Wednesday, January 30, 2013
THE ART OF BLOGGERING LIKE A BLOGGERER
"Bloggering is the magicalest!" – Katy Perry
Now that I'm a bloggerer, everything is so much vivider and more excitinger! Tastes taste tastier, smells smell smellier. It's like my eyes are open, WIDE open, for the first time!
But why does bloggering make me want to go sit in a really dark Mexican restaurant and drink margaritas (on the rocks with salt) and eat chips (with the green tomatillo salsa) for a few hours in a row? Is it because bloggering (unlike blogging – yuck!) is casual and multi-locational and distracty enough that I could be bloggering the whole time I'm using tequila to elevate the joy levels in my blood to all-time highs? Or is it because I can blogger my whole experience in said dark Mexican restaurant -- mostly by taking artful vintage-camera-app shots of my third margarita -- and thus feel busy and productive for the first time in weeks?
Is it the darkness that beckons me, or the thought of bloggering in the darkness, drunk, while stuffing my guac-hole full of guac? Does it just feel right, to carbo-load while also slipping into daytime alchoholism and also crafting something roughly akin to the single most illustrative Yelp post in the known universe? I've always wanted so badly to be a multi-tasker.
Or maybe I just thrill to the thought of NOT going to the stupid gym today, and instead getting really sauced and then stumble-walking to the elementary school to get my kid, and (bonus) she's still young enough to believe I'm just in a superfuckingexcellent mood (not drunk!), and also young enough to believe that a sudden-onset stomach virus (not a sudden-onset bloggering drunkiness!) forced me to kneel and vomit in the bushes.
Yes, yes, I know. It's not funny anymore.
But it's only not funny because I broke the bloggering rule and went into excessive detail -- like a blogger (ew) would! I slipped out of my newfangled bloggerer mindset by accident. Fuck me! If I were at a dark Mexican restaurant pouring tequila into my face right now this never would've happened.
11:55 AM
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
ON BLOGGERING
I didn't accomplish shit today. Maybe I need to start bloggering again. Not like the old-timey blogging of yore, which required taking long, cold stares at your own soul and then sighing deeply, and then forming those deep sighs into clumsy prose.
No, I need to partake of the newfangled bloggering these whippersnappers are doing. The newish bloggering is less like scribbling in your unlocked diary (Hello! Read me, read me!), and more like talking very loudly to your imaginary friend on a busy city street (Brussels sprouts do not have vitamin E in them, Lucille. They're a goddamn Cultivar!). I like talking loudly and I have tons of imaginary friends, although most of them are no longer speaking to me.
Theoretically, with more bloggering, I can remind myself of my "voice" as a writer. It's important to have a very strong "voice" so that, when you send your (theoretical) manuscripts out to the publishers, they have that haunting sensation that they've heard your very distinct (Chillingly distinct!) "voice" somewhere before. And they have! They read your stupid blog once, because you tweeted something profane that was retweeted by some jack juice with 5 billion followers.
This confusion might lead them to confuse your "voice" with "the voice of your generation" – which is actually Mariah Carey, I think, or that lady from the Progressive Insurance commercials.
Blogging is distasteful to me, because I'm not all that interested in writing about my life at this exact juncture. My life is at once far too pleasant and far too unpleasant to discuss. The pleasant things (living with children, dogs, husband) don't typically make for good blogging. No one truly wants to know about how delightful your kids and your dogs and your husband can be sometimes. OK, sure, I don't mind reading about other people's children and dogs and husbands occasionally, but only if I can also gaze at beautiful professional photographs of those kids and dogs and husband(s) as they, I don't know, vacation as a family at a resort that I can't afford? But only if one of the kids gets a stomach flu while at the overpriced family resort, and subsequently vomits all over the quaint restaurant and the gorgeous little seaside hut pictured there, and then only if the writer describes it all in graphic detail, in order to illustrate fairly and realistically just how frequently young children try to a) kill you with the superbugs they drag home from their second-rate daycares (or in this case, lick straight off the airplane tray table of a second-rate airline) and b) ruin everything, especially really expensive vacations paid for by glossy magazines. Naturally, though, the feature would end with a reminder that kids also c) make everything better (after ruining it all) by being clever and delightful for a minute or two, and keeping you distracted from your own mortality for an additional minute (which is exactly 3 more minutes of pure joy than you ever experienced before you had children).
The unpleasant things that I might blog about (trying to write and sighing deeply instead, trying to be friendlier and more engaged when surrounded by small people, dogs and husbands all the time, trying not to eat carbs and growing immediately faint and then needing an emergency custard-filled doughnut to adjust plummeting blood sugar levels) don't make for good blogging either, thanks to their close resemblance to a Cathy cartoon.
Instead, I should be bloggering about these things. Bloggering is short and sassy and to the point and as long as I throw in enough Instagram photographs of adorable dogs and giant custard doughnuts (with pop-up maps to nearby doughnut restaurants) and photos of me, on the floor, having fainted after taking three hours off my usual carbo-loading schedule, I will be perceived as edgy and modern, even though I'm blobby and archaic.
Bloggering is pure magic. I think that's a Katy Perry lyric, but it's still true.
4:30 PM
