Goddam It, I'll Tell You Why

Now this post isn't the first of the planned trilogy of year-end wrap-up posts, which will be forthcoming, and you'll know them when you see them, but as the major impetus for writing it just exploded in my head like a hand grenade, it's a post I just couldn't not write. I'm not sure how exactly, but the tone of this is somewhat influenced by the month's worth of posts I just read from the great blog find of recent memory. Why I never searched the blogosphere for blogs like this, and apparently there are several others I haven't gotten to yet, I'll never know. Usually I do search out whatever format I'm working within to find all the best stuff and then wallow in it. But outside of the blogs connected to the Libbyverse that I still check in with from time to time (most of which have been far less interesting in her abscence from the scene), and outside of the two outstanding blogs written by young females in Guinevere's book club -- both of which I wish updated more often -- I haven't looked around much.

Then I was linked to 'Every Day Is Like Wednesday', a comic book related blog filled with so much smarky attitude and plain common sense that it's been my guilty pleasure addiction for the last four days, and in fact I just spent two hours reading the entire output for July of this year, and in several places I laughed my freaking ass off. I'm not sure how well all of the humor would translate to a non-comics reader, but I urge you to at least give it a try. If none of the hand-drawn episodes of Batman giving somewhat insensitive gifts to his various teammates with a total deadpan attitude don't at least make you smile a little then I give up.

Yeah, but what inspired this post then? I spent that two hours reading that blog rather than wrapping X-Mas presents, rather than working on a chapter, rather than doing other more productive things, like the three posts I still intend to do before I leave here tomorrow, and then I felt a little guilty about spending that time, even though I did enjoy myself. I felt that same guilt a couple weeks ago after playing four straight hours of Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth on the PS2, even though that was a lot of fun. And tomorrow I'm heading to Massachusetts and I know if I dick around here too long people will start wondering where the frick I am and all, and all of this was playing through my head back and forth like a ping pong ball, and then I hit upon the soundbyte that inspired this whole post.

I'm on vacation. This is my first vacation in a year. I gave up my summer vacation and week at camp to go work at a new job. In my six months there I haven't missed a single day, and I haven't even left early or come in late. Not once. I perform a very difficult and critical part of the line. I work a grueling weekly schedule of ten hour days and then five more hours on most Saturdays, all of which require me to be there at 5 AM. Additionally, I'm responsible for the rent and all the bills in my life, and I don't have a roommate or girlfriend to split them with. And let's not forget about the book, which I have to squeeze around my insane work schedule, and the fact that writing a novel is a challenging endeavor ... even when it isn't about something so deeply personal. On top of that, I'm not getting laid. So there's some pressure weighing on me, and if I want to spend two frikking hours of my vacation -- or any other freetime, for that matter -- enjoying myself by reading an entertaining blog on a subject I've been a fan of since I was three years old, that's what I'm goddam going to do. And that goes for the rest of my vacation, too. I'm going to do whatever the hell I want to. And that's that.

That isn't me yelling at any of you, or anyone else out there in the world, by the way. It's me yelling at the part of my brain that makes me feel bad whenever I indulge myself a little. For the next week that part of my brain can just SHUT THE HELL UP!

I feel better now.