I kind of went on a spree with alternate identities from varying ethnic backgrounds, such as Juan Quatro the Magnificent, the last remaining descendant of the legendary Don Quixote, and a terrible street magician. And then there's the Japanese KazanInu-Mekka, which translates (very) roughly to "Volcano Robo-Dog."
All this to say, I tend to dance aimlessly around random, off-the-wall topics, following them up with the inevitable closing statement that is bound to contain some kind of arbitrary observation and begin with the phrase "all this to say."
That's because whenever I think of something of actual substance about which I might blog, the option of actually blogging about it is conveniently unavailable to me. So I usually condense it into a micro-blog and stick it on my facebook as a status update, like "I blame Mario Kart for my habit of throwing banana peels out the window while I'm driving" or "I don't procrastinate at work. I delegate tasks to my future self."
No one would've guessed that these statements are but mere morsels of the feast of blog-able content that flew through my mind too quickly for me to even grasp it, much less tame it and tie it down to this webpage. The status about Mario Kart is but the echo of a fleeting monologue that digs into the effects of racing games on my lead-footed predisposition, as well as the incredible restraint I demonstrate by not throwing all my trash out the window as I drive up and down I-20 five days a week.
And while the procrastination idea may be something that you'd expect to see on one of those graphic tees by which teenagers find themselves all too amused these days, it was actually the tail end of a conversation I had with my inner monologue about what I would actually do if I were able to communicate with the past and future iterations of myself.
The truth is that there is a journalist inside my head, sitting on a wooden crate in a dimly-lit room; an old-fashioned typewriter sitting atop his lap as he endlessly punches away at the old creaky keys - a 30-page discourse on every thought that passes through his tiny, imaginary world. Seldom does he ever publish an article, though; and when he does, his vision is too blurry and his memory too faint to dictate properly the essay to my antsy fingertips.
The posts in this blog serve two purposes: firstly, a method of record-keeping so as to provide a means by which I may look back and accurately assess my progress toward my goals, and secondly, my own entertainment. When ideas never make it to this blog, but are instead thrown off-course into the sea of collective information that is proprietarily owned by Mark Zuckerberg and his evil empire of soul-stealers, they never live up to their true potential, and usually wind up serving the exact opposite purpose than that for which they were intended: they provide records of times in which I was either too busy or too distracted to actually write something substantial, and they provide entertainment for others. I'm not too worried about the second part, but it's the first one that gets me.
All this to say,* I need some way to put ideas down on paper on the fly, in such a way that I can remember the ideas as they were when they first hit me, while not taking more than a few moments to write them down. Then once every couple weeks, I just need to vomit them all down in this blog and then edit the post to make it something that's interesting enough for me to want to actually go back and read one day.
Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I guess I'm already using facebook as that always-accessible idea-jotter-downer.
Huh.
Looks like now all I need is some kind of routine to get myself in the habit of going through all of my old facebook posts and saying "What was I thinking when I wrote that?" (...which is actually something I already think to myself pretty frequently. Like when I read my status from last night: "Dude. Big fights make for great make-up sss...shopping.")
So it's settled. I hereby commence Project RoboDog. Phase 1: make a point to update my facebook status whenever I am struck with a thought or idea about which I would most likely blog if a computer was in front of me at that moment. Then, every Friday, review my RoboDog posts and draft an actual blog post about the ideas they represent.
I didn't blog at all in May, and there were so many times I wanted to. We'll see how June goes. Facebook Fridays, here I come!
-R.
*You had to see that coming.
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