About three hours ago, just back from a run and poised to hunker down at the computer for some blogging, I spotted our cat, Tess, curled up in deep sleep on our bed.
Then, just a few minutes ago, I saw her in the exact same position and state of consciousness, only this time on the couch downstairs.
I was struck by the fact that at least she’d changed venue. In the meantime, I’d dicked around at the computer for fully one-eighth of the day, accomplishing precisely nothing.
An apt note, it seems to me, on which to mark the one-year anniversary of Lassitude Come Home, this aptly named showcase of my, um, “talents.”
Technically, this blog debuted on July 15, 2010, which means it won’t turn 1 until a week from today. But the facts are these: I haven’t posted in nearly three weeks ago, I’ve got time to write today (albeit three hours less of it at this point), “blog anniversary” is my only idea for today’s entry, and history tells me it’s now or perhaps weeks from now.
Actually, today’s procrastination was somewhat instructive, in that I spent most of it rereading all my preceding posts. There have been 45 of them, not including today’s. Divide that number by 12, and even a scantly developed right brain like mine can figure out I’ve posted less than once a week. This year, there’s been only one month in which I’ve posted as many as four times.
But the point isn’t quantity—it’s quality, right? That’s what I like to tell myself. At any rate, to best figure out what I want to say now about the 45 posts I have managed to write, it seemed instructive to revisit my very first post, which I’d inauspiciously given the unimaginative headline, “So It Begins.” (Why not something more provocative, like “Hell Yes, I’m Talkin’ to You!”)
That initial post, while brief, effectively laid out my mixed emotions and motivations. I’d written that I felt I needed a creative outlet but wasn’t sufficiently disciplined or creative to tackle long- or even short-form fiction. I’d expressed concern that, in a world in which every self-important idiot seems to have a blog, I merely was jumping on a fatuous bandwagon. I’d conceded that, while my main desire was to entertain the few friends with whom I’d shared the URL, my ego was big enough to want “a larger audience than one-on-one e-mail could afford.” Finally, I’d worried that my lassitude indeed would come home—that I’d be “too lazy to keep this thing going.”
So, first the good news, as I see it. Today’s post is proof that I’ve indeed kept at this. Having revisited my previous posts, I’m gratified and more than a little surprised to find that most of them, to my eyes, Don’t Suck. While this might not sound like much, it’s high praise within the self-critical edifice that is my psyche. I came into this venture aiming to be entertaining and/or interesting, and at very least not to bore. I think I’ve mostly succeeded at that. Not every time, but more often than not.
Now, for the bad news. In my first post I’d suggested brevity would be my friend. “Blog posts needn’t be long,” I’d written. And my posts wouldn’t be, I’d implied. The benefit to readers being that I’d shut up before anyone started begging me to please wrap it up. The benefit to me being that I’d approach posting less as work and more as play, which presumably would encourage me to get off my ass and write more often.
The numbers pretty well tell the story there. I posted most often—seven times—in the blog’s very first month. And all of those posts were relatively short. Like a good newspaper story (but tellingly unlike many of my efforts during my unheralded career as a print journalist), those early pieces said what they needed to say and then stopped. By contrast, I’ve posted only two times in two different months this year, and three times in three other months. Many if not most of my posts in 2011 have been 1,500 words or longer. There’s a direct correlation between length and frequency, as I expected last July there would be.
Does that mean I always need to write shorter, or that there’s never merit in writing at greater length? No. Hopefully I’m not kidding myself, but I genuinely thought, in rereading my posts, that some of the longer pieces were among my better efforts to date. (Others struck me as far too long.) Still, size does matter. And performance, I think, can improve with frequency. (The preceding messages brought to you by the SSSAAA (Sexually Suggestive Spam Advertisers Association of America.)
Finally, here’s the news that isn’t classifiable as good or bad, but that constitutes my third reaction to that initial post nearly a year ago. I‘d written then that I hoped to amuse, entertain, edify, or at very least not bore my friends with these writings. Several of you have e-mailed me, and/or posted comments on the blog itself, to let me know that a particular post or posts have connected with you in some positive way. I’ve been very grateful for that. Thanks for reading, and for making me feel good about what I’m doing.
But, that expressed, I’d frankly like to have a larger audience. (It’s not you, it’s me.) As far as that goes, I admit that I probably need to be less like Phil Hartman’s Prehistoric Caveman Lawyer character from the old Saturday Night Live skits, protesting that I “don’t understand your strange 21st-century ‘page views’ and ‘enhance-your-Web-traffic’ ways,” and should make myself learn how to market this blog in a way that increases its visibility while somehow keeping it at the periphery of the big, scary, potentially menacing grid, where mean people and loudmouths can and too often do join the fray. But, again, there’s a reason I call this thing Lassitude Come Home and not Welcome to My Brand. I’m no go-getter. And to be frank, I want cool, vetted readers, not just any old set of eyes. So, what I’m asking is, if you read me, please consider sharing me with friends and family members you think might like me (really like me! not to be too Sally Field about it).
Oh, please consider, too, targeting anyone you might know at The Onion or other fabulous Web or print entities that are looking to hire fresh (53-year-old!) talent to write satirical or personal essay-type material full-time, at a great salary, ideally at home in his pajamas, saving him having to commute fully clothed every weekday to his perfectly fine but unexciting job at a local nonprofit association. I’m just sayin’.
When I started this blog a year ago, my fondest hope was that doing so would push me to take various thoughts, reactions, riffs and rants that might otherwise comprise a few lines or paragraphs in an e-mail message to a friend, and expand them into readable essays. Pieces that would stretch and polish my writing skills and prompt me to take a more expansive look at some of the things going on around me—in my personal life, the country, even the world. Earlier today, as I paged through material that ran the gamut from religion and mortality to baseball and the funny papers, from terrorism and foreign policy to technophobia and masturbation, I felt a modicum of pride that, if nothing else, I got that goal off to a pretty good start.
One last thing: Have I mentioned—in passing, perhaps—that I’m a little lazy? So, if there’s a subject you’d like me to write about, please let me know. I’m not guaranteeing I will. In fact, it’s more likely I won’t, whether because I don’t feel qualified to do so, or because the topic doesn’t sufficiently interest me, or because it’s time-sensitive and I’m too slack to address it before it becomes old news, or whatever. The point is, though, if I use your idea rather than having to come up with my own, that saves me precious brain power. (Believe me, there’s little in there to spare.) And even if I don’t use your idea, you may be setting me up for a future post in which I explain why I axed it. Why, I may even mention you by name! How awesome would that be? (Don't answer that.)
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to go. It occurs to me that Tess in some ways is a great role model.
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