9.28.2009

It's Monday, the Arctic Monkeys are on, and I'm eating green seedless grapes.

I'm really sad that I haven't been writing as much.

Honestly.

It's a awful truth that when you're getting paid to write, writing for free suddenly loses appeal. Even though I haven't actually had anything published yet -- a fact that continues to befuddle friends and family alike ("What the heck have you been doing for over a month??) -- I've spent most of my days on the ground doing prep work, preparing stories for the launch, training and editing.

Needless to say, the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of a computer screen. But there's such a satisfying release that comes with personal writing, as opposed to reporting and story writing.

I'm realizing this more as I read the insane collection of essays by Chuck Klosterman in "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." This guy combines the hilarious and opinionated story-telling of David Sedaris with the clinical insanity of Hunter S. Thompson. Right up my alley.

But the point is that most of his essays are late night rants that he wrote down. If you've read this blog long enough, you know that I've had my share of opinionated rants, many of which came during the months leading up to the election. I eventually decided that it was better for my readers -- and my employability -- if I stopped being so opinionated and just presented facts and remained fairly objective.

What's the fun in that?

Reading this book has made me realize that there is inherent value in hearing/reading some guy rant about everyday life, making outrageous claims -- like that the Lakers vs. Celtics rivalry in the '70s can be used to describe everything about human life or that soccer is a sport created by and for outcasts and should be banned (two actual claims in Klosterman's book) -- and backing up with creative, though sometimes faulty logic.

Now I'm not sure I can start doing that again on my blog. I worry that my current employers won't be terribly happy about me spouting off insane hypotheses about politics, sports and the music industry.

I also don't plan on putting all these into a word file to be made into a book later so that I can become the next over-the-top and edgy social commenter. OK, maybe I will. But I'm not doing it for the money. OK, maybe I am.

Anyway, I guess what this rambling is leading up to is that I want to come back to writing for pleasure more. I keep telling myself that I don't have time to write up well thought out posts for this blog, but obviously this didn't take me very long.... So maybe I'm right.

Whatever happens, I want to at least get my favorite post series back running: Tuesday Guilty Pleasure. It's been far too long since you guys got to make fun of me for some really random crap that I've fallen in love with.

As soon as I hit "Publish Post," I'm going to craft a TGP for the four (maybe less?) people that actually check this often enough to notice my absence. It will publish tomorrow at 9 a.m., the exact time I'll be walking into my office, where my writing means a pay check.

Can you believe that people would actually pay me to write? I can't either, but I'm not going to say anything.

1 comment:

Chris said...

I'm glad you're pining to write again. You know very well how much I used to post (And if you forget, the ridiculousness exposes itself on the right-hand side of my blog). It's just not sustainable, and I don't even have the type of consistently demanding job that you have. But still having interests in writing personal stuff is important, especially for someone like you who has always been an aspiring writer beyond the objective scribing.

The old ways of writing--of sitting around an apartment, watching TV, and picking up the laptop next to you when something strikes you--no longer seems viable. But trying other ways might be worth the while. For example, I really hate being on the phone, more now than ever before, mostly because I just rather be doing other shit with my time. So now I only make calls when I'm traveling somewhere on foot, so that way I don't lose any time. Likewise, if you have a favorite park or spot in the city, it might be nice to bring a pad and a coffee and see what comes out of you. And if you deem it worthwhile enough, you can just quickly type it up and throw it on this sucker.

Look forward to reading more stuff, either way.

Love
chris