Purposeful Purposelessness

Ali Smiles/Flickr

I was fretting about what to do with this blog and then, like a bolt from the blue, it came to me: you will write whatever you want.

I sat stunned for a moment after this revelation, contemplatively picking my nose. What, I wondered, did that voice mean?

It repeated, you will write whatever you want, dumbass.

Having no luck with my nose, I pulled my dainty pickin' finger out and said to it, "Seriously?"

My finger, still recovering from the horrorshow that truly is the inside of my nose (left nostril in particular), said nothing. It simply shook and wept as silent tears coursed down the smudged, sad little face I'd drawn on it in fine-point Sharpie (which also gave me the most miniscule of buzzes as my finger roamed about in my nose). I left it to its misery and drank a Pepsi.

Write whatever you want, dumbass.


Like, in a blog.

Revolutionary.

Here's the thing, though. I certainly do write personal, even emotional stuff. I seem to save that for Tumblr, if I do it at all, because Tumblr is a nice community and it feels almost like some of those folks who read my blog and vice-versa are pals who may actually give a shit, as opposed to the rest of the Internet, which is mostly just the sock puppets of one or two computer-savvy sex offender party clowns living in dank basements somewhere in the Midwest.

In general, though, I like to write about other stuff, or fiction (or I like to make jokes). Sometimes people even pay me for that writing. So I think the deal here is I won't be writing fiction, because that's one kind of writing I do that I've never been asked to do or paid to do and I'd like to get paid for that one day, so I don't want to give it away for free. I won't put much personal stuff, though never say never. I'm an emotionally unstable mess of a man, so that shit is total wild card territory. I'll save simple one-liners or two or three liners for Tumblr and/or Twitter. Here I'll be exploring dumbass, acid-flashback-inspired tangents from the depths of what's left of my brain, how-tos about everything (I'm fucking into how-tos these days, even though I never do anything), weird news, weird people... really, whatever. I don't think there'll be a common denominator. This certainly won't be a GOT-DAMN crime blog (though I actually have a new blog set aside for crime-related stuff I can't sell to an editor), but I'm not ruling that out, either.

Hopefully anyone who happens by will be marginally entertained before they really start to wonder what the hell is wrong with me and get scared. Most importantly, I'll be entertained.

It's a great, freeing philosophy, this "Blog whatever the fuck you want" thing. I wish I'd thought to do it sooner. But seriously, there's something wrong with me, so I didn't.