It’s been over two months since I last wrote anything. Not just in my blog, but anything including anywhere. The reason is, I got told no one wants to read about my boring life. Even if that’s true, you ought not to run around telling people that, as it tends to be hurtful. But I got to thinking about some of my favourite blogs – Feeling Funny, Snoozing on the Couch – and realized they are just about someone else’s boring life. How about John Steinbeck? Can you think of a better writer, he and his Nobel Prize? Most of what he got famous for writing about was the Selinas Valley in California where he lived, and his books were filled with characters derived from his friends and neighbours. Most of his early books and stories occurred in places he could see from his kitchen window, with the notable exception of the beginning of Grapes of Wrath which starts in Oklahoma but moves on to Selinas later. I always sort of thought of this blog as something of a diary, maybe something my kids would read later to know me better, since I’m such a crappy communicator normally. Maybe they could read exerts of this at my funeral, that might be fun. Well, this is my boring life and I’m paying to maintain this domain on line, so I’ll keep writing about it. Besides, what else do I know to write about? You probably don’t want me writing about your life, boring or otherwise.
What I really wish for is that whatever I write about is relatable. If I was Spiderman, and I was swinging from a web in a dense, urban setting catching criminals, I could write about it, but it wouldn’t be relatable to anyone. It would be escapist fantasy, held together by a suspension of disbelief. I mean, the premise would be far fetched, but as long as we all agree not to point out that the story contains a million glaring absurdities, we could just enjoy the ride. I got over comic books early in life. I used to read Superman, but one day I bought a Superman comic that was so stupid my brain snapped in half trying to suspend my disbelief. What happened was Lois Lane’s house got blown up and Superman arrived just in time, caught every little fragment of debris and reassembled it so fast that Lois didn’t even notice her house had just exploded and Mr Spandex Alien had superglued it back together. Huh? You can’t even ask a 10 year old to agree to that bullshit. Like she didn’t even notice her vase had a new crack in it? Right away I started wondering if Lois had her arm blown off, let’s say, and how fast you’d have to do reattachment surgery for her not to even notice?! Good God I hope the guy who wrote that quit his comic book job and found something more suitable to do, like rodeo clowning or cleaning public toilets.
If you’re still hanging in there, thanks for reading. I think it helped to talk about all this, and hopefully I can get through this little snit and start writing normal stuff again.