Sunday, June 2, 2013

The posts you didn't.


2am and I'm still awake writing this song
If I get it all out on paper
It's no longer inside of me
Threatening the life it belongs to

And I feel like I'm naked in front of a crowd
Cause these words are my diary screaming out loud

And I know that you'll use them however you want to. 

Anna Nalick

If truer words of writing have been said, tell them to me. There are many books about writing, but for me, this nails it.

Despite the page views numbers for this blog nearing the 1000 mark, I still somewhat denied to myself that anyone but like 4 of my closest friends bothered to read these posts. Having little online reaction it was easy to think I was talking to myself and the two people I direct messaged when I posted -so they could tell me if it was funny or offensive or full of errors or simply dull - in case someday I used it as a writing sample for a gig. (Hi Melissa.)

A few days ago I got a message from a friend that said "You haven't blogged in three weeks."
Someone noticed that.
I can honestly say it is because I have been exceptionally busy. I have.
But that isn't all of it.

I was at a fundraiser last week and an attractive guy I barely knew came up to me and said he enjoyed my blog. "Sometimes I don't agree with you, but it's always interesting, and I'm not much of a blog person."

Yesterday I saw physical evidence that someone I didn't think was reading this did. Nothing had been said to me, but something had been changed for my inner peace.

Suddenly what I said here mattered more. This isn't some in your face facebook post that everyone on your friends list is subjected to. People come here intentionally to hear my stories.
And they will react to my stories, good or bad.

The draft I was working on last week was dark. It was too dark. The dark part was to get to the funny part, and it was meant by me to make the funny part more funny. I keep editing it to lighten up the dark parts because to make it work I needed the back stories, but I couldn't use them in a form that was so bloody awful that no one recovered enough for the laugh.
This isn't a Tarantino movie. I don't have Travolta or Pitt to carry me past the cover your eyes scenes.

Surely by now you know you can come to me for a mortifying moment you can identify with. If not, just wait. I have so many cringe-worthy experiences. I get stuck under desks; I get spider nests in my hair that I jump around beating on my head and ripping chunks of hair out to dislodge; my skirt was stuck up inside itself just last week at school.

But in this case, to get to the mortifying moment, the one where I go off remarkably on the clueless gentleman...
To get to that I had dragged readers through some pretty ugly memories.

I hadn't posted because knowing people are reading this led to consideration of how it makes them feel.
And how it makes me feel, to know they know.


Tomorrow I will decide that I have softened violations and verbal assaults as much as one can, and I'll put it out there in the world. It's better to just write it and move on. Once I hit the 'publish' button all will have it all out of me, and I'll have the next experience, which will probably be an absurd easy reader. Or another detail of the online dating experience, in which I finally get the pictures of the 55 year old man in a speedo thong, and I complain about all the guys who simply message me : Your hot. As if it would be a good way to introduce yourself even if you did have access to an apostrophe e.
They walk in the door, so accusing their eyes...

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