Sunday 25 January 2009

I'm Two Today!



Today, or todayabouts is kind of a special day.

Today this blog is two years old.
Two years old.

That may not seem a lot, in terms of the span of a human lifetime, but it is in terms of most things IN a lifetime.

I can't think of that many things that last that long. To be sure, I have friends who are still a regular feature of my life after twelve years, I have possessions I've had for many years indeed, but otherwise life is change.

I've lived at this address now for getting on for two years and that will make it the longest I've ever lived anywhere. This is actually the first place I've ever lived I've really felt was home. Ever.

But this blog has already exceeded the time I've ever spent working for the same company, to date. I work in a precarious sector where staff do not tend to stay for long. People traditionally burn themselves out and need to move on in a matter of months. It's a boom and bust sector, essentially. No real stability. You're a hired mercenary in many ways. The majority of companies I've worked for literally no longer exist.

And of course, it's lasted longer than any romantic relationship I've ever had. And I suspect longer than any romantic relationship I ever WILL have. Such things are purely transient features of my existence and will likely always be so.

There aren't many things in my life that one realistically thinks will last all the way through it. I've never moved into a property and thought I'd stay there forever, never taken on a job and seen it as a job for life, more as something to serve my needs in the present. And I don't ever expect romantic relationships to last for more than a few months, realistically. They are things I fully expect to come and go. If people ask me where I see myself in five years time my thought generally is 'Haven't a clue, but one thing can be said for sure. I will live somewhere different to where I do now, work somewhere different and if I'm seeing anyone, it won't be anyone I even know at this point'.

And now I'm thirty I've started to think that maybe I might actually stay put homewise in future if I can, but the rest, the rest will keep changing with the seasons.

So I guess this blog has become a stable feature in my life. Something I hope will always be part of it. Where some people do DIY on a Sunday afternoon, I do some blogging. It has that role in my life. It's the thing you work on, the thing you build up.

It's a very new medium in many ways and it's continually changing. When you first start a blog, it's not like it's an established concept. There aren't people out there who've blogged for twenty years and can tell you their life story as a blogger. There aren't people who can tell you how it has changed their lives, how it has fit into their lives, how their blog developed and what there was to get out of it. In many ways that's what you're discovering yourself.

Because it does take on a life of its own. And it involves tough decisions. Ultimately, some pretty life changing ones, potentially.

Because it depends what you want out of it. Many people do indeed just write an odd post of a few short paragraphs every few days or so and really just use it as a social tool. Just to let something out and get a few comments. And that's fine.

But you don't have to do it very long to realise that there are far greater prizes at stake, if you know what you want.

What does blogging potentially have to offer you?

Well, I don't actually want to be famous as me. I don't want my actual name in the headlines. Because then it means my life history makes the headlines. And the lives of my friends and family get drawn into it. I don't want that. My perfect life is a life where I'm relatively prosperous but can go for a drink in peace.

But.
I'd certainly like to make an impact on the world.

What blogging can potentially offer you is an amazing reward. Like a lot of things, you get out of it what you put in. And the more you put in, the more rewards you get exponentially. But if you really want those rewards, then you have to view blogging in a certain way. Ever been to one of those job interviews where they tell you 'It's not a nine to five job'?
Blogging has a similar dynamic. It offers a choice. Just like with jobs, you can just go for a nine to five job. You can work to live. Or you can work every hour God sends at a vocation.

Now early in the life of this blog, I made mistakes, we all do. Because you're just getting your head round it all. You don't necessarily appreciate the choices you'll have to make.
And one of those is- and there's no two ways about it- blogging is time consuming. Or can be.
How much time you put into it is up to you. But if you really want to make it effective, really you need to be thinking about fifteen hours a week. That's about as much as I tend to put in.
Now that might seem a lot, but if you think about it, it isn't. It's about a quarter of the time you spend at work earning money. The week has one hundred and sixty eight hours. Deduct sixty for the time in the week between getting up in the morning to getting home from work, deduct another forty eight for being in bed asleep or otherwise, deduct another five for cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc, you still have forty five hours you time left.

Allocating fifteen hours of those to blogging still leaves you another thirty or so in which to have a life.

But you need to be realistic about this. The point here is 'have a life'. What do you want to be doing in those other thirty hours?
Go out with mates, go to the pub, visit your family, go to parties, go to football games, maybe watch the TV.
And whilst you say thirty hours, you need to face the fact you may not always have that. You need to face the fact that if you take your job seriously, your job may erode time from those thirty hours.
But so may blogging. You have to face that. Success will create work for you. The more your blog does what you want it to do, the more time it will take up. Because you will have more comments to answer, you will have more blogs you need to visit. In taking on blogging as part of your life, you need to ask yourself whether you are prepared to take on whatever workload it dishes up.

Effectively, you have to treat it as you would a career. And try adopt a professional ethos towards it.

You need to consider what is important to you. And one thing you need to be aware of right from the start- because I didn't think about it, it was only subsequently I became aware of it- serious blogging is pretty much incompatible with serious romantic relationships.
You don't have time for both.
Unless it's with someone very understanding.

And let's face it, most people won't be. Most people can understand if they never see their 'partner' because their partner works all hours, or has a career keeps them away from home for the overwhelming majority of the time.



But this is different. Most people are not going to accept that you are going to come home, then be on the computer till half nine and then you're going to want to go out for a drink, so really they'll never get to exchange a word with you at all during the week. And they won't have you entirely at weekends either. Some weekends they may never see you at all. Because you do still have a social life.

And of course, one sees this with bloggers who do it more to pass the time. They find a serious relationship and the blogging tails off.

Now I'm going to be honest here. This really is your main make or break choice. Everything else in your life can be fitted in. If you are single, then you can still work a full time and demanding job, devote several hours a week to blogging and still have a full and active social life.
What you may well not be able to do, is sustain a romantic relationship long term. Not and blog effectively.
If you can find one that's compatible long term with blogging, all well and good. But you need to accept, that it may not be practical.

What I'm basically saying is that the chances are high that situations will arise where you have to make choices, making one choice will negatively effect your blog, the other will effectively end the romantic relationship. I'm serious. The chances of you not having to make that decision at some point are unlikely.

Hard choices. And it's about thinking long term. Delayed gratification.
What you have to remember is this.

If you choose the romantic relationship, chances are still ninety five percent so that in a years time that romantic relationship will be over. And then you'll go back to your blog and try pump life back into it, but it's a year of your life wasted.
Even if the romantic relationship does turn out to be something special and it does last, you'll still look back at what your blog could have been and sometimes you'll resent him/her for what they made you give up.

But if you choose the blog, you don't lose. You can't. Ok, some days you may wonder why you threw away romance because it conflicted with your blog, but if one day you find that every post you do has fifty comments and you're averaging a thousand readers a day, do you really think you'll care if you never have a romantic relationship ever again?
Probably not.

Because your blog will give you so much more than a romantic relationship ever could.
So yes, you're potentially working towards a situation where romantic relationships really will be totally irrelevant. Something you can just take or leave. If you can find one that doesn't conflict with blogging, all well and good, but if you can't, you won't much care.

And now let's look at WHY.

It's certainly changed my life. It has rendered the need for many things obsolete. Time was when I used to worry about when D eventually moved out. The idea of coming home to an empty flat. I don't need to worry about that now. There is no dynamic in my life, except when I'm feeling depressed and unattractive makes me want to share my life with anyone. No need. I have a good social life, I'm still young and pretty enough to be able to get sex and intimacy for the short term without having to shell out much more than the cost of a double Bacardi and Coke. The only reason I might want to consider wanting to get tied down is loneliness. But blogging means I never need be lonely, even in my own home.
And otherwise, I have all the practical advantages of living alone.

I can wander into the living room at any time and switch the TV on and watch what I want. I can go to bed at whatever time I choose and not worry about anyone else. I don't need to follow mealtimes or indeed, fit in with anybody else's patterns aside from me. I can come back at one AM, get myself a snack and lie on the couch semi-comatose channel surfing. I can bring back who I want, when I want. I don't have to consider anyone else at all from the moment I cross the threshold of my home.

But time was when I'd feel lonely at home alone. I don't any more. No need to.

Someone asked me a while back 'But don't you want to love and be loved?'
Do you know what?
Not really. Not any more.
As things stand, I can't see how it would add to my life in any way, shape or form. Hey, I can't stop myself falling in love, but I'm not sure being in love would add much to my life. Potentially detract from it, just as likely. I'm actually in a position where I would potentially turn down the love of someone I was in love with, because it might well not fit in with my life as it stands and where I want it to go.

So yes, the blog has become my home life. I have a good three dimensional social life and I have an online home life. And frankly, I prefer it that way. My blog is kind of like my living room and I have guests round every night who comment, so feel like they have literally come to visit. Lovely talking to you, seriously.
And whilst I have this sort of home life, I can't say any other type sounds particularly appealing.

But of course, that's really only a fraction of it. The rest of it is kind of two steps forward one step back. We have our supporters and we also have our critics.
Our critics do do us a certain degree of damage it's true, not just to me actually, but to friends and family- I've had family members harrassed by telephone and I've had my blog mentioned at a family member's place of work, I've had some fairly unpleasant things written about me online, none of them true and if you even knew the half of it, you'd be appalled.

But I think their online antics fail. Largely because they direct traffic this way and any sane person once they've read this blog can see the wood for the trees and can see what REALLY motivates these people.
To be honest, if people want to direct traffic this way, let them. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

This is, of course, the dark and unpleasant side of blogging.

But the positives.
Those of you who come and comment, yes.

But time was when I only thought of how many comments a post might get. Now, I don't so much. It's a bonus. And I write different posts now for different reasons.

For example, the post below. I do one every Sunday. Purpose? Well, that's social blogging. It potentially draws in ordinary everyday bloggers who aren't interested in this blog as such, but might return and might get interested over time.

And I write more personal posts sometimes, just to give a bit of real life perspective on things. The personal is political after all. And a lot of the time, those posts are written more for the regular readers than wider readership.

But they aren't the ones I get a thrill writing.



Some posts I write, I really am filled with electricity when I press publish. Because I know they have it in them.
They are the posts I really blog to write. Sometimes they get comments, sometimes they don't. I don't expect them to get comments particularly. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised when they achieve the added bonus of being successful commentwise.

By successful I mean this. This blog has actually earned itself a nice little niche in Google. I guess the more hits a blog gets from Google, the more Google pushes the URL up the list for fresh searches.
So nowadays, I've got used to the fact that a strong post will get read and will get linked to from surprising places.

And that's how I judge a post these days. Whether it gets linked from elsewhere and how many links it gets. A post that gets linked, is a successful post. One that doesn't, isn't.
And I suppose that's a slightly different way of looking at it to the way I once did. But yes, that's how I judge posts these days. By going through sitemeter and seeing the origins of visitors. If it's not a link I was aware linked here, I go through to see what the link is.

And the numbers here are going up, perpetually. This is the joy of blogging. This bit, the bit that matters long term, can only get better.
Two post I wrote recently I knew when I pressed publish 'You'll get links off these. Within the week'.
Occam's Razor and The Submissive Male.

I knew they'd do well. I knew when I pressed publish they'd hit Google and would get linked from comments sections, or get linked on blogs and sites discussing those issue. I didn't hope. I knew they would.
And they did.

And sometimes one can just be- flabbergasted. One wants to cry with euphoria. I think I've already mentioned one of my posts got linked from the letters page in the Financial Times (odd, because it wasn't a financial post), but only this morning I received an e-mail telling me a post of mine had been reviewed on a site dedicated to that exact topic. And that certainly wasn't a post I had high hopes from at all.

And during the last week I got my first link from Wikipedia. Even if not from an actual article, but from the users discussion forum. It's progress. It gets you thinking, could you one day actually have links to posts you've done in actual articles?
Maybe. I really don't see why it's impossible.

And yes, when I got voted 174th UK political blogger, truly amazing moment. I can't explain to you how I felt then. Money can't buy that type of feeling, it can't.

Do I think I can do it again? Do I think I can pull a higher ranking than that? Well, of course I do! I'd have pretty much given up on myself if I didn't think I could.
Though maybe it would help if Iain Dale didn't list me as a Labour Party blog...

Yes, blogging can be a heartache. And no, it's not always an easy life.

But the sky's the limit.
It's worth it. It's worth all the sacrifices you make for it.

I know what I want from life and I know that blogging and only blogging can give me that.

The only way is up.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday Mr Crushed!

I've been in my current guise less than a year but I feel like I am enjoying it at the moment. Sounds like you have grown deeper blog roots than I have, so far.

Anonymous said...

My other half works away from home most of the time, hence my blogging.

I used to get depressed about being alone but I don't now.

It does fill a void but when he is home, I don't bother posting....

Anonymous said...

Congrats on two years blogging.

I completely disagree that blogging is so all consuming that it makes a romantic relationship impossible and undesireable. My passion is writing, which is time consuming and requires me to be locked in my office for long hours.

I think you are hiding behind blogging to keep from too intimate connections. You want to compartmentalize your relationships into safe, controllable boxes, not letting any one party see too much of any side of you.

But, hey, if you're fulfilled that way or at least moderately content, it's your life.

Anonymous said...

Hahahahahhappy Birthdayayaya!!! "A blog will give you more than a romantic relationship ever will" Haha, your day will come when one of these gorgeous, intelligent creatures persuades you otherwise. There is an increasing feeling that you are struggling to believe this and are trying to convince yourself. Happy Birthday, have a (cold) beer for me.

Anonymous said...

and as far as I knew you were only a month or so old. That's about when I discovered you, I think.

Congrats on your two year run and your success.

Anonymous said...

Happy 2nd Birthday Crushed!
You have a wonderful blog.

Anonymous said...

Happy Anniversary Crushed. I'm sure it has been a roller coaster ride.

Blogging seems to bring out the best in some and the worst in others, luckily the former outweigh the latter.

While it is all consuming for a while I can't see it as a permanently satisfying way of life because life changes and priorities change and it should not be at the top of the list at certain times.

So enjoy it while you do and see what will happen in five years time. You might be surprised.

Anonymous said...

You might thing this is a rallying call to arms, but it really comes across as someone struggling with an overwhelming sense of desperation.

Get out of the house. To somewhere other than the pub.

Anonymous said...

Crushed, You know I can't help but contrast what you are saying here about blogging with what you said about second life.

I figure you look at blogging like I look at Second life. You see the potentials of blogging, the positives and figure they outweigh the bad stuff. The "fat bunny boilers" as you put it, etc. etc. You spend a lot of time blogging, you see your blog as your living room and interact with your regular visitors on a daily basis.

I do that with sl. I have friends and acquaintances who I meet up with and discuss stuff with.

If you ever go back try visiting Renaissance Island. It is a Tudor sim with a lot of accurate even educational content.

The fact is that I have found blogs that are frankly quite mad or rabidly promote something and others that are really balanced and interesting. There is a lot of abuse and insult on some of them from "trolls".

The same is true for sl. You get griefers, you get idiots and weirdos, you get those in real life too come to think on it.

You also get genuine nice helpful people who will give you Linden$, no strings, to get you started with advice and help. And you in turn pay that forward.

I guess sl just gives you more to hang your imagination on and will probably give more still in the future or some successor will.

For both of them you have got to fit rl in as well and you are right you can't spend all the hours god sends on line. There are chores, obligations and rl relationships need your time and attention.

You seem to be able to afford much more time than me. Me? I don't get enough for either really.

Blogs with more than one contributor help keep the blog active and interesting without needing so much sacrifice from one person.

That is the same with sl, lots of sl environments are collaborative.

Bottom line? It seems to me that whatever good you can say about blogging you can say similar about SL. Also what ever negatives you can come up with, there are equivalents.

How one decides to interpret those things depends on how one looks at them. Mybe on prejudices likes and dislikes, personality, initial experiences there.

So congratulations on making it two years.

It must have taken a huge lot of work, if the time I put into blogging is any guide.

I said it before, whatever else your posts certainly do make a person think, also a person has to be fairly on the ball with their comments, and I figure that is a good thing.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, Crushed.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on keepin' with it all that time... so many folks I've known not even that time have burned out or claimed to have nothing more to say (did their life grind to a halt? I don't think so. I don't even try to be interesting (ha! I think that shows)...



Here's to 20 more years of giving it one in the eye back to Ingsoc


;->...

Anonymous said...

Blue Eyes- Oh, when it's good there's nothing like it. But there are negatives. Especially if you're- a bit controversial.

I think you do reach a point of kind of gravitational thrust, but it does go in fits and starts, cycles if you like.

But ultimately it's hugely rewarding when it goes well.

Sue- For me it provides something to occupy my time, plus it provides an outlet for my thoughts. Otherwise they'd just be wasted on my mates. I think that's what it is for me- knowing I'm presenting my thoughts to as wide an audience as I can.

Vicarious Rising- It doesn't necessarily make it undesireable, but it can make it a little impractical. It's just my experience.
One of the reasons my little friend Haydee was so valuable to me was I could talk to her AND blog simultaneously. There was no conflict. It wasn't a case of either-or. I could read all the blogs and reader and chat to her at the same time. I only had to stop the conversation whilst I wrote posts.

'I think you are hiding behind blogging to keep from too intimate connections. You want to compartmentalize your relationships into safe, controllable boxes, not letting any one party see too much of any side of you.'

Hmmm. Did I write something like that somewhere? I must have done. Was that in the post I wrote New Years Eve in my little period of drunken post-marching powder binge depression and then deleted?

Yes, I admit, that's very much how I think.
I only really let my guard down with one or two people in Real Life. But actually a couple more online.

Gingatao- I'm not disputing that, I do feel in- and out- of love quite easily I think, in some ways.
I was quite hung up in someone for the greater part of 2008 until reality knocked.

I do keep hoping Ms Crushed will appear, but you know, I am pretty sure when she does she'll be someone calm, relaxed, so chilled out she's pretty much horizontal.

Charles- I started it about this time, and became daily in about May 2007.

It's been a good run, but I think it's still early days :)

Sweet Cheeks- Thanks! It's nice when the effort is appreciated. I do think it will improve over time as well. I think it has suffered from a certain lack of planning and well, too much reactive blogging in the past.

jmb- It continues to be so!

Yes, it does and I do think it's one of the problems with what I call the 'Red button' syndrome.
It's what makes people like Kim Jong Il and their ilk behave like big men. They never need actually get hurt, worst comes to the worst their little red button makes them feel big.

It's the backbiting and the trolling I guess I find shocking. I guess I'm not really used to that. Though now I've kind of GOT used to it.

Life does change, it's true. But I think as my life changes, this blog adapts.

Five years time, it's true, who knows?

Anonymous said...

La Femme- Desperation or despair? :)

I don't know what you mean by rallying call to arms, I think it's kind of normal to do a post on one's anniversary reflecting on what that means.

Because one's blog does become quite a major feature of one's life.

Don't get me wrong, some days it really does drive me to despair- no names mentioned- but I still think it's worth it, because basically I have faith that happy endings are possible.

I think I get out enough. I go out most nights to give myself a break and socialise in the three dimensional.

Moggs- The potentials and the positives do outweigh the bad stuff, yes.
But it is, as jmb says, a rollercoaster.
I think, like any sales oriented person, I tend to see myself as only as good as my last week's figures. That's the ups and downs aspect. But you can write what you think is a really excellent post and no one reads it. And then you write what you think is a completely drivel post, really because you think 'What the hell' and it really touches a nerve and then you perk up.

I shall check out the Tudor Island- and some of the fantasy locations you mention.

Well, yes you do get a lot of rabidly mad blogs, I guess. I don't think any of the ones I comment at regularly are, though some would say they are. Some would say this blog is pretty crazy. I've been compared to Hitler, Charles Manson and Jim Jones by some of my more vocal critics.

Yes, as I say, trolling is unplesant. There's never any need for it. People who take blogging to that level, who bring that to blogging are scum in my view.

Time, well time is always the problem. Because how much time one has can wildly fluctuate. If one goes more than about a day away from a PC, it's a nightmare checking your reader. Admittedly, forty of the posts in there will be pictures of naked women posted by Theo Spark which don't require much attention, but even with Google reader, I can't comment at every post worth commenting at.

I keep working at finding more organised systems- but then one finds one is running faster and faster to stand still.

The guest post slot does help, kind of, and I also now buold up posts in advance so if time becomes an issue, I've always got a post to pblish.

Remember, I wasn't knocking sl, you'll certainly see me in there again, I'm sure, I was kind of passing comment on certain aspects of it. I do the same with blogging.

It takes time in several senses that may not be apparent to a general reader. Firstly, I actually do read a lot of blogs. I don't comment at all of them, but I do keep abreast of them. And comment when I see fit. From time to time I go on 'missions' to find blogs to add to my reading list. And to be honest, one tends to find only about one in ten really grabs you, more like one in twenty.

Comments take up to an hour a night to answer, generally. The average post takes about an hour. I say average, because some write themselves and I don't pause for breath but run them off in about twenty minutes. But then it still takes a while to find images.

Other posts can take two to three hours, because I'm not happy with them first write.
And of course, I'd say posts published are about sixty-seventy percent of posts written. There's lots I don't publish, because I don't like them the next day.

I aim to make people think :)

Welshcakes- Thanks! It's been an interesting journey!

Gledwood- I don't think you casnn run out, unless your life stops. My brain still seems to come up with ideas from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I think most people have something to say, it's in the observations.

20 more years, I don't see why not :)

Anonymous said...

Happy blog b-day Crushed! You have some very interesting things to say and I hope to be able to read for years to come.

You are right, blogs can change perspective. My blog for example has become an online interactive diary of my day to day life. I opened it at the beginning because, well, I was bored. Now it has become a place where I can go to remind myself of how good things actually are. Keep on truckin :)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on two years!

I know you've had a rocky time here and there so I'm glad you still have such a passion for writing in your blog. Well done crushie.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. Interesting. Happy Blogday.

I hear everything you've said in relation to the joy and benefits blogging brings to your life. Like with most things and most people, positive feedback leads to our feeling good about ourselves. That isn't a bad thing. It is human nature after all and most of us are human.

My personal view is - that life should be balanced. That's not to say that there isn't room for the passionate. Where would we all be without the passion of those with extraordinary talents in the scientific field for instance?

So yeah, being driven by a passion for something isn't necessarily wrong, but - where is the line to be drawn between a productive passion for something and obsession? The internets can be addictive in nature.

You said '....I'm actually in a position where I would potentially turn down the love of someone I was in love with, because it might well not fit in with my life as it stands and where I want it to go.'

I wonder where exactly, that is Crushed?

Anonymous said...

(1) Many happy returns. I've enjoyed your posts, even though I still have a devil of a time getting your page to load on my antiquated machine.

I'll be posting my third anniversary special in a few weeks. Funny how time flies, huh?

(2) I actually know married people who do considerable blogging. Right now, howver, my life is mostly focussed on family needs, and that has cut into my blogging time quite a bit. Hopefully, I will be able to get some time to catch up.

Anonymous said...

Reeny- It does become something you develop. The Tin Drummer once said he got a strange sense of looking at something familiar when he looked at this blog. It's becausec it is in fact the same template. It's just I've done quite a bit with it over time. It looks pretty much how I like it now, but I do still do DIY on it from time to time. I'm thinking of another little furniture removal.

I guess I do see this as something that will last and therefore it's worth the effort.

Kate- It's been a learning curve, shall we say :)
I think one of my problems is- perhaps always will be- I try to see the best in everybody and I also don't really see the point in arguments. I don't.

But not everyone wants to play like grown ups, sadly.

I think you have to have a passion for something. Otherwise life will always be hollow.

I've Been Mugged- I think for me it's knowing I'm getting the message out there. Of course, I always want more people to hear it, but it gives me the sense of doing something constructive.

A line between productive passion and obsession...
I don't know. When it stops being productive and becomes negative, I guess.

Where exactly, you wonder...

Check out Iain Dale's blog. So we're talking like that in terms of name recognition.
But then think Paul van Dyke, combined with the Eyes Only character in 'Dark Angel'.

I guess that's kind of the vision I have in mind as what I want to work towards.

X-Dell- I must admit to having noticed it does take a while, if I use other PCs. To be honest, I don't have problems with blogs taking a while to load, because I use a reader and so when I want to comment and it clicks through, it opens a frsh window so I can leave it while it opens.

It is crazy how time flies. Three years. That's as long as my degree took.

I think a balance is possible, but time demands can always get in the way. The time I have to put into work is always a variable, and obv if I really got a chance to go for it careerwise, I'd be prepared to put in a lot more hours into work. Which then pushes everything else back. I'd probably still blog to the same degree, but everything else would certainly suffer.

It's not been a problem lately, but in the past, I've really worn myself out with competing demands.

Anonymous said...

Congrats and good luck, on the anniversary and the future, Crushed. I continue to read you because honest people are in short supply. I think that you're most likely a fine coffee-shop companion, someone worthy of time and conversation. Someday, perhaps, I will be back in England to find out.

Anonymous said...

Your "little friend Haydee was so valuable to [me]"?

Uh, has she been demoted? 'Little friend' and past tense? Sorry, that just stuck out as odd.

I think you might've put something about keeping people at arms length in your new years post before you deleted it in favor of a less personal ( and I felt less compelling and honest) one. Although I suppose both posts were quite personal to you.

I do relate to what you say about not wanting to be known under your real name. I don't understand fame or why anyone would want to live in that fishbowl. However, I do want my ideas recognized while my life remains my own.

Anonymous said...

Wow! vicariousrising hits it spot on. Who the hell would want to be famous?

Rhetorical question I guess, cos there are the likes of Jade Goodey who soooo want to be. They chase it and chase it.

It sounds pretty horrible to me, never having any peace. Paparazzi trying to shoot pictures of you taking in the milk without make-up. On holiday with remarks about how much weight you had put on, how you had let yourself go. Lenses pushed aggressively in your face if you go somewhere, goading you to do something newsworthy. Speculating your relationship was on the rocks...

Ew! No thanks.

Anonymous said...

8xyzzy- I think I'm honest in the sense I say things as I see them. I think yes, genuinely honest people in the sense I see people as being honest are sadly, in short supply. I guess it's because so much of the world we live in is itself a falsehood.

We don't really have coffeeshops here, except Starbucks and the like, which people pretty much use as go in and take outs.

But I'd certainly enjoy a couple of pints! :)

Vicarious Rising- She is actually taller than me, though for some reason I don't see her that way.
She is always someone who will mean the world to me, though for various reasons, our lives don't intersect to the degree they once did. But I will always owe her a lot.

It's not that I keep people at arms length- I'm actually very tactile and open in some ways. But I guard my inner sanctum. And I do kind of see my closest friends as being my life bodyguards.

Yes, that's how I feel. It's kind of like I want it all for Crushed, but still have a quiet life myself :)

Moggs- That's kind of what bothers me. Let's face it, my private life can be- well, let's just say I want to keep it private.

I want to be able to do things and people not know. You go for a drink with a woman and it's in the tabloids? Fuck that!