Loose(ned up)

So yeah, those that can do and those that can’t critique.

But one of the 3,598,805 reasons I’ve resisted blogging thus far despite participating in online forums and seeing crazy that shockingly rivaled that of my family is…do you want to guess?

No, not fear of being slagged off. Not my boring life. Not laziness–look, they are “right” but not the answer I’m looking for, ok? And since I have 3,598,802 more of these to go, asking you to guess was stupid.

It’s tone. Because frankly after years of mucking around in people’s s-e-xxx lives, I now get paid (sporadically, thank you luck of the Irish) to write copy that is “put together” to varying degrees. Sometimes it needs to read like Barbara Bush looks, all stern and hearty and This Is the Way It Is. Sometimes it can be a bit more sprightly and warm and adorable, like MTM doing Laura Petrie. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what the hell I write because by the time it gets through all the “stakeholders” and lawyers I don’t recognize it anyway.

But when I’m communicating with people who make me laugh and there are no expectations and no constraints I don’t dread writing. [More importantly, I don’t dread re-reading what I’ve written because I’m trying to stay awake or something and whoa, counterproductive.] It’s usually vulgar and run-on and messy and free and often rather mean-spirited, which (somewhat sad to say) is me, unplugged. It’s Janis Joplin meets Bob Dole, yo, and hot damn it feels good.

This is where I remember that in school I always sucked at writing conclusions and it took forever and I’d be in tears but generally triumphant by the end. Or this is where I could think back to yesterday and the trouble I had ending my “more serious” posts so that there could be a nice pithy sound-bite-y sort of wrap up.

And then I realize there’s nothing but me and the memories of my grammar school teachers holding me back from typing:

IN CONCLUSION, I’m glad there are beautifully-crafted blog posts out there; I even enjoy reading some of them. But all them sparkles, it ain’t me.*

* c KD Lang/Ben Mink