FACT: Blogging is pretentious.

   I think I got into blogging about two years ago. But I've been bitching about my life for a lot longer than that. I was pushed into blogging by friends. Friends who, I can only surmise, were anxious for me to stop laying all my shit at their front doors.

It seemed innocuous enough. Blogging. It seemed like a nice place to work out frustration... to work out my neuroses and also my technical insufficiencies.

But my writing never flourished as I had imagined it would. The internets is a fickle bitch. She takes your hard work and makes you sit there as you realize that your pie in the sky aspirations are just that. There is nothing special about any of us. The only special thing about anyone on the internet is some of them have an innate ability to sell themselves. They are born to braggadoche (not a word. but it was euphonious and i went with it.). They are master manipulators. That is all this world has come down to: Salesmanship.

Who can put themselves into the prettiest package?

Did I display enough internal conflict externally today? Or do I have to tell them about the time I almost got into a three way with my cousin?

Do I have to bare my soul, only to have "RipperChazzz31" comment that I'm a "... pussy who should crawl out youre[sic] mommas[sic] ass and visit the real world."?

Would that real world include you? Because honestly, I'm good.

There is no real world anymore. Real is imaginary. We create these sprawling, detailed, fictional accounts of our lives, so intricate, Dickens himself would applaud with jealously. We co-opt our imagination and make it our reality. Who knows whether or not its true... that doesn't matter. What matters is how many hits your site got today.

Man it sucks when that hit counter just doesn't move. When the only people who visit your site are the occasional wrong click, or the not so occasional hit from a masturbating cyber nerd who happens upon your post from two years ago about how hot the chicks from Battlestar Galactica are. Seriously. I have your IP address, Emir of Bhutan.

So to get your blog out there, you visit other people's blogs and are forced to leave comments and shamelessly pimp you blog without looking like you're shamelessly pimping your blog. It takes a special kind of deceitfulness to be able to do this and be undetected.

I just was never wired like that. I thought the blog should speak for itself.  I thought pithy writing and soul baring on a semi-daily basis would be good enough. It was. For about a week. Then, when people finally read my shit, and somewhat enjoyed it, I took that as encouragement.

Shame on you people. Never encourage a delusional. It's unfair and unkind to everyone involved.

To a delusional, this was it. This was the payoff. I was already a millionaire. I was pimping my ride and loving every minute of it.

Then the next morning rolled around. And I had to think of more bullshit. And eventually, the bullshit well ran dry. I'm talking dry. I was envious of the Joads.

Cut to a year later and I am a changed man. I'm less confident, more disturbed, more addled than ever. Less sure of my abilities. All things, I'm certain, that make for an eminently readable and thoroughly enjoyable blog-sperience.

Don't get used to me.