Wednesday, April 17, 2013

It's my blog and I still have no control

If you look to the right of your screen, you'll see the blog posts that I have written that have gotten the most attention. I am always tempted to remove this selection from the home page. They irk me, though I simultaneously find their presence amusing. You see, these are not the posts that I think are the best. They are not the funniest, the most informative, the most insightful, or representative of my best writing (the bar is low on that one, I know). In other words, they are not the posts I would have chosen.

I've decided it's a metaphor for life. You make the most out of what you have, try to carefully craft the world around you, but ultimately you get what you get. You can't force people to base their impressions of you on the events you'd prefer - IF ONLY, RIGHT?!? If I had control over that, one of my good friends would stop telling people that the first thing he ever heard me say was, "I want vodka!" After 16 years, that story has slowly shifted from amusing to embarrassing. Especially when he makes sure people understand that I was 15 at the time.

Great. See what I just did there? Now all of you first time readers, all one or two of you, have just had your impressions of me tainted by that stupid story. Even if I told you about the time my friend and I used a week's worth of lunch money to buy food and blankets for the homeless guy sleeping under the local bridge in Montana in the winter*, you'll still remember the vodka thing. Which is exactly the point I'm trying to make. You see, the Internet takes the way we form impressions and exaggerates certain aspects of the process. You can't see me, you don't hear how I emphasize these words. Instead, you get to read them in the way you see fit. I can only lay them out and hope that you appreciate them.

*That's a good story. Expect a detailed account soon.

The way I sound in your head? Yeah, I doubt I actually sound like that. And unless your imagining me gesticulating wildly as I "talk", then you've got that wrong too. I bet I'm a lot more like a cartoon character than you think. Just keep that in mind if you decide to read through those popular posts, maybe that will improve them a bit.


No comments: