blogiversary 2013

Wow.

Nine years ago, I started this blog.

That’s an incredibly long time in internet years.

I kind of want to load my posting data into a grapher to see how my posting frequency curve goes. From frequent to really really frequent, and then a long slide into almost-never.

I bet you could lay that against blogging trends and the growth a facebook and twitter and see the implosion clearly; as social media finally got a real foothold, blogging crashed and burned.

That probably makes sense. Blogging was a fad, something of an era; every fucking person on the internet seemed to have a blog for a six month period there. And then they didn’t. Abandoned blogs are the ghost town of the decade; people will tour them some day, dodging tumble weeds and spam links and stealing mementos.

Actually they won’t. Because unlike ghost towns, blogs leave nothing behind but empty hearts and minds. No blood no guts no brains at all.

There are exceptions, obviously. Great writing happened, and is still happening, in the context of blogs. No, the issue wasn’t a lack of content, it was the opposite. It was that signal-to-noise problem that chases us around the internet; when something works, really works, it has the life span of a snowflake. Perfect, brilliant, ephemeral, and then gone, lost in the waves of its own success. The sheer mass of irrelevancy and stupidity swamped the goodness and buried it.

But you know that. And anyway you’re not reading; who reads blogs anymore?

I was trying to figure out where to start in this update. Where am I now, and where was I last time I actually used to write about it?

Last time I had double-digit updates in one month was November ’09.

Last time I broke 20 in a month was january ’07.

Stats for 2011: 32 updates.

Stats for 2012: 8 updates.

So you can see where I sort of abandoned the idea of talking about myself on the internet. I’m pretty sure that corresponds to various life events, though I frankly have neither the desire nor the strength to try to correlate it.

Bottom line is, my life’s been complicated, but it the worst, most trivial and tedious way.

Long time readers (I don’t know if that’s plural any more) know I’ve been through some incredibly painful crap the last few years; to the point where I got really self-destructive, made really bad choices, nearly lost my job, and wrote incredibly well.

This current wave isn’t like that. In the last couple years, it’s that shoelace shit; a job that just keeps getting busier, kids having various breakdowns, family schedules of unimaginable complexity, financial troubles, health issues (mine and others). It comes down to the minutiea of the ordinary: too much to do, too little time to do it.

And I’m getting old.

in November of 2011, I turned 50.

Ok, I know, 50 looks good on me. The other day, a sexy MILF in a Peets coffee addressed me as ‘young man’ (there’s no way she’s more than my age). I can still get away with dressing like a teenager – skinny jeans, slouchy beanie, combat boots, tee-shirt over thermal. And it’s not the grey – yeah, the beard is largely gray now, but gray in that steely way that looks weather-beaten from hard riding. And I’m at the lowest weight of my adult life; from a high north of 250, I’m down around 210; for the first time ever, I weigh what it says on my driver’s license.

No, the age is on the inside. I feel it in my fucking joints. My shoulders tend to ache now, and my knees can’t take as much pounding. I can’t drink anymore (it just makes me sleepy and gives me a headache); there’s gin in my liquor cabinet that’s been there wince – well, I was drinking dirty martinis with dark-haired girls when I bought that bottle. I fall asleep too early and sleep like crap these days. And my eyes – I carry three pairs of glasses with me now, far, near, and dark.

Boring, right?

Fuck you. I’m still angry and dangerous, and I absolutely will do the wrong thing to you given half a chance. You still should not trust me with yours wives, your your girlfriends, your sisters or your daughters. The difference is, I’m a little bit smarter and move a little slower.

What I won’t do is get old gracefully. I can’t seem to avoid getting old, but I can avoid acting old. I drive like I always have – get out of my fucking way, you – I ride motorcycles, I scuba dive (deep), I go out of my way to do the more dangerous things. What age tends to bring to this is only that I now think about how long recovery will take before I go do something (sorry, honey, I’m not 25 anymore).

I’m not afraid of being an old guy. I just hate having any limits placed on me, you know?

0 thoughts on “blogiversary 2013”

  1. Harrumph! Thanks for the posting my friend. I am right there with you; I was never the blogger you are, but I have much the same response. I am a few months younger than you, and most of the time I don’t feel 50, I feel great. Then there are other times when I wonder where the time has gone and why my joints hurt and I can’t run as fast or walk up a steep hill. A part of me says that I just need to XYZ and then I’ll be right back in the game. 🙂

    Enjoy life, it can be fun; it just needs more maintenance now.

  2. FWIW, happy 9/50. Points scored for time served.

    Sometimes life’s better and happier off the internet. I hope yours is.

    1. Oh, it’s not that I’m ever off the internet anymore. It’s just that writing and I have a rough relationship at the moment. I’m doing better with a lens than a keyboard, creatively.

      Smooches back at, ya, love.

  3. Maybe there’ll be some sort of renaissance of blogging? Maybe blogging will come back somehow? (Because Facebook kind of seriously sucks.) An interesting project would be to research the old blogs/bloggers –where/who/what are they now, and how did the process/act of blogging effect this transition?

    ***

    “Iconoclasm”

    Old gods.
    Their brittle splintering bones
    litter the unhallowed brine of this beach.
    Glaring fossils, they shriek toward the sky. Defiant.
    Bewildered at dying.

    I see the gods driven from the flaming groves,
    and I hear the oracle scream and strangle on prophesy.
    I know that it is never enough,
    fleeing to the edge of land;
    the loss of faith demands an extinction.

    The waves are eternal, relentless, indifferent.
    The vines of Bacchus wither, writhe dying,
    in the keen saline sting.
    The maenads drop dancing,
    shrink bleached on the sand,
    astonished forever to die by the sea.

    It is only old lovers calling drunk in the night,
    voices shaking,
    desperate in parodies of old arrogances,
    that move me as the tides are moved
    to scour imperviously these discarded gods,
    turning tawdry flesh to the pale perfection of bone.

    The slow dissolve of calcium,
    icons into sand and salt.
    Is there grace for the old gods?
    Blanched fragile and white and endlessly baffled,
    they howl in resistance, fading away.

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