Pessimism

Posted on January 29, 2003 in Attitudes

If you like to live in a tranquilizing cloud of unknowing, skip this message. If you don’t mind gritty truth-telling as I see it or if you suspect that you might have a case of Dissociative Identity Disorder that needs curing, read on.

I’m not going to mention names, except for one. If you know that I’m talking about you, then you’re half way cured. If you aren’t sure, you can go back to your own blog and count. Numbers should show if I am right or not.

Plenty of people are jumping on Blog-Whoring 2. I’m not. And I’ll tell you why:

I can count the number of times in the last two months when someone other than Lynn has registered a trackback or mentioned an article which I wrote on their site on one hand. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I’ve mentioned another person’s entry on my blog in the same interval.

“What goes around comes around,” those who want to console without becoming involved say to me. I’ve got a long list of people who I am waiting to see excluded from a clique because something they said was misunderstood, for example. I am still waiting for the number of pointers to this site from other blogs to equal the number that have gone out. I am still waiting for some to doff their corrugated vinyl leech suits and become partners in conversation rather than parasites on my benevolence.

Goodwill goes around, but it seldom comes back.

It’s not right that a person should give and not get. It’s not right to stop giving out of pique, either. I’ve outdone most of you in expressing my gratitude for links, visits, and signatures in my guestbook and guestmap. My name is rare on other blogs, except when I put it there.

I guess you can call me “self-promoting”. That’s the mean term some paste on folks like me who say “Hey, I exist. I have feelings. I’m neither below nor above you. Treat me like a human being.”

I exist in a backwater, I grant you. I love mythology and religion, for example, in a way that is not gullible or dismissive. I speak my mind. I’m not addicted to television and I have never seen Survivor, The Bachelor, or any other reality TV shows. I don’t even write in the Erma Bombeck style that others find so entertaining — at least not usually.

I’ve been doing the promoting of others almost since the beginning of blogs. I’ve promoted the idea of a Net since before nearly all of you had e-mail accounts. And I’ll keep doing it because I passionately believe in the good of this media.

People ask me “You’re so good you should write a book”. I’m in no hurry to do this because of the underwhelming response to my blog. To be a successful author, you not only have to promote yourself, you have to have friends/fans who will buy your books and tell others to read them, too. And to be honest, I don’t think there’s enough of a base for me to do that. That’s why I am going slow on my nonweb writing projects. I am waiting to see.

Now for the mention of The Name that I promised in the beginning: another who often feels like I do, Blue Iguana, has disappeared from the net. She has spoken in the past of her dissatisfaction with the net and the backstabbing she has seen. Plenty of people have weighed in to tell her just to ignore it. I know she can’t. She was raised, like I was, to take in every comment as truth. blu owns a conscience and it wracks her all the time. She doesn’t want to live like the rest of the world, in denial of the pain in herself or others. I think she could stand more joy in her life and it frustrates me that I am beyond the place where I can give it. But I’ll not deny the pain. I am waiting to see if she resurfaces. I dread that she might not.

Another last thought: I have a low tolerance for flakes. A few months ago, I made the mistake of reciprocating a few of the speak no “evil” of anyone in the cabal variety. I am paying for my mistake, for entertaining people with illusions about the honesty of their writing and their “neutrality”. If you made it to my primary links list, I don’t think you’re shallow. I also grant that there are people who deserve to be on this list. The events of the last two months have made it difficult to keep up. I’m behind on my gratitude, too. I apologize for this. But as I sling the golden ball, please pass it on and do what you can to make sure it gets back to me. I’ll keep doing as I have done. It’s not right not to praise what is good and interesting.

If you don’t praise me, well, I will assume that my stuff is bad and dull. Your comments and your pointers help me feel like part of this universe instead of a crumb of anti-matter that everyone shuns lest it spark the destruction of the whole world.