O, to Be a Blogger

One of the things I've noticed since I started blogging is that the whole thing is primarily about attention. I'm habitually checking my blog to see if anyone has visited, or even better: commented. You see, I'm a comment whore, I live for the comments. It's the main reason I even bother to think up this drivel. My girlfriend recently started receiving comments on her blog and in a surprised tone recently admitted to feeling the same way. It's as if one goes into blogging with the completely innocent motive of expressing oneself and soon you are waking up at 3 in the morning to see if anyone has left a new comment. But then again, perhaps I'm just speaking for me.

This develops into a vicious circle where you feel compelled to write interesting and/or entertaining posts to keep people coming back and leaving more posts. The strange thing is that it doesn't really matter after a while whether people are writing nice things or just correcting your grammar. All that matters is that someone, anyone, is paying attention.

I do my best to post as often as I can but there are many times when I sit down in front of my computer and there's just nothing, not even the usual inane stuff that I put up here. I doesn't help either that I imagine (because it's certainly my imagination to think that anyone actually cares what I write on MY blog) people shouting, "make me laugh, clown!" when I'm sweating it out to come up with something to write. Perhaps someday soon, a clever grad student will write his or her thesis about the unique psychology of bloggers. On that day we'll all learn that the whole thing is tied to not getting enough attention as children, or searching for intimacy in the relatively safe environment of cyberspace because society is becoming increasingly more alienating. Hell, for all I know someone probably already has.

The point of all this is, (damn what if there is no point....THE HORROR) that I don't feel especially put out by these feelings, I just would like to have entertaining and humorous posts bloom in my mind like so many spring crocuses. It's........ a dream I have. (editor's note: last sentence to be read with a wistful intonation).

Plus, it would certainly be a boon to my skills to be able to write without all of the parenthetical additions, mostly because I haven't mastered all forms of literary device at this point. Now where am I going with this?

Something, something... sweaty, pot-bellied clowns rubbing ruttabegas on their bums, something, something... dirty, stinking apes chucking poo, something, something else.... midgets in spandex holding hands and singing "We are the World" and........... I'm spent.