Back to this

After returning to this this before, I never took the time to explore, see what this is.

Anyway, I was listening to The Steal Like an Artist Audio Trilogy by Austin Kleon and pondering what he says about blogging, I think in one of the Show Your Work segments, and I thought, "I got a lot out of blogging for a lot of the time I was doing it. Some external, but certainly a significant amount was just for myself."

It was in my head, so it was weirder and ramblier than that, but that's what it boiled down to.

I'm going to make a point of writing here more, so I can find out what it is. If I don't come all of the time, it'll never develop into anything. It'll just be a space, where I occasionally dump stuff.

I might, in that process, dig out old Facebook posts or tweetstorms, edit them into something for posterity or for a medium I'm perhaps better at.

Twitter, @rotfg_neil, I'm particularly ill-suited to somehow. Now, I could complain that nothing I do gets any traction at all and you could think "Maybe it's you, asshole." And I'm mostly not inclined to fully disagree, but I also know that I get way more traction other places. Sometimes the exact same people that respond well to me on Facebook, miss it on Twitter. It might be how my voice plays on the medium or how my words affect it's algorithm. Fuck if I know.

I don't really care either, although I don't know a way to write it that doesn't sound potentially petulant and insincere.

I do find it... interesting.

As I'm sure I've said, the one thing I don't want this to be is a place that I'm trying to prove I can write. Every time I found myself doing that at the old blog, I'd write things I didn't like as much and my writing got worse. I'm sure there are lots of people who could overcome that particular irony, but I'm not one of them, nor am, at this point in my life, that interested in any suggestions for how I might, but thanks for thinking of them on my behalf... and then thanks for not bothering to pass them on.

UPDATE: Facebook has decided that this page here is "spam". It has, of course, provided no evidence of this claim and it seems sketchy on the face of it, but I have no real love for this site at this point either. For now, it's allowing my Tumblr, so I might post there for now.

The Tumblr version of this post here can be found at this link.

Why blog?

I've decided to blog again.

I'm not committed to giving up videos at this point, but I'm no longer sure I can bring myself to keep up on it regularly. As I said at some point in the process, I could definitely get enthusiastic about it if I could get someone else to play me in my videos. That sounds like a just a canned line, I suppose, but it's certainly true. I have two videos that due to technical issues and me wandering too far astray have multiple parts that I'd have to spend a lot of time going through to turn into videos, and I simply can't bring myself to spend that much time listening to my own voice.

So, the I was reading The Creative's Curse by Todd Brison, which mostly didn't work for me. There's a sweet spot in storytelling and teaching in which the specific evokes the universal, which I think this was reaching for, but I found that it eventually had too much specific that had no relationship to me or my needs. That said, he suggests regular blogging, which spoke to me.

Now, here's the funny thing, Instagram is the only social media site I'm active on.

Mind you, I keep thinking I should drop it, because it's owned by Facebook, just like I should use a different blogging service because of Blogger's connection to Google. Yeah, like everyone, I have a LinkedIn that I rarely use. I mean, it's the only connection I have to a handful of people I like having some connection to, but damn, if it isn't almost a bunch of "navigating white collar workplaces" and "selling capitalism to the masses" articles making my want to gouge out my eyes.

But while my Instagram username is flying_guillotine_, awkward underscores to distinguish from other "flying guillotine" users, it won't let me put this blog as the link on my bio. Now, I'd be lying to suggest that my intention with the name "Rise of the Flying Guillotine" isn't partly political.

It is, of course, at least as much a reference to Kung Fu movies.

For my purposes, however, it's good. I'm going to come over here and blog regularly, not promote it significantly and try to ignore how many people bother to read. I think that's how I've always gotten the most out of writing.

I don't have an agenda at this moment. I don't want to avoid politics necessarily, but I want to avoid the kind of reactive political writing that social media is so good at encouraging everyone to get distracted by. I'm not innocent of that, in fact, I'm too easily swept up in it, which is part of the reason I stepped away of most social media. It's so clear to me how dangerous the entire process is to everyone.

I also don't want to do movie reviews. I always hated my reviews the most, out of all of my writing. Do I say that somewhere else here already? It just always what brought out my high school English essay writing, which I'm glad I learned to do, I suppose, but have no interest in further exploring. It was one of my go-tos when someone convinced me I could impress some person or people with my blog and use that for some kind of later rewards that clout might buy.

I won't be surprised, but I will be disappointed, if that's all I end up doing with this damn thing. It is indeed exactly my disappointment with my previous blog that I did too much of both of those things.

I'm really hoping it'll be a quiet place that I do some glorified journaling for the sake of writing words in some order to focus some of my thoughts.

I can't explain to myself or you why it's still easier for me to do that in public than in a notebook hidden under my bed. Putting something on the Internet in hopes it goes largely unnoticed is some kind of contradiction in my head that I'm still working to resolve.

Blog post

Here I am writing on a blog that I created to not write blog posts on.

Whatever.

I was feeling mildly blue last night. I read My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix.

I had avoided this book, despite really enjoying Horrorstör and absolutely loving We Sold Our Souls. But I avoid stuff about high school generally and '80s stuff specifically, especially anything with even the tiniest whiff of nostalgia.

First, nostalgia is a cancer.

Second, '80s nostalgia is a particularly aggressive cancer that needs to fought at every turn, because, as someone who lived through them, they were culturally absolutely awful. They should absolutely never be treated as some culturally positive time in our history.

As it turns out, the book is very good and didn't enrage me for its nostalgia, which it maintains a whiff of, but thankfully doesn't revel in. The thing that was difficult for me was the question of friendship as presented in it compared to my own life.

Now, mind you, I'm heading into Seasonal Affective Disorder time here. Considering how short and crummy this summer was, I'm doing pretty well with it, using a variety of things in concert with one another, including having an awesome family, although Conan is showing increasing signs of the same affliction.

I feel like I might have done poorly by people I could have or should have been friends with or done something more to maintain the friendships I've had and have let slip by.

Some part of me misses the idea of letter writing. I think there was even a period in the '90s when I might have been emailing people in some similar ways that people in times past used to sit with a quill or pen and write missives of much introspection, but those days slipped by. Now, I rarely think to check my email even less write anything meaningful... or mind you, even think to write anything and then skip.

I think I meant to do more today. Maybe not massively productive stuff, but I've listened to a lot of Ramones and wrote this post. It's not nothing.

P.S. I read them all years ago, but I'd totally use up some Audible credits on audiobook editions of Dee Dee Ramone books, Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones, Legend of a Rock Star and especially Chelsea Horror Hotel. Just sayin'...

An introduction of sorts

A slightly disorienting introduction to a new concept. It comes with this new blog and a link to my Patreon. I expect these to mostly be tools I use to help the videos, but we'll see how all of this turns out, won't we?