"You should have a blog"

People always say to me: "David, you should have your own blog." Actually, they don't sound so formal. It's more like: "Why don't you have a blog?" It's because I'm always spouting stream-of-consciousness type stuff about every subject under the sun, and always in a convincing tone, whether or not I myself am convinced it's right. Maybe they’re acknowledging some kind of natural writing ability on my part, or maybe they're just hoping I'll shut up and write the stuff down instead of bothering them with it.

But, because I'm sort of behind on the technological revolution I haven't done it yet. I had a MySpace page for about a week, but the "everybody is suddenly my friend" aspect drove me crazy in no time. So I deleted it. I can't even find a Google archive of it, I dumped it so fast.

I'm not behind techwise because I'm some kind of Luddite, nor due to some kind of fear of all things computer, like a lot of older folks have. Nope, with me, I just ended up working a bunch of low paying jobs where the companies were too cheap to do anything online, or I was assigned to some non-web project, or the project I was assigned to for the web took a nosedive and was trashed before it was ever published online.

And, since I'm a writer -- don't know if you knew that (although, in my view, anyone with a blog is a de-facto writer, something which peeps like crazyjohn should realize and not waste their money on graduate school for writing, especially if they do it well, which he does, crazyjohn, I mean). Since I'm a writer, I of course don't get the kind of jobs that make a lot of money, except that time I worked for an "agency," in which time my spouse was unemployed, so we were barely afloat and sort of broke anyways, so I've never had the money to buy all the things I want, like Photoshop (I'm also a photographer), web software, publishing software, and stuff like that.

But blogs are free, which is a nice service, even if they do make money somehow, because I'm a fierce defender and promoter of the people's Constitutional rights, including the right of people to write or say whatever they please, even if it's the kind of thing that will make a bunch of other people so mad they want to tar and feather you.

Speaking of agencies, these companies that produce marketing writing and graphics and stuff like to refer to themselves as "agencies" because it sounds more Rico suave and cool, I guess. Which is fine, but having grown up reading John Le Carre spy novels and a good Tom Clancy yarn (Ronald Reagan's term for The Hunt for the Red October), to me, an agency will probably always mean spook central, the CIA, the Mossad, the KGB, Mi5, or a place to get airplane tickets. What I wouldn't do for one of those agency jobs now. They do pay well, especially for writers and editors who are used to working for peanuts, though I've noticed that writers who start those jobs right out of college are less appreciative, because they aren't as aware that writers are supposed to be always broke and/or out of work.

So, these days, when someone asks me what I do for a living, I say: "I'm an out-of-work writer." That pretty much says it all, I think. Maybe someday soon, I'll be able to tell them: "I'm working on an in-depth human interest piece on the lives of the homeless. I've been undercover on the assignment for about a month now." And then, some years later, when I'm still living amongst the homeless, those old friends will be able to point me out to their companions and say: "Now that's an investigative journalist."

It'll be worth a Pulitzer, let me tell you.