World's worst blog entry, part 2

Where were we?

I think it may be best to continue with the notion of getting one’s jollies by the mere acts one performs, not from expectations that those acts might eventually lead to enjoyment. It’s not merely taking the easy way out, it’s wonderfully pragmatic. I’m not suggesting that one should refuse to sacrifice now to achieve larger long-term goals; I’m suggesting one learn to enjoy the sacrifice so it doesn’t seem sacrificial, and don’t build too much expectation on whether the long-term goal will actually bring enjoyment. (It may or may not, and if it does, enjoy it then.)

Show, don’t tell. I’m telling. That’s all that’s happening here. This is not exemplary writing. However, for those who don’t like to have to pay attention—and let’s face it, that’s a pretty significant portion of the population we’re talking about—this pedantic summary may seem the only part of this drivel that they can handle. (No offense. Oh wait. We’ve already covered how whether I mean offense or not is immaterial in light of how it’s you who must choose to be offended. I recommend you choose to not be offended, if you can.)

If you’ve seen the movie Bull Durham, you may recall the scene where catcher Crash Davis (pre-Waterworld Kevin Costner) offers advice to the batter to not dig in too deep in the batter’s box, because, regarding the pitching of Nuke LaLoosh (pre-activism Tim Robbins), he notes, “I don’t know where it’s going. I really don’t.”

That’s often what I could say about these essays when I start them.

Let’s turn this on the audience. Won’t that be fun? I must take into some account, when composing these things, what the reader is likely to think in response. Mostly I am concerned the parts that are (in my mind) obviously sarcastic will have been a bit too subtle, and that I’ll come off as an uncaring berserker. It’s not that I am worried about being seen as an uncaring berserker—because, heck, some of the time, to be fair, I probably am—but the audience to which I suppose I must be trying to appeal (at least subconsciously) is not those who would proudly declare themselves to be uncaring berserkers. (The occasional berserker or sheepishly uncaring, sure, they’re fine.)

Sometimes I have a mild intention about what I want the reader to come away with after reading, but rarely am I trying to be persuasive, so with many of these I am just throwing out some anecdote or silly rant or random thought with more-or-less the express intention of seeing what the readers will make of it. Or maybe I’m full of crap. Either is equally likely.

Regardless of whether I’m attempting any level of manipulation or seeking extraordinarily mild controversy, the opinion I hold of this transaction is this: I cannot control how the reader will interpret what I say. I can explain something down to the most mundane level in an effort to attempt to make clear my thesis, but the communication works equally on both the part of the writer and the reader, and the reader brings to whatever I say his or her own experiences and prejudices and sense of humor; I cannot anticipate what those are in all possible cases. Nor would I want to. Still, for example, when I quipped obliquely about suicide in part 1 (and I was encouraging that one not kill one’s self in the allusion), if you felt uncomfortable in some way, the reaction was yours, not what I elicited. I won’t begrudge you for having your hang-ups if you won’t blame me for unintentionally poking at them.

I suck; you suck. Let’s change the alphabet. (That last part is an inside joke for my own amusement, but for fans of George Carlin’s A Place For My Stuff album, that’s from where it comes.)

Where were we? Oh, like either of us cares. Perhaps you enjoyed reading this, perhaps I got some modicum of enjoyment out of having provided it for you to read. I’ll try to convince myself I did on my end. If there’s nothing tomorrow, then you’ll know I didn’t break the habit of not enjoying it. I won’t have considered my time to be sufficiently idle. And that won’t be your fault. But if there’s nothing here then, I refuse to feel guilty about failing to provide you with it; it’s not like you can’t find some other way to pass the time. This is the internet, for crying out loud.