I'm sitting here in my office with one shoe on and one shoe off, scratching my head because Spring changes do funky things to my scalp, while reading an email. This mysterious email person is telling me "you used to be funny, but now you're just angry and bitter and unhappy. And you criticize women too much and say 'cunt' which I don't like. I think that word demeans women."
I'd love to brush this off, but she's about the fourth person to say this. True, it might help if I recognized the email address so I knew who she is, but it doesn't make that much difference. Kitty said it. Sssshe-who-should-not-be-named said it. Wanderlusting Karina said something sort of similar once. I'm trying to think who else has said it but my brain won't work.
To quote the always hot Linda from the TV show Becker, here's the thing, many of those same people had also criticized me awhile back for saying I was unhappy about certain things that are going on, but not doing much about them. Well, now I'm doing something about them. And in order to do something about them I must face them and confront them. Consequently, they are on my mind a lot. What is on my mind is going to affect my blog, obviously. The only realistic alternative is that I can close my eyes and go back to doing nothing, only now I do nothing while ignoring the constant waves of attacks that keep hitting me and others like me.
Perhaps I would be funnier if I shut my eyes and closed my mouth? I do recall that some of the best posts I ever wrote were written during a time when I was feeling completely numb to the world and just fed up with caring. I know it wasn't a healthy time for me, but I did write better stuff. I was as detached as if I were on drugs or mentally ill, neither of which is a good way to be. But it enabled me to be funny.
Ellen Degeneres has always made me laugh. When I look at her routines I notice that I never see anything controversial. I may be out of touch since I haven't watched her do stand-up lately, but I never saw her do an act where she talked about being a lesbian, or any of the issues you would associate with that, or bashed men, or even talked about just generally controversial issues of any kind. She made jokes about her mother, mostly. And they were always funny. I like Ellen. She cracks me up and never makes me feel insulted or attacked. I don't care who she sleeps with (Portia is hot, by the way) and I don't care who she votes for because she never makes it an issue.
I don't know if I can be like Ellen. I suppose if I could then I might actually get paid for this crap that I write. I mean, funny is worth some money, you know? If I were really all THAT funny then I could get paid to put the crap in my mind down on paper, or e-paper or whatever you want to call it.
Several times over the past 2 years I had mentioned feeling like I needed to just shut down my blog. That's about how long some people have been complaining that they don't like me anymore. I used to get ideas in my head and race to the computer to write them out before they escaped and disappeared into nothingness. But these days I don't feel that. I don't wake up in the middle of the night with an idea that I think is just soooo funny and a compulsion to write it down. I don't see people in traffic and feel the urge to take their photo because they are such a selfish ass and I want to post their photo and story on the internet for the world to see. Oh, just the other day a stupid selfish bitch in a Volvo did the most insane and idiotic thing to me, and I nearly hit her as I held down the horn on the steering wheel, which she either ignored or couldn't hear because she was so old. But it didn't even cross my mind to write about it. My blog didn't flicker in my thoughts for even a brief instant.
I don't know what I'm trying to say here. And maybe that's half the problem? Every time I go to shut down I catch it from both sides, with people who like me saying they don't want me to go, and people who used to like (tolerate) me but don't anymore saying they don't want me making them feel bad because I shut down after they told me how much they dislike me.
The worst part is that I actually thought I was doing better. I honestly thought I had done a decent job the past few weeks. But apparently not. Sometimes there is just no pleasing people. Once someone decides they don't like you anymore, at least with some people, you are just never going to win them back over again. Or maybe it's not that at all. Maybe its all me.
One odd side-effect of all of this blog-related drama is that I don't know if I want to go to Australia anymore. It makes no sense, I know, but it's how I feel. I feel like that whole dream suddenly has a giant dent in it and I can't smooth it out. Now before you go off saying "oh, you just wanted to go because of one person," I'm telling you, that's not so. I've wanted to go since I was a kid. I just never thought it was realistic to think that I could. And then I encountered several Aussies on the internet and I liked them, so the dream revived and then some. But lately I feel, I don't know, I don't seem to have a dream anymore or else I don't know what it is. I just want to wander and not talk to anyone and be left alone to see the sights like a regular tourist. I feel wounded, I guess. Yeah, I'll catch shit for saying that, I know, but it's how I feel and this is my damn blog and if I can't say it here then where can I say it?
Let me see if I can explain it to you from my point-of-view. Imagine you have this big group of new friends. Maybe you don't know them well enough to call them friends, but you really like them and they seem cool. Now say they are having a big party and you are invited. It's a big group of people, some of whom you have talked to quite a lot and really, really like, and some you have talked to less and like, but don't know as well.
Now, the day before the party you get a call from one of your absolute favorite new friends, and she says to you, "I heard you were coming to the party tomorrow night. I want to make one thing clear. I don't like you and I don't want you talking to me. In fact, most of my friends don't like you either and they don't want you bothering any of us, so just you steer clear of us when you see us. Understand? We don't want anything to do with you. You go hang out with everyone else, but fuck off otherwise."
Now how do you feel about that party? Are you still excited about going?
Yeah, well that's how I feel.
So, lately I've noticed a bit of a, hmmm, how can I say this, an edge to my personality. That is to say, I've been really fed up with just about everything. Also, I've been screaming at my computer more than usual. It seems that the more 'patches' they forcibly upload to my PC at the office, the slower it runs. And slow running computers really piss me off. Today my computer was so slow that I actually shouted "for God's sake, get me a pencil and paper so I can do it the old-fashioned way!"
Yes, I really said that. Loudly. Sprinkled with some creative curse words, one of which certain female bloggers keep emailing me to tell me is derogatory to women even when it's my computer I'm shouting it at.
The biggest problem with what I shouted is that I'm not really sure if there ever was a time when my line of work was done "the old fashioned way" with a pencil and paper. At some point they clearly had to actually get on a computer. But that is beside the point. The main point is that I'm pissed off and it doesn't seem to be abating. At all.
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