Blogging as therapy #1

In this new — and God help you all, let’s hope mer­ci­fuily short — series of posts, I am seek­ing to shake, punch and kick some life into the dis­eased, fetid corpse of blog­ging by hark­ing back to the medium’s golden age. When blog­ging used to be about the tedi­ous minu­tiae of one’s life. When its grand­est ambi­tion was to tackle noth­ing more sub­stan­tial than point­less navel-gazing, rather than enga­ging in the much more ser­i­ous and worth­while busi­ness of upload­ing a point­less photo of said navel to dis­play along­side your latest tweet about how much fluff it holds.

Indeed, it’s almost like my very own first fal­ter­ing steps on the inter­net — don’t fol­low that link, because it’ll make your stom­ach heave — and I’m get­ting misty-eyed (and faintly naus­eous) as I recall those more inno­cent days when I was a wide-eyed and naive young blog­ger, sit­ting alone in my attic room lit by a single naked light­bulb, furi­ously bash­ing my key­board late into the even­ing as a means of pur­ging my soul, whilst des­per­ately hop­ing that someone, any­one, would hear my plaint­ive cries. Sniff.

For­tu­nately, I’m now older (much older). And wiser (but not much wiser). And uglier (oh Jesus Christ, will you look at that face — yes, def­in­itely uglier). And incred­ibly cyn­ical (though it was always thus, in truth).

So I’m going to start occa­sion­ally using this site as a self-indulgent tool for per­sonal ther­apy. You see, the thing is … I keep think­ing about my first primary school teacher dressed as a nun, beat­ing me soundly with a black­board eraser whilst singing Madonna’s Like a Vir­gin, and I’m won­der­ing what it all means? Oh wait, not that one. Here’s the del­ic­ate mat­ter on which I require your assist­ance, my dear unre­li­able reader.

Ques­tion: I am con­sid­er­ing hav­ing a mid-life crisis. How should this mani­fest itself?

Let me help you for­mu­late your answers by telling you, right from the start, that I can’t drive. So a gleam­ing red sports car, com­plete with its obvi­ous phal­lic sym­bol­ism and a £2.99 CD of ‘wide open road’ rock music in the ste­reo sys­tem, is a com­plete no-go. As is a motor­bike — I’ve only got one leg, you see (sshh, I don’t like to talk about it), so I’d just climb on it and then imme­di­ately slip off the other side. Oh, and no steamy, sala­cious, Sun head­line affairs with eight­een year-old bleach-blonde nymph­ettes, please — I’m knackered just think­ing about that one, espe­cially as these days I like to be tucked up in bed by 10.00pm and passed out by 10.01pm hav­ing not even man­aged a single sip of my Horlick’s.

In other words, I require sens­ible and cre­at­ive ideas for how to live out my mid-life crisis — though com­pletely ridicu­lous sug­ges­tions will also suf­fice since there’s no point in set­ting the bar too high, is there? After all, this is blogging.

Do your worst. I have faith in you.

Comments: 11

    I have dogged faith that you will single-leggedly bring blog­ging back! Arf.

    Ani | 08.18.09, 20:55

    Hav­ing spent most of the 1990s indul­ging in the most pro­trac­ted mid-life crisis that I could get away with, I feel that this is a sub­ject upon which I can pon­ti­fic­ate with some meas­ure of author­ity. Now, you see, the WHOLE POINT of a mid-life crisis is to throw your­self into a range of activ­it­ies which a) you think you missed out on in your younger days and b) that you’ll soon be too old to even con­tem­plate, even though c) you’re already slightly too old to be doing them in the first place without d) com­prom­ising your dig­nity (although e) the edge of fevered des­per­a­tion that you bring to these activ­it­ies will pre­vent you from noti­cing d) until the crisis has run its course, at which point you’ll exper­i­ence an awful, shud­der­ing, wholly mor­ti­fy­ing moment of ret­ro­spect­ive clarity).

    Sorry, am I mak­ing it sound like mid-life crises are Bad Things? Oh, they’re not really. Rather, they’re a neces­sary rite of pas­sage, and HUGE fun (for a while). But “sens­ible and cre­at­ive” they most cer­tainly are NOT. So might I sug­gest chuck­ing “sens­ible and cre­at­ive” aside, in favour of “ridicu­lous, waste­ful and intensely, sin­fully pleasurable”?

    Good. Glad we cleared that up.

    mike | 08.18.09, 23:47

    Join a band. ‘Nuff said.

    L | 08.19.09, 09:10

    Ha ha, Mike!

    Ani | 08.19.09, 10:29

    Also, I know I am being no help, but I just went through my rebel­li­ous teens yes­ter­day so I’m afraid I know noth­ing of this ‘mid-life’

    Ani | 08.19.09, 10:38

    I agree with mike. Though: START A BAND!

    You know you want to.

    You know you really want to.

    Ani: Mid Life Crisis is what you do when you look back at your rebel­li­ous teens and decide you weren’t nearly rebel­li­ous enough. Only with a bit more money.

    Cheerful One | 08.19.09, 10:45

    Unre­li­able and the Witnesses.

    (just say­ing)

    Cheerful One | 08.19.09, 10:45

    I’m inter­rupt­ing my own mid-life crisis for a few minutes while I attempt to parse the par­en­theses in Mike’s com­ment. Nor­mal com­prom­ising of dig­nity will resume shortly.

    In my exper­i­ence, it’s rather a waste of time to try to avert or con­trol one’s mid-life crisis by plan­ning it in advance. It just sneaks away and ambushes you from a dif­fer­ent angle instead.

    Hg | 08.19.09, 16:04

    Ani — I don’t get the joke. Explain?

    Mike — I like your think­ing, though I might have to build the exper­i­ence bey­ond just being “ridicu­lous, waste­ful and intensely, sin­fully pleas­ur­able’, because that could just describe eat­ing Mar­mite Baby­bels, and I do that already.

    L — I can play spoons.

    Ani — So are you say­ing you’re young? You know there’s an age limit to read­ing An Unre­li­able Wit­ness, don’t you?

    Cheer­ful One — I like the band name. What I really need though, if I’m going to start a band, would be a ukulele-playing duo to provide back­ing music. Hmm.

    Hg — I know you speak sense, but if I can plan it I might not find it so exhaust­ing. And that means I’ll be able to get to bed earlier. Which is the main con­cern I have, really.

    An Unreliable Witness | 08.20.09, 21:13

    My cure of inab­il­ity to cre­ate any­thing with any medium was really quite simple, though it may seem odd.

    Grab your phone book, and no not a web­site that provides num­bers, you have to have the pages in hand for this to work. Some­thing about being tactile.

    Flip to a ran­dom res­id­en­tial page.
    You can either pick a name at ran­dom, or find a name that agrees with you.

    Here you have two options, and both have worked very well for me.
    Either you call, or you write the name you picked.

    Herein lies possibility.

    From time to time I will actu­ally state to the per­son I get on the line, “I can’t cre­ate right now. What should I do?” And their response, whether logical, intel­li­gent, or oth­er­wise is always great fodder.

    Now, if you choose to write more mean­ing­ful things tend to occur. (At least in my experience.)

    It all kind of depends what you need and what you are look­ing for on that plane.

    But, in any event, it ends all the grey crap that clut­ters and surrounds.

    I’ll give it you, if needed.
    But shh.
    You know?

    Persico | 08.21.09, 19:38

    No, you see, you’re sup­posed to START blog­ging as the mani­fest­a­tion of your mid-life crisis. No?

    bohémienne | 09.14.09, 00:54

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