Bugger. No sooner do I activate comments, I accidentally reject the first genuine one. That was in response to the hastily written post about the dogs, a few weeks ago, written purely to see how many hits I got for the word “lesbian”. Anyway, as I abandoned the experiment at 0 hits , I’m going to have to google what the word “banal” means. I’m sure it’s something really good.
*tappity*
Oh.
I do, however, like this statement from Wordsmith’s “Word of The Day”…
“How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?”
–Joyce Carol Oates, “Speaking of Books: The Formidable W.B. Yeats,” New York Times, September 7, 1969
It’s always been a bit of a strange thing, writing this blog. You’re either loved, or you’re hated. No middle ground. Nobody says “It’s OK”, or “not bad”. It’s either marriage proposals, or death threats. And, I’ve had both of them!
I discussed this in an unpublished entry I wrote just before the 5th anniversary. It’s how much this blog has changed.
Going back to the earlier days, I was pretty much fearless on what I put on this blog. After all, it was hosted on something like freeservers.com…. nobody knew about it except me, and maybe a couple of friends. I could say what I liked. The blog was some sort of therapy to me. If I didn’t like somebody, I’d write things about them in here. And it was great. The early entries (mostly now deleted) involved around an ex, who shall remain nameless, for reasons explained later.
The site grew, it got linked to, search engines inevitably picked up on the content, and it wasn’t really anonymous anymore. So, I moved. To “TonOfSpace” some time in 2001. They promised 100Mb of free web space. And I enjoyed it. Until they completely vanished overnight.
This didn’t set me back. After a couple of moves to other temporary hosts, I’d somehow started to get a following. Links appeared in other blogs. Back in 2001, I had the world at my feet. My eye operation set me up for the first full time job I’d had.
it was time to lay bricks, and set up a foundation for me to build from. In 2002, mercuryvapour.co.uk was born.
God, enough of the history. I’m boring myself now.
So, banality is what it’s came down to. Meh, I agree entirely, and have done for the past few months. It’s not possible for me to word this in a way that’s not going to sound like a strop, and an old time “Jamie storms out of whatever he’s doing because there was a comment made”. The comment, naturally means nothing, but I can understand why it’s made.
Over the past few months, I’ve not put the effort into the site I used to. There are too many reasons to list. I’ve tried to pinpoint it to one reason. It’s not possible. So let’s list them.
1. Too popular. Every segment of this site is published by search engines. By the time you’ve read this, Google’s indexed it.
2. I’m too secretive. I respect people’s privacy, and these days, if I talk about them in here, I don’t mention them by name.
3. It’s too easy to upset people when you don’t intend to. Coatesy, one of the few people I do name in this blog, commented on Sunday, “I see you slagged me off in your blog again”. No. Never my intention. I do not say anything in here I would not say to someone’s face.
4. My dad reads it. Let’s face it, I’m in a spiralling pit of depression. Back in the old days, before he knew about it, I wrote about everything. How I felt. Whether it was good or bad, I’d write it, and publish it. I don’t like doing it with him reading it.
5. The rest of my family reads it. See above. I wanted to talk, in detail, about the recent death of my great uncle, which hurt me deeply. I can’t.
6. I want to talk about things I’ve been told, but can’t. Things which I literally shed tears over this morning. But can’t. There is no longer the veil of secrecy and anonymity I relied upon in the earlier days. This is no therapy for me. I’m simply bottling it up more and more. Thinking about it to the point of exploding.
7. I have never ONCE mentioned current girlfriends relevant to the time of posting. Secrecy thing again.
8. There are only so many times you can talk about having a really big poo.
It’s official. Blogging is no longer a hobby, it’s a chore.
And, back to the original comment. That’s why my life seems banal. It’s because the non-banal stuff is kept off the site.
I’m going to publish this unedited. And then edit it later on.
(P.S. I knew what Banal meant. I just wanted an interesting opening)
Technorati Tags: banal, blogging, Death, girlfriends, giving up