Don’t Read This

Blog No. 27

If you’ve made it this far you are either determined or stubborn (or a friend of mine who knows how difficult I can be).  As you can imagine I do want you to read this post and the whole blog as a matter of fact.  I am grateful to every reader that makes his or her way here.  Ah, but there’s the catch.  I expect that you came here on your own, or you had someone tell you about this blog (because they thought it was that good or that bad, I don’t really care as long as you read it).  Sure there are some of you who I told myself, but for the most part I am not in a place where I want to advertise my blog; at least not to my friends.

By now you may be wondering where the heck this all came from.  The other day my fellow writer, and member of the collective, Christian was very generous in posting a comment on facebook about my latest story.  (By the way you can check out part one of my story over at the Adventure Worlds blog.  The link is on the side of the page).  It was very nice of him but it made me feel uncomfortable.

I’ve spent some time thinking about that.  Here I am writing one public blog and contributing to another and I don’t want anyone I want reading it (present company excluded).  Aside from the obvious reason that I am nuts, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Initially I thought that I’m just not there yet or I hate myself and don’t think I deserve anything nice.  But that can’t be it, I’m too egotistical.  (No arguments from my friends I’m sure).  While there is some merit to that I think it goes deeper.

Part of the problem comes from the delivery system.  The comment was made on facebook.  I don’t have any specific problem with facebook (other than the thousands of annoying game requests).  I am certainly not one of those people who rail against the site (if you don’t want your info out there, don’t put it out there).  The problem is with the type of friends I have on facebook.

My go-to spot in Windsor.

A good number of my friends are old acquaintances (who I still like but wouldn’t want to bother with something like a blog) and people who are really my brother’s friends.  Since my brother works downtown and I sometimes can be found there I have become friends with various bartenders and bar owners who, while we all get along quite well, are not what you would call close friends.  I don’t want to bother them with a link (or many links) to my still burgeoning blogs.  They probably don’t care and may feel pressured into reading them and saying something nice to me about it the next time I’m down that way (they are very nice like that).

Maybe it has something to do with being a prophet in your home town (or something like that, I forget the exact phrase).  To all my long time friends (the ones not already involved in these blogs at least) am already know as someone or something.  They may look at a facebook link to something I wrote and scoff.  If I were at a place where I had tons of followers and likes, or if I were published or something then I may stand a chance in swaying their already constructed views on me, but again, I’m just not there yet.

In reality (and not my fractured mind which is evident in the above text) it all comes back to me and my own perception.  I am not confident in these blogs or my ability to continue to write consistently or with any competence.  There are some people from the above groups that I have told about my writing.  I did it in person during a conversation which led me to believe the person in question may actually be interested in this blog or the other one.  I also filled the suggestion with qualifiers and self deprecation so that if by chance they did decide to check out my writing and they hated it, I had already warned them.  It may not be the best way to get an audience for your blog, but I’m just not there yet.

P.S. To Christian: this post was in no way meant to make you feel badly.  I really do appreciate the comment on facebook, but as you may have read, I’m not exactly ready for that.