#1- What it's All About

Does running out of space on the 'about me' section make me self-absorbed?  Probably.  But what is a public, online journal but self-absorption at it's most geekiest anyway?  Why is my blog worthy of reading by someone who doesn't even know who I am?  It probably isn't.  Maybe I'll let my mom read it one day.  I'll probably have to take out all the swears then, and, of course, all the times I mention her and blame her for all my problems.  That's going to be a lot of redacting....

Here's the gist of things:
I'm just getting back into this whole writing thing after a several-year break.  I was about 3/4 of the way to a bachelors degree in English with an emphasis in writing when I dropped out.  It was partly because I had a family and needed money and partly because I didn't really like it.  While my lit profs were super-dorks that I adored, my writing ones were pretentious and lame.  I think a lot of creative art professionals... and amateurs too, I guess... and maybe even enthusiasts, or connoisseurs, if you will, are inflated with self-importance and disdain for everyone else and they still get a ton of respect and admiration and I hate them!  Um, hey, guess what, dude, I know lots of stuff too! You being good at something, or THINKING you're good at it, or even claiming to know all about it but not actually doing it, doesn't make you better than me.  It's the lack of crippling emotional problems that does! Burn!

Anyway (FYI, those kind of random tangents are going to happen.  Often)...
I dropped out of school and went to work in 2007 and haven't written much since then.  Even when I was taking classes though, I didn't feel like I was really writing what I wanted to.  It was like it wasn't my voice, but my voice squashed through some kind of desperate, please-like-me filter.  Maybe that's not true, maybe I didn't know what my voice was or how to get it from my brain to the paper back then.  Maybe that WAS my voice because I WAS desperate for good grades and for my teacher to like me.  Who really knows? The long and rambley point is: I have recently started easing my way back into writing using a simple exercise called 'free writing'.  You just write for a predetermined amount of time, just write and write and don't stop even if all you're saying is, 'this is stupid' over and over again.  It's supposed to get the creative juices flowing.  I started these free writes, and a river of creative, sticky juice (that was just a little bit bitter for some reason) exploded out all over the place... you know, like ejaculate from a penis (it's what's called a 'double entendre' in the biz).  All these ideas and observations and feelings poured out and my 20 minutes of writing turned into 60 minutes almost every day.  There were several concepts I came up with that, I think, are interesting and possibly well-written enough to share, so I thought I'd slap it up on the ol' interwebs and see what happens.  And here we are.

My tentative plan is to write short posts like this every few days to help me develop the tone of my writing; really hone in on what I want to write about and how I can make it hilariouser (yes, I am going to be making up words like that sometimes).  It'll sort of be like more polished free writes, less quantity, more quality (I hope, maybe they'll be crap). I'll also post highly polished works, or final drafts, that will most likely be personal essays every few weeks.  I'm open to and hoping for some constructive criticisms.  But don't make me cry, guys, for serious.  My ultimate goal is to have these essays published somewhere that isn't of my own making, you know, like a magazine or something.  Remember magazines? Those were the days...

So there it is. My deepest, most fragile. ridiculous, gigantic dream out there for everyone in the entire world (and maybe some extra-terrestrials with amazing wi-fi) to see.  Holy shit.  Good thing nobody's gonna read this.