A Piss of Clarity All Up In Yo Grill

Cause you just a bunch of perverts.

Actually, I found myself preparing a long, LONG reply in the comments section after my first ‘Saga of Eaner’ post and decided to just make a whole new fresh post dealing with the topic at hand in that conversation.

First, let’s deal with the main criticism that its been nothing but game posts from me. Well yeah, to a large extent that has been the case. One of the things I like to do in my free time is play games. It shouldn’t come as much of a  shocker that a lot of my blog content is going to resolve around something which I spend a fair amount of time doing. I mean, I suppose I could try writing about things I DON’T like doing, but that would really just make me a less wrinkly version of Andy Rooney.

You know what I don't like? Anything at all.

I’m going to blog about things that get my attention and hold my interest. So that’s going to mean posts about games, sports, fantasy sports teams and books. It’s also going to mean angry diatribes against idiots, amusing web videos that made me chuckle and just general “Hey, here’s what’s going on in my head.” kinds of things. Whatever is getting my attention is going to be a lot more likely to be the basis of a blog post.

Anyway, this got me thinking about something…why do we blog? I mean, what is it that drives us (well, me in this case…you lot can speak for yourselves) to do this? Certainly there is more than a little bit of narcissism going on. Let’s face it…everyone likes receiving some level of attention, and that definitely includes me. Part of it is a chance to vent frustrations or anger felt towards something. Part of it is a chance to do some writing. And part of it is that forlorn hope that maybe, just maybe, somebody out there in the ether might think the same way as I do.

However, there are some things that I do plan to change about the way I go about doing this. When I first got the renewed inspiration for the AAR project, one of the lines that got my attention on the site that turned me around was to always assume that you are writing for the masses. And that’s something that I have never really done. Sure, your audience might consist of Aunt Martha and 3 stoned rejects living in a flat somewhere downtown, but if you fall in to the trap of writing with that assumption, you’re more likely to mail it in and produce crap. And you’re a LOT more likely to throw some badly formatted, horrible edited (if at all) turd out in to cyberspace…a chunk of flotsam that you can shrug your shoulders at and just mumble a “Whatever” towards.

That is DEFINITELY something that I’ve been guilty of for a long time. I don’t know how or when it happened, but I definitely picked up the attitude at some point that editing and cleaning up something that was written was just a waste of time. I can’t remember the last time, prior to this week, that I actually went back over ANYTHING that I had written to see if it could be improved.

And what I’m now realizing is that even if my entire blog audience consists of my friends, some family members, and the occasional wing nut who arrived on my blog page for reasons that I will never understand, don’t I at least owe you guys the basic respect of trying my best to clean this shit up before I expose everyone to it? So I am really trying to make a concerted effort now to go back and re-read after I’m finished with my initial draft of a post. Hopefully I can cut down on the stupid spelling mistakes and egregious crimes against grammar.

And prior to this blogging challenge I realize that I had become an infrequent poster at best. Well, that’s something else that I’m going to try to change. I’m not saying I’ll continue the daily grind of posting something (I actually wouldn’t call it a grind as I’ve enjoyed this whole project overall, but I know of a few cases where I basically wrote up what I would consider dreck to ‘get my post in’ for the day), but I will at least try to do so on a regular basis. I think that the Guild AAR can certainly help there since I’m going to attempt to make that a weekly effort for as long as I can keep it going and remain interested in the project.

However, and I can’t state this plainly enough, this is my blog. As much as I am going to try and at least produce something readable for anyone who chooses to read it, what I do produce is going to be what I want to blog about. If you’re tired of game posts or political posts or fantasy football posts or what have you, well…don’t read it. Nobody is forcing you to read this shit, and if you don’t want to then DON’T, but don’t read it and then come crying to me because you’re finding the subject matter repetitive. If you really think that I’m going to lift a finger because someone thinks I need to talk about something else…well, you REALLY don’t know me very well, do you?

Oh, and I would be remiss in my duties as an asshole if I didn’t point out the hilarious stupidity of Shaun complaining about my content on the same day that HIS web post contained 250 words talking about what he might blog about over the last 5 days of the blogging challenge. Verrrrry compelling, Mr. Guthrie. Deep subject matter there. Get your own house in order before you start complaining that I might need to vacuum, dude.