Recently I have been bad at the internet. I have been really bad at email* but even more than that, I have been exceptionally bad at my blog. I think maybe I have been having sort of a self-sabotage moment, something to which I am no stranger. I had my best blog day ever last month which led to my best blog month ever, hits-wise anyway. I was really excited! I was like, yea, things are maybe happening. Maybe if I write a few more relevant blog posts some of those readers that read my one socially relevant post will visit back for another fix and be like, hey, this girl is funny. Or smart. Or annoying but I can’t seem to stop reading. But then I pretty much didn’t write anything at all! I totally missed the train. Like, I saw the train coming, I heard it’s train whistle thing, it started to slow down and just at that moment I dropped a dollar on the ground and instead of being like, “whatever, fuck the dollar” I looked everywhere for it because I really needed that dollar and then the train sped off and who knows when the next one will arrive. Or, wait! This is a better comparison and maybe more realistic. It’s sort of like when I train for a half marathon (or a marathon but, really, that hasn’t happened since like 2007). So I train hard for the half marathon – but not as hard as I could because I am sort of runner-lazy and also unmotivated – and then the race comes and I do a good job! And I am having so much fun! And I am like, “yea, this is great, and if I train even harder I can really kill this distance.” So for half of the race I am running I am day-dreaming about how much I want to run the next race even better. And then the race ends and I go about my day. And then the next day I decide to give myself the day off because my legs are sore. And then the next day it’s the same thing. And all of a sudden it’s 3 weeks later, I’ve run like 5 times and now I have to try and get back into shape again. It’s like, there this is crescendo of excitement when you work towards something and then the music just dissipates and rather than building immediately to the next crescendo, because the musicians are all there in their chairs already so you might as well take advantage of them and besides, they’ve already been paid for the next two hours, you say “fuck it! Consider the extra money an early Christmas/Channuka/non-denominational holiday present!” It’s just stupid. I mean, I’m sure the musicians appreciate it but that doesn’t even matter because I just made the musicians up. In the real-life version of this story I am not actually helping anyone, only hurting myself so the story is a little more sad.
Anyway, moving on. So despite the fact that I haven’t really been writing on my blog, I have been thinking about it. I have come up with all sorts of fun things to write about. Things that I think you might enjoy reading. But I have also come up with this new thing that I am doing on Twitter which is what I was planning on writing about today when I sat down at the computer and before I got distracted talking about trains, running, and musicians. This thing is called “#ObservationOfTheDay.” Basically what I do is quite obvious. Every day I make some sort of observation and then label it with my very own hashtag! Pretty neat, right? So on the first day of observing, I tweeted, “Twitter brings me more stress than joy and yet I know I will continue to use it.” Why would I do this? Well, I will tell you.
So when I had that one really big post where I got all the hits (most of them from Belgium) it was because of Twitter. It was because I hashtagged something appropriately and somehow it found itself in the Twitter feed of a Flemmish-language web based newspaper and voila! The entire population of northern Belgium (minor exaggeration here) was reading my blog! I thought to myself “wow, this Twitter thing really does work!” But then I realized that Twitter stresses me the hell out for some of the same reasons, in fact, that I am stressed out by email and regular mail. It’s like, no matter what you do things are always being hurled at you. Sort of like when we used to play dodgeball in gym class. I hated dodegball. Why would anyone want to go stand on a basketball court and have those big rubber balls thrown them? It makes zero sense to me. Anyway, I am constantly getting emails (major exaggeration here) and lots of credit card come-ons and clothing catalogues in the regular mail. And people are always tweeting. And when they tweet, they link to articles that look interesting so then after like 10 minutes on Twitter I have like, 25 tabs open with articles I want to read. I always want to read all of the things. It’s very stressful. As a result, I don’t go on Twitter all that often which means that my presence on Twitter, as a tweeter, goes largely unnoticed. That is a problem because, as I mentioned earlier, Twitter is useful for my blog but only if I have followers or I write about something culturally relevant. I basically have no followers and I often write about nothing of consequence (this blog post being a perfect example of that) and so therefore my blog just sort of disappears into the world of interwebbery without making too much of a splash. And so, in an effort to try and fix that, I have decided that I will tweet at least once every day. (Hooray for structure!) And thus was born #ObservationOfTheDay.
So yesterday my observation was,
“Dudes look silly in skinny jeans. Therefore, they (the jeans, not the dudes) should be thrown in a pit and burned.”
And then something great happened! On only my second day of observing, I got a response! (Granted, it was from one of my few followers who also happens to be a friend of mine from high school with whom I occasionally have amusing twitter-sations, but still!) He responded with the following hilarious bit of information:
“I know a guy who had a serious finger tendon injury from trying to remove his own skinny jeans.”
So I know that finger tendon injuries are no laughing matter (my brother had one from playing dodgeball – see what I did there? Full circle, bitches – and he had to wear a homemade finger-splint for months!), but seriously? That is hilarious. And I mean, I don’t want to say that he deserved the finger tendon injury but like, if you injure your finger taking off your skinny jeans then I am left to wonder how in the world you got them on in the first place. And also, what technique this individual uses to remove said skinny jeans. As a result of finding out this information, I became immediately happy that I had started my daily observations and had observed this one specific thing, but also sad that I have gotten this far in my life without knowing that someone experienced a serious finger tendon injury from removing his pants. Better late than never, I suppose.
Anyway, observing is fun! You should try it! Also, you can read my daily observations @franklyrebekah. Today my observation involves rice pudding.
*This is nothing new. I am often bad at email.
franklyrebekah 