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Blogging about Blogging, and Other Things that Make Me Cross-Eyed

posted by mzemait2 at 11:13 am.

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So, I wrote a blog this weekend. About bats. Vampire bats, to be exact. They’ve caused an outbreak of rabies-related deaths in Venezuela. Quite sad, actually. But I wrote a meta-paranoid blog about how this is proof that vampires exist and are plotting to create the apocalypse. It could have been quite clever. But, truly, it was shit.

I didn’t write it because I was inspired. I didn’t write it because I had an important life experience that I felt was interesting or funny enough to share with you, or because I felt it would make a comment on religion, sex, or any of the other forces that drive our lives in the contemporary moment.

I wrote it because I thought it would distract me from the real world.

You see, I’ve had the real world on the brain lately. I’m not referring to the true story of seven strangers picked to live a house, have their lives taped, find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. I mean events and decisions that will determine, at minimum, the next year of my life. This is a very exciting time in my life because there is so much possibility, but it is at the same time absolutely frightful. I’m finally at the point where I’ve been setting up and going to job interviews, which in and of itself is a wonderful step in my life. But the prospect of possibly having to make a decision about my life scares the living bejezzus out of me. I also spent the weekend at my parents’ house in the suburbs, aka, that place where I have no friends and nothing to do except watch a marathon of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and nap. And when I start to think about things like that with nothing to occupy my time, the thoughts build and build and build, until my mind is consumed by “what-ifs” and hypothetical situations.

And it started to get ridiculous. My mind started to run like a choose-your-own-adventure book (which by the way, is sort of a fitting metaphor for the post-college transition). So I decided that writing a blog about a completely different topic would get my mind off matters, and result in a much better perspective. Plus, I’d have written a blog, so that’s productive, right?

WRONG. I wrote this blog, and (pun not intended, but definitely appreciated) it sucked. It sucked vampire balls.

Because I have to write about what’s on my mind. I can’t write something in an attempt to replace my current thoughts; I can only displace them onto paper or a computer screen. It is then that they take a tangible form and make sense. It is then that I can work out the problem in my head and begin to think like a rationale human being again. If I’m thinking about vampire bats and write about vampire bats, it’ll be the best damn piece about vampire bats that you’ve ever read in your life, and you can quote me on that. But thinking about your future and writing about bats is just stupid.

It’ll drive you … batty? Hmmm?

When I write, I need to let whatever’s inside of me at the current moment pour out. Normally this results in something humorous, since I’d like to think I have a sense of fun and joy pumping through my blood usually, and I constantly want the surreal situations I have bouncing inside my twisted mind to become reality (if you’ve seen my Liza sketches at a Fishing with Dynamite show, you know what I’m talking about). And when I wrote about Jesus camp, it’s because Jesus camp was on my mind. And when I wrote about sex ed, it’s because I read an article about abstinence-only education and remembered how much that pisses me off. But in the rarer times when I’m overwhelmed with heartbreak, or depression, or anger, I need to let this live on paper too.

Once I puke out my mind-guts on paper, then the shaping begins. Edit edit edit, tweak tweak tweak. I know at times it might seem like this blog is word vomit glued on a web site, but I assure you I take great detail in arranging that word vomit just so. And I take pride in the writing I release to the public, so I wasn’t going to let a post laced with dumb jokes and allusions to Buffy represent me in the interweb. Which is what I decided when I took a second look at it during the editing process.

I don’t know why I decided to try to be “cute” when I didn’t feel like it, or why I wrote about bats. There were so many other things going through my head that I would have rather written about and somehow developed into an entertaining blog: how I watched SNL’s Best of Chris Farley last night, and I thought about how the funniest comedians tend to have these really dark, tragic sides to them that no one ever really sees. I don’t put myself into the same realm as these great funnypeople, but I see myself having similar characteristics, like using humor to hide pain. Or I’d rather write about my interesting bus ride home to the suburbs, where I sat next to and talked to a black man from the ghettos of Chicago who made me realize how privileged my white middle-class ass is. Or I’d rather write about how obsessed I’ve been lately with the musician Ben Lee, and how I can’t stop thinking about the significance of his lyric “And they all say that to pour, it has to rain,” which makes me think of how things sometimes have to get shitty before they get really awesome, which goddamn, I hope is true.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is, I tried writing a blog about vampires, and it was really bad.

And I hope this one was better.

Thanks, Ben!

Mary Zemaitis: I enjoy comedy. And entendres. Sometimes, Triple Entendres.