You know this person.
This person complains to you sometimes about their problems, and you look at them, your eyes welling with the hard-earned watery vitriol of frustration at their willful futility and you try to tell them that they're curdling the milk of your human kindness. Giving the maternal teat of your conciliatory friendship and care a proverbial* purple nurple.
You don't appreciate this.
You want to tell this person, "hey, why are you doing this to yourself?" Don't you know that you're better than this? Don't you know grown men resent being made to sound as if they're reciting an Oprah monologue preaching self-actualization?
But of course, this person is often too stubborn to stop until they're absolutely ready to. Until they hit bottom... or bottom hits them.
Often this person is in the mirror.
You're in an unhealthy relationship with yourself. You need counseling. You need to learn how to express yourself.
Again, I guess.
I am disappearing before my very eyes, and pretty much, only my eyes.
The amazing thing about gradually becoming a hermit isn't so much the lack of human contact atrophying my mind and rendering me mildly dyslexic as a typist, making me mildly forgetful of easy trivial information that would otherwise finish or fill-out a lot of my sentences, it's not even the Al-Queda intern beard I grew and then shaved, although that was kinda special, no, it's that I've grown in my infinite withdrawing, slightly lonely.
Mostly for myself though.
I like my solitude, but the old me wouldn't have needed this preamble to introduce himself to an invisible internet readership of none. He would have simply wrote, and vomited up some semi-charismatic eloquence and let it sit for someone to stumble on.
And maybe it would have been a stupid intro, or a talky one, or whatever, but it wouldn't have been hidden. It wouldn't have started like any decent story's first draft with everything you write to get started...
But this is what happens when you swallow your life.
"Be the conduit for life grasshopper, not the container; that which does not flow, clogs."
The cumulative effect of taking everything good, bad and indifferent about yourself and hiding it behind your eyes. Telling it to stay there and rot while you busy yourself with the pursuit of accumulation. You know, "try to grow up".
"Ah, so."
The irony here is that this blog is going to largely be about the everything else I busy myself with. It will be about the joyful distractions and occasional inspirations of my escapism, while I try to reclaim my life-raft and paddle back to the cruise-liner of greater society. Also, I'm going to be polishing my metaphors, because I'm pretty sure that one was at least a little awkward.
I like the excuse to clack keys which I wont have to hold up in front of the group as a part of my recidivist writer rehab. I may occasionally put up some of my crap, but more than that, I like the excuse to talk about and introduce cool stuff**, because even being moderately vegetative, I can't stomach wanton garbage and I have always thought that people horde their cool too much.
Mind you, this might be out of a lack of it. Wanting to keep that band they like between friends. Not wanting to let a thing that you've claimed become communal property in the flat world... because then what would you have left over, a sterling personality?
Okay.
It took you twenty years to find that obscure horror film, someone has to respect that struggle right?
Nah.
They don't. And I don't. And you shouldn't. This goes for the "you" not tied to external passive media as well. Life is meant to be lived, and enjoyed, and shared, and so, the first step begins.
Grab a name tag. Ignore the stale donuts and sour coffee.
Hello, my name is David. I'm a 26 year old unemployed writer from Brooklyn trying to get through his fourteenth mid-life crisis***. Trying to write again. Trying to make a living. Etcetera. I'm sure you already have a mental picture. I wont disabuse you of it. I'll only say by way of mild qualifier that I'm the coolest hermit you can find...
Unless you know one that whittles. Or makes strangely compelling art from blood and semen trapped under glass panes and soldered onto metal backing. Then, okay, fine, whatever, you could make an argument.
Maybe.
But fuck you for trying to.
I could make little hair-families from the shedding of women that sit next to me at the bus and play out what might have been in three-part dandruff puppet theater episodes brought to you in part by a grant from the Helena Rubenstein foundation, but I'm not an attention whore. Or that weird.
Really.
As it stands, I may not be the center of the universe. Nor despite the inescapable attention whoring of blogging, am I petitioning to be. But falling between the cracks gives you the gift of unique perspective, and, many times, generous chunks of free time. Where your accountant brother might be able to help you successfully set up an I.R.A, I can tell you about interesting shows you've never heard of, video games, music, books and comics you might like, and a smattering of all the rest of the shit people with real lives don't have time to waste worrying about.
So,
Let the great experiment begin!
*There are no proverbs that I know of to cite involving the application of nipple twisting, but I chalk that up to a poor memory and hobbled public school education.
**Satisfaction not guaranteed. Also, I reserve the right to blog about random bullshit and personal nonsense like everyone else.
***Is that excessive? Would 34 1/2 nervous breakdown sound more reasonable? Also, because this is a blog and not a novel I can get away with this indulgent asterisk bottom of the page reference deal- someone should have flogged Junot Diaz about the head and arms for doing it in "Oscar Wao" though.
