and I have to go to see the Lumineers open for
U2 in concert and lament the slow painful death of rock and roll.
*I’m not sure about the syntax of this sentence. I don’t
mean to imply that it is an emergency glove-compartment. It is a perfectly
normal glove-compartment, not one of those tricky ones like they have in The
Wire to hide drugs and guns. Nor is it a compartment for emergency gloves,
because I don’t own any gloves, for emergency or otherwise. Emergency is meant to
modify the peanut butter jar, or rather the peanut butter in it, as in “open in
case of emergency.” Emergency, in this case, is “when you don’t have time to
eat breakfast,” which is, in fact, every morning. So. I guess “emergency” in this
instance is slightly misleading.
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