There are some things that I am good at – by my own account. Others who’s opinion of me is good have weighed in – agreeing with my position on myself. They are allowed to have a high degree of credibility. Despite my high opinion of myself I must admit that there are things that I simply don’t shine at. In fact there are activities when compared and contrasted to the prowess of others; my skills are paler than my skin color.
I learned this morning that blogging is one of those activities. Now this is not to say that the Trifling Blog is not a worthwhile read (at least for the author), but I happened on the Euripides of bloggers this morning, and compared to his craftsmanship and the complexity of his bogification (blog-a-factsione in Italian) my writing truly pales. One could think of my blogging like an average day in Dayton Ohio.
Oh what a dizzying fall it was, to have met terminal velocity falling off my own pedestal. The ground was not in the slightest bit yielding. Everything about this Epiphonic moment was harsh and cruel, cold, calloused and a whole bunch of other words. In short it scared the bejeebers out of me.
As is often the case, inside the pain was a lesson. A lesson about gravity, a lesson about falling and a lesson about the very nature of blogging and what makes it compelling. It seems that it is not just the writing of the blog that is important. It is about the heat created when you attract regular commentators who are dedicated to proving you wrong on all counts. This is where the feathers really start to fly, where the dust is kicked up. It’s better than Micky Roarke in the Wrestler. Better than Afro Samurai.
Blogging in its purest form is a shit storm. The real professionals wear pajamas all day. They live in glass houses and they surround themselves with piles of “skippers” these are the stones that we collected as kids that “skip” when you frizbee them across the water. The real-deal professional bloggers skip a stone across their blog and wait for the ripples. Pretty soon the kids on the other side of the lake start skipping stones back.
Substance only counts for minor points. This is an important concept. An hour into reading this blog dealing with some fairly topical and potent political material, I realized that no mention had been made for almost 20 minutes of the topic at all. Rather, it became a stone throwing contest over the use of a single word in the language. The word was “impish”. So was the dialogue.
Salvo after salvo, personal assault after personal assault, thinly veiled insult after thinly veiled insult. God it was fun reading. I felt so morally superior to all of them. Me and my little blog that nobody reads.
It was at this moment that I decided to create an alter ego for myself, so that I could aggregiously comment on my own blog. Taking the opposing point of view on any subject, and calling myself all kinds of names.
So in conclusion, I look forward to the ongoing dialogue with myself. I can only hope that I don’t loose the argument. I hope I will continue to learn from the masters. Perhaps one day I can wear my P.J.’s all day and smell of cigars and sardines (I made that last part up).
Perhaps one day….I will arrive.