So last year I had this brilliant and fairly spontaneous idea to go without television for a year and introduced the experiment on my blog and blabbed about it to all my friends so as not to easily backslide when the going got rough…and believe me the going has been rough at times.
It’s been over six months since I started going without TV last July and I wanted to share some of my impressions and experiences should you decide to undertake something so foolish.
As I wrote in my first post, I was in the middle of summer reruns and not much was happening in sports when I started so it was easy to ease into. However, as the new fall season started and especially when football season started, there have been times when I thought I was going to pull my hair out.
In the interest of full disclosure I have to start off by admitting that although I haven’t watched TV at home in the traditional manner I haven’t missed out on as much content as I first imagined I would. Perhaps it’s kind of cheesy but I didn’t extend my self-imposed restriction to watching content on the internet and it didn’t take me long to discover free episodes of my favorite shows on the network websites and other TV and movie content sites like www.hulu.com.
Through those avenues I’ve been able to keep up with Jack Bauer, ET. Al. without missing a beat in most cases and online there are fewer commercials, although that will most assuredly change as viewing habits shift. Granted, I’m watching them on my laptop screen instead of the 60” Mitsubishi but I really don’t notice the difference that much.
I also rented a bunch of movies and whole seasons of shows like Entourage when I was first going through withdrawals but now I might be good for a trip to the Red Box once every week or two, if that.
Unexpectedly, I think I’ve stumbled upon a snapshot of how my generation’s offspring will view and access most of their entertainment in the not too distant future. Having said that, I must also add that viewing content actively like this is much more purposeful than flipping on the TV and letting it stream constantly in the background and that’s what I found I missed the most in the end.
It wasn’t as much the big chunks of TV that I used to sit and watch that I missed the most, it was the little in-between times we watch TV that really gave me fits. You know, when you’ve got something to do in an hour and you’re all ready to go and you just want to sit down and veg out for a few minutes and flip through the channels. Maybe learn something about sharks or catch Final Jeopardy...or just have it on in the background.
I guess you could say I missed the habit of TV, if that makes sense, more so than any specific show but think about it. I’ve had Good Morning America on while I get up and moving every morning for over 25 years!
As noble as I make this all sound now, remember that this was Comcast’s idea in the first place but I don’t think it could have worked out better for me at times. This experiment happened to coincide with a period last year when I was really struggling with depression, hence the no working and the no bill paying.
I found that I couldn’t lie around and indulge the chemicals in my brain nearly as easy as I could with access to television. Sure, there were times when I gave in and watched Hulu all day but most days I fought it through the benefit of what I was forced to do without TV as my default mode of inactivity.
My dogs certainly benefited from more attention and I’ve spent more time writing. My house is not any cleaner and I haven’t read as much as I thought I would. Oh, and I spent a lot more time at the gym but I may have cancelled that out with all the beer I drank and greasy sports bar food I ate during my frequent trips to the local tavern when I needed a sports fix or wanted to torture myself by watching the Texans.
Most of all however, I’ve spent more time with people and that’s been the greatest benefit. As planned, I eat dinner and watch Survivor every Thursday over at my parents and that’s been priceless. Plus, I’m much more prone to accept an offer to meet up with a friend or help someone with a project because I am literally bored out of my mind sitting around at home sometimes.
So what will I do when June 30th rolls around? I speculate about what if I did get even just the basic channels. Would I be reformed and view television differently? Leave it off more often? Or would I go back to my old habits?
I don’t know. It’ll be one day at a time I guess.
My name is Greg…and I’m a TV-aholic...
This Weekend: A Man and His Hair
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
My Big Fat TV Experiment!
Editor's Note: This was originally posted in August of '08 right after I started this experiment. Tuesday, I'll post an exciting update!
“The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.” ~ Ray Bradbury, The Golden Apples of the Sun
OK, so I got behind a little on my Comcast account and those unreasonable turkeys took it personally and turned off my cable and my internet. Fine, no big deal, it’s happened before but this time they wanted a deposit since I was a habitual slow-payer. Fair enough but it got me to thinking.
They did it on a Friday and I went without television for a whole weekend which is a pretty big deal if you knew how much TV I watched. That’s when this little experiment started to take shape. What I found is that once I was unshackled from the hold that television had on me I was free to be a much more productive person. Watching TV is not an activity; it’s inactivity.
I couldn’t just sit and do nothing anymore; I could read again… and I could think again! Perhaps accurately, the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright called television, “chewing gum for the eyes.”
In my opinion, you’re either a TV person or a music person and I’m a TV person. By that I mean some people walk in the door and turn the TV on and some people walk in and turn the radio on or put on some music and I guess there’s even a sub-group of people that sit around without any noise which was unfathomable to me.
I realized that I could rationalize and make a viable experiment of going without television but these days unless one wants to go to the library or Panera Bread two or three times a day to check email and pay bills (yes I do pay some bills), you pretty much need to have internet access of some kind.
Well, my neighbor has a wireless router and I can pick up a pretty good signal from it. After Comcast’s ruthless action, I made a phone call to said neighbor, told him of my grand experiment and suggested I shoot him $20 bucks a month and split the cost of his internet with him. Done and done.
One might suggest that I simply just decide to watch less TV and that would be a valid suggestion for anyone that had willpower in their personal repertoire. I, unfortunately, do not. If television is available than I will avail myself of it; it’s like a Fully Digital High Definition Sixty Inch Widescreen needle mainlining useless drivel into my brain. My drug of choice if you will.
One might also suggest that I just get some rabbit ears and limit myself to “regular” TV with ten channels or whatever (and I remember when there were only 5 in Houston and no cable or satellite.) Actually I did that for a couple of years before but found that whether it be one channel or a thousand, I’ll watch whatever’s on including Spanish Tele-novellas that I don’t even comprende.
So I officially started my experiment the first of July and so far so good. With the dearth of first-run shows and must-see TV available during the summer, it’s not been too bad at this point but I’m already worrying about how this is going to go over when fall comes around. I’m already behind on what’s happening with Nancy Botwin and what will become of Dexter? What am I going to do without NCIS? How can I live without knowing who got kicked off the island?
Seriously though, what will I really miss about TV other than the pixilated lullaby at bedtime? I think sports will be the number one thing. Thank goodness Tiger is out for the rest of the golf season but come football season I expect to have Delirium Tremens that would rival that of any aficionado of Thunderbird or MD 20/20.
To be fair I will note that I’m not going to avoid TV entirely; I just won’t have it at my house. I find myself looking forward to the trips to the local tavern when my beloved Texans are playing and my mom and I have already talked about having Survivor night on Thursdays. And I’ll also rent movies and stuff from time to time.
Sadly the bank of otherwise useless and random pop trivia I’ve accumulated through TV is all I have to hang my hat on sometimes at the end of the day. And perhaps that’s what I dread the most about not having the “idiot box” glowing in my living room and dutifully putting me to sleep at night. I worry about how much pop trivia I will get behind on or miss altogether.
But that’s kind of the point I guess…
Tuesday: Update! My Big Fat TV Experiment!
“The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.” ~ Ray Bradbury, The Golden Apples of the Sun
OK, so I got behind a little on my Comcast account and those unreasonable turkeys took it personally and turned off my cable and my internet. Fine, no big deal, it’s happened before but this time they wanted a deposit since I was a habitual slow-payer. Fair enough but it got me to thinking.
They did it on a Friday and I went without television for a whole weekend which is a pretty big deal if you knew how much TV I watched. That’s when this little experiment started to take shape. What I found is that once I was unshackled from the hold that television had on me I was free to be a much more productive person. Watching TV is not an activity; it’s inactivity.
I couldn’t just sit and do nothing anymore; I could read again… and I could think again! Perhaps accurately, the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright called television, “chewing gum for the eyes.”
In my opinion, you’re either a TV person or a music person and I’m a TV person. By that I mean some people walk in the door and turn the TV on and some people walk in and turn the radio on or put on some music and I guess there’s even a sub-group of people that sit around without any noise which was unfathomable to me.
I realized that I could rationalize and make a viable experiment of going without television but these days unless one wants to go to the library or Panera Bread two or three times a day to check email and pay bills (yes I do pay some bills), you pretty much need to have internet access of some kind.
Well, my neighbor has a wireless router and I can pick up a pretty good signal from it. After Comcast’s ruthless action, I made a phone call to said neighbor, told him of my grand experiment and suggested I shoot him $20 bucks a month and split the cost of his internet with him. Done and done.
One might suggest that I simply just decide to watch less TV and that would be a valid suggestion for anyone that had willpower in their personal repertoire. I, unfortunately, do not. If television is available than I will avail myself of it; it’s like a Fully Digital High Definition Sixty Inch Widescreen needle mainlining useless drivel into my brain. My drug of choice if you will.
One might also suggest that I just get some rabbit ears and limit myself to “regular” TV with ten channels or whatever (and I remember when there were only 5 in Houston and no cable or satellite.) Actually I did that for a couple of years before but found that whether it be one channel or a thousand, I’ll watch whatever’s on including Spanish Tele-novellas that I don’t even comprende.
So I officially started my experiment the first of July and so far so good. With the dearth of first-run shows and must-see TV available during the summer, it’s not been too bad at this point but I’m already worrying about how this is going to go over when fall comes around. I’m already behind on what’s happening with Nancy Botwin and what will become of Dexter? What am I going to do without NCIS? How can I live without knowing who got kicked off the island?
Seriously though, what will I really miss about TV other than the pixilated lullaby at bedtime? I think sports will be the number one thing. Thank goodness Tiger is out for the rest of the golf season but come football season I expect to have Delirium Tremens that would rival that of any aficionado of Thunderbird or MD 20/20.
To be fair I will note that I’m not going to avoid TV entirely; I just won’t have it at my house. I find myself looking forward to the trips to the local tavern when my beloved Texans are playing and my mom and I have already talked about having Survivor night on Thursdays. And I’ll also rent movies and stuff from time to time.
Sadly the bank of otherwise useless and random pop trivia I’ve accumulated through TV is all I have to hang my hat on sometimes at the end of the day. And perhaps that’s what I dread the most about not having the “idiot box” glowing in my living room and dutifully putting me to sleep at night. I worry about how much pop trivia I will get behind on or miss altogether.
But that’s kind of the point I guess…
Tuesday: Update! My Big Fat TV Experiment!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
25 Random Things About Me-A Facebook Exercise
1. I agree with Stephen Wright that you’re not paranoid if someone is really following you.
2. If raising great dogs is any kind of indicator as to the father I would have been..um, I would have been a great father.
3. My niece and nephews grew up way too fast but they’re all gonna be great grown-ups I have a lot in common with.
4. On the last day of a trip, I once helped a girl get a street dog vaccinated and its records post-dated and then successfully brought it back to Houston from Playa del Carmen, Mexico…she named him Amigo.
5. I’m surrounded by friends that make me so proud in the parents they’ve become and the great kids they’re raising.
6. I think in Haiku when I’m sad sometimes.
7. Eight years ago I wrote 7 solid pages and a tight outline of a novel that I will admittedly never finish but I still think about it almost every day.
8. I also wrote 3 pages of a sweet screenplay based on a true story that I will never finish but I think about that a lot too.
9. Over the last 10 years I’ve had the good fortune in life to have jobs and friends with jobs that has allowed me to average eating lunch 2 or 3 times a week all over Houston with the same group of friends and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
10. I’ve told 5 women that I loved them but now that I better understand love I think I really only loved 2 of them.
11. I have the same waist size as Jerry Seinfeld.
12. I purposely gained 15 pounds over the last year.
13. I have not watched TV at my house since the beginning of July last year.
14. I have a list of 5 things that I have said or written that are worth re-quoting.
15. I used to routinely stand around alone in a restaurant or club waiting for someone and having a fake phone conversation so as not to appear like a lonely loser with no friends but I don’t do that anymore…now I stand around and fake text.
16. By my humble estimation, I could beat 95% of the people that read this in Jeopardy.
17. I played golf almost every week for years and then my clubs got stolen and I haven’t played since and I oddly don’t miss it.
18. Hank Jr. said it best, “All my rowdy friends have settled down”…so I went out and made a bunch of new rowdy friends…and then they all settled down too.
19. I lived in my dream house by the time I was 30…poetically, my ex-girlfriend and her family still live there and now it’s their dream house.
20. “My Little Runaway” by Del Shannon was the Billboard number one hit the week I was born.
21. I recently let my hair grow for a year and a half just to get back at my parents for not letting me have it long in the 70’s.
22. The optimism and hope in my sister’s 25 Random Things made me physically tired…but also very, very proud.
23. I love Houston and living 15 minutes from my mom and dad.
24. The beach still makes me feel like a little kid.
25. Finally, to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, if I’m screwed up it’s not because of my parents; it’s because I’m just a shithead.
Coming Friday: My Big Fat TV Experiment
2. If raising great dogs is any kind of indicator as to the father I would have been..um, I would have been a great father.
3. My niece and nephews grew up way too fast but they’re all gonna be great grown-ups I have a lot in common with.
4. On the last day of a trip, I once helped a girl get a street dog vaccinated and its records post-dated and then successfully brought it back to Houston from Playa del Carmen, Mexico…she named him Amigo.
5. I’m surrounded by friends that make me so proud in the parents they’ve become and the great kids they’re raising.
6. I think in Haiku when I’m sad sometimes.
7. Eight years ago I wrote 7 solid pages and a tight outline of a novel that I will admittedly never finish but I still think about it almost every day.
8. I also wrote 3 pages of a sweet screenplay based on a true story that I will never finish but I think about that a lot too.
9. Over the last 10 years I’ve had the good fortune in life to have jobs and friends with jobs that has allowed me to average eating lunch 2 or 3 times a week all over Houston with the same group of friends and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
10. I’ve told 5 women that I loved them but now that I better understand love I think I really only loved 2 of them.
11. I have the same waist size as Jerry Seinfeld.
12. I purposely gained 15 pounds over the last year.
13. I have not watched TV at my house since the beginning of July last year.
14. I have a list of 5 things that I have said or written that are worth re-quoting.
15. I used to routinely stand around alone in a restaurant or club waiting for someone and having a fake phone conversation so as not to appear like a lonely loser with no friends but I don’t do that anymore…now I stand around and fake text.
16. By my humble estimation, I could beat 95% of the people that read this in Jeopardy.
17. I played golf almost every week for years and then my clubs got stolen and I haven’t played since and I oddly don’t miss it.
18. Hank Jr. said it best, “All my rowdy friends have settled down”…so I went out and made a bunch of new rowdy friends…and then they all settled down too.
19. I lived in my dream house by the time I was 30…poetically, my ex-girlfriend and her family still live there and now it’s their dream house.
20. “My Little Runaway” by Del Shannon was the Billboard number one hit the week I was born.
21. I recently let my hair grow for a year and a half just to get back at my parents for not letting me have it long in the 70’s.
22. The optimism and hope in my sister’s 25 Random Things made me physically tired…but also very, very proud.
23. I love Houston and living 15 minutes from my mom and dad.
24. The beach still makes me feel like a little kid.
25. Finally, to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, if I’m screwed up it’s not because of my parents; it’s because I’m just a shithead.
Coming Friday: My Big Fat TV Experiment
Friday, February 6, 2009
Flotsam
Flot – sam (flŏt'sum) noun – American Heritage Dictionary
a. Wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk.
b. Floating refuse or debris.
c. Discarded odds and ends.
d. Vagrant, usually destitute people.
The brief definitions above are much more succinct than I could be at explaining the figurative reason I included the word flotsam in the title of my blog. Through my ups and downs I feel like I have accumulated a collection of odds and ends in my psyche that need to be discarded…or shared. I also like the word for commercial reasons because it’s catchy and full of angst and goes good with “forty” and it will still be catchy should this blog(ugh) last long enough to be changed to Flotsam at Fifty one day.
Through my previous posting of the two parts of my Blog Manifesto, I have given you the how and the why of my essays. Now let me tell you a little about the who and maybe it will all come together in the end and make my blog a must-read amongst the literati.
I’ve earned my hard-won experience through a divorce, a couple of live-ins, other failed relationships, failed business ownership, financial ups and downs and struggles with type II manic-depression (more on that in a later essay.) Oh and I have a chronic illness, Chron’s Disease, that has humbled me more times than I can count when compared to the physical suffering of others.
Due to a surgery I had seventeen years ago relating to Chron’s (rhymes with phones), my system doesn’t absorb the vitamin B-12 like it should and when that is deficient it literally causes the emotions of regret and remorse to be overwhelming at times in ones brain. Ironically, it took an episode of the hospital show, House, to teach me that fact and how important it is for me to give myself shots of said vitamin.
I didn’t try any illegal substances (emphasis on the past tense and please, please don’t say anything to my parents) until I was thirty-five but subsequently tried everything short of injecting anything into my body. Because I got married right out of college and was married throughout my twenties I’ve often said I lived my twenties in my thirties and it’s leaked over into my forties!
Thank God, I’m more prone to obsession and compulsion than I am to addiction because although I do feel that it has given me a practical education when it comes to the debate about illegal drugs in our city and in society (more on that in a later essay); when it’s said and done, it’s all just so much playing with fire.
Don’t read too much into it but here’s a Haiku that I wrote about that…
untitled (addiction)
my mind toys with it-
something that cannot be reigned
passing hand o’er flame
Although I was raised in the south and my parents are from rural Alabama, my sister and I were raised in a very un-prejudiced household and I think that seeming dichotomy is born of the strong faith our parents share.
My last girlfriend was a twenty-three year old Nigerian model and student and she is among a handful of African-American women that I have dated. They were all thirty or under save one and for a middle-aged male that can’t afford a Corvette, it was always about the age and not the ethnicity (more on that in a later essay too.) I’ve dated more women in their twenties than I can count and it’s all a grand confluence of my personal Peter Pan Syndrome crashing into their issues with daddy and everyone wins.
Look at the third definition for Flotsam above, “vagrant, usually destitute people.” Like so many in today’s America, I feel like I’ve been a paycheck or extended illness away from destitution almost constantly over the last umpteen years. There’s also a personal moral destitution I’ve felt at times or at least touched and it’s something that infuses the very relevant views I have on issues confronting all of us.
Perhaps more than anything though, as I go through what I generously hope is middle age for me, the emotional flotsam that has seemingly broken away from my very soul has made me feel truly mortal for perhaps the first time in my life.
To be precise, I think my broad experience makes me someone whose opinion is worth considering on a wide range of cultural and social issues. I humbly ask that you consider my viewpoint as that of a self-professed unnervingly human and capable everyman; a Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks if you will, for the blogosphere.
Tuesday: 25 Random Things About Me-A Facebook Exercise
a. Wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk.
b. Floating refuse or debris.
c. Discarded odds and ends.
d. Vagrant, usually destitute people.
The brief definitions above are much more succinct than I could be at explaining the figurative reason I included the word flotsam in the title of my blog. Through my ups and downs I feel like I have accumulated a collection of odds and ends in my psyche that need to be discarded…or shared. I also like the word for commercial reasons because it’s catchy and full of angst and goes good with “forty” and it will still be catchy should this blog(ugh) last long enough to be changed to Flotsam at Fifty one day.
Through my previous posting of the two parts of my Blog Manifesto, I have given you the how and the why of my essays. Now let me tell you a little about the who and maybe it will all come together in the end and make my blog a must-read amongst the literati.
I’ve earned my hard-won experience through a divorce, a couple of live-ins, other failed relationships, failed business ownership, financial ups and downs and struggles with type II manic-depression (more on that in a later essay.) Oh and I have a chronic illness, Chron’s Disease, that has humbled me more times than I can count when compared to the physical suffering of others.
Due to a surgery I had seventeen years ago relating to Chron’s (rhymes with phones), my system doesn’t absorb the vitamin B-12 like it should and when that is deficient it literally causes the emotions of regret and remorse to be overwhelming at times in ones brain. Ironically, it took an episode of the hospital show, House, to teach me that fact and how important it is for me to give myself shots of said vitamin.
I didn’t try any illegal substances (emphasis on the past tense and please, please don’t say anything to my parents) until I was thirty-five but subsequently tried everything short of injecting anything into my body. Because I got married right out of college and was married throughout my twenties I’ve often said I lived my twenties in my thirties and it’s leaked over into my forties!
Thank God, I’m more prone to obsession and compulsion than I am to addiction because although I do feel that it has given me a practical education when it comes to the debate about illegal drugs in our city and in society (more on that in a later essay); when it’s said and done, it’s all just so much playing with fire.
Don’t read too much into it but here’s a Haiku that I wrote about that…
untitled (addiction)
my mind toys with it-
something that cannot be reigned
passing hand o’er flame
Although I was raised in the south and my parents are from rural Alabama, my sister and I were raised in a very un-prejudiced household and I think that seeming dichotomy is born of the strong faith our parents share.
My last girlfriend was a twenty-three year old Nigerian model and student and she is among a handful of African-American women that I have dated. They were all thirty or under save one and for a middle-aged male that can’t afford a Corvette, it was always about the age and not the ethnicity (more on that in a later essay too.) I’ve dated more women in their twenties than I can count and it’s all a grand confluence of my personal Peter Pan Syndrome crashing into their issues with daddy and everyone wins.
Look at the third definition for Flotsam above, “vagrant, usually destitute people.” Like so many in today’s America, I feel like I’ve been a paycheck or extended illness away from destitution almost constantly over the last umpteen years. There’s also a personal moral destitution I’ve felt at times or at least touched and it’s something that infuses the very relevant views I have on issues confronting all of us.
Perhaps more than anything though, as I go through what I generously hope is middle age for me, the emotional flotsam that has seemingly broken away from my very soul has made me feel truly mortal for perhaps the first time in my life.
To be precise, I think my broad experience makes me someone whose opinion is worth considering on a wide range of cultural and social issues. I humbly ask that you consider my viewpoint as that of a self-professed unnervingly human and capable everyman; a Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks if you will, for the blogosphere.
Tuesday: 25 Random Things About Me-A Facebook Exercise
My Blog Manifesto-Part II
“Know thyself.” Socrates
Ok, if you read my Blog Manifesto-Part I, you know what my technical parameters are for this blog(ugh!) Given my tendency to be verbose, I’m already finding keeping my essays around 750 words will be more of a challenge than I expected.
In this second part of my Manifesto I will give you some insight into where I’m coming from and what makes me think I can write anything you might want to hear. I guess perhaps maybe the whole idea is to write for oneself but if you notice I’m kind of iffy on that point. I feel that I have the soul of a writer but also the heart of a life-long salesman and marketer and absent a consistent muse, I have to think in terms of whom my marketable audience is and what I can draw from that will make you want to buy what I’m selling, so to speak.
The first one’s easy, my target audience is those that are forty-plus, like me, or those that are fast approaching forty and even some of you that have encroached upon your fifties (By the way, as I rapidly approach that number, screw fifty being the new forty; come see me when fifty is the new thirty.)Secondly, I’m looking for a kinship in what I write; I’m seeking to explain the unexplainable sometimes in terms that might make you say, “Yep, I know just what he feels like…”
At times my urge to write feels like Peter Keating coming too late to the discipline of self-belief and trueness to one’s inner rhythm and calling. I’ve come to embrace this calling, for lack of a better term, not through the pompous bromide I suffer to share but rather I share to stay sane…
Also, how can I define myself in this brief introduction that will place me in the right age range but also identify me as a kindred spirit of this odd half-generation we share that seems to make up the fence I straddle on so many issues and technologies.
For starters, I never had to get under a desk for a bomb drill in class but I was among the first group of eighteen-year-olds that had to register for the draft since the Vietnam War as our country planned for fighting the indefinable Cold-war. That also means I have picture albums full of bell-bottom pants, leisure suits and large bow ties and prom pictures with ruffled shirts.
I bill myself as the Gregster, a bon vivant, a Student of Human Nature and perhaps most telling in regard to the extent of my humility, as The Guy Who Knows a Little About a Lot. That’s the best way I can characterize the amalgam of information I have picked up over the years of being a people-watcher, reading the newspaper voraciously and watching way too much TV.
Now that I finally feel like I have something to share, I do find it hilariously coincidental that one of the two classes I dropped in college was English and it was mainly because I later realized I didn’t have the discipline or the depth of experience necessary to write even the most basic term paper or essay at that time.
I guess what I’m selling in the end is that life is hard and complicated and sometimes seemingly unbearable but if it weren’t for other people. People that you don’t even know; people that may save your life one day; people that remind you that you’re not alone…when you feel like you’re alone…
So that’s my manifesto, much Like Charles Foster Kane’s Declaration of Principles it’s full of hope and grandiosity. It’s an emotional business plan, if you will, for sharing my thoughts, confusion and yes, principles, on a wide range of subjects in a pretentious and self-indulgent manner that only cyberspace can provide.
Oh, and If you know what book Peter Keating is a character in and if you know what movie Charles Foster Kane dominates then we’ll get along just fine…and you’ll also know what my favorite book and movie are…
Next Up-My First Web Essay; Flotsam
Ok, if you read my Blog Manifesto-Part I, you know what my technical parameters are for this blog(ugh!) Given my tendency to be verbose, I’m already finding keeping my essays around 750 words will be more of a challenge than I expected.
In this second part of my Manifesto I will give you some insight into where I’m coming from and what makes me think I can write anything you might want to hear. I guess perhaps maybe the whole idea is to write for oneself but if you notice I’m kind of iffy on that point. I feel that I have the soul of a writer but also the heart of a life-long salesman and marketer and absent a consistent muse, I have to think in terms of whom my marketable audience is and what I can draw from that will make you want to buy what I’m selling, so to speak.
The first one’s easy, my target audience is those that are forty-plus, like me, or those that are fast approaching forty and even some of you that have encroached upon your fifties (By the way, as I rapidly approach that number, screw fifty being the new forty; come see me when fifty is the new thirty.)Secondly, I’m looking for a kinship in what I write; I’m seeking to explain the unexplainable sometimes in terms that might make you say, “Yep, I know just what he feels like…”
At times my urge to write feels like Peter Keating coming too late to the discipline of self-belief and trueness to one’s inner rhythm and calling. I’ve come to embrace this calling, for lack of a better term, not through the pompous bromide I suffer to share but rather I share to stay sane…
Also, how can I define myself in this brief introduction that will place me in the right age range but also identify me as a kindred spirit of this odd half-generation we share that seems to make up the fence I straddle on so many issues and technologies.
For starters, I never had to get under a desk for a bomb drill in class but I was among the first group of eighteen-year-olds that had to register for the draft since the Vietnam War as our country planned for fighting the indefinable Cold-war. That also means I have picture albums full of bell-bottom pants, leisure suits and large bow ties and prom pictures with ruffled shirts.
I bill myself as the Gregster, a bon vivant, a Student of Human Nature and perhaps most telling in regard to the extent of my humility, as The Guy Who Knows a Little About a Lot. That’s the best way I can characterize the amalgam of information I have picked up over the years of being a people-watcher, reading the newspaper voraciously and watching way too much TV.
Now that I finally feel like I have something to share, I do find it hilariously coincidental that one of the two classes I dropped in college was English and it was mainly because I later realized I didn’t have the discipline or the depth of experience necessary to write even the most basic term paper or essay at that time.
I guess what I’m selling in the end is that life is hard and complicated and sometimes seemingly unbearable but if it weren’t for other people. People that you don’t even know; people that may save your life one day; people that remind you that you’re not alone…when you feel like you’re alone…
So that’s my manifesto, much Like Charles Foster Kane’s Declaration of Principles it’s full of hope and grandiosity. It’s an emotional business plan, if you will, for sharing my thoughts, confusion and yes, principles, on a wide range of subjects in a pretentious and self-indulgent manner that only cyberspace can provide.
Oh, and If you know what book Peter Keating is a character in and if you know what movie Charles Foster Kane dominates then we’ll get along just fine…and you’ll also know what my favorite book and movie are…
Next Up-My First Web Essay; Flotsam
My Blog Manifesto-Part I
“Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” Oscar Wilde
Ugh, I guess with these words I’m now officially a blogger. I cringe at the term in all of its forms; blog; blogger; blogosphere…actually blogosphere is pretty cool but the others…
I think most bloggers would more appropriately be called Web Diarists, since that’s what so much of blogging (ugh!) has become. Online regurgitations of what someone ate today and how they felt; only pertinent for a short time and perhaps never of interest to anyone but the writer or their close friends; their very close friends.
I much prefer the term Web Essayist. Although certainly no more worthy than the aspirations of the rest of the blogosphere rabble, I will aspire to a goal of writing web essays or columns that at least appear to mimic writing which is commercially viable and built around a consistently fair and unique viewpoint that may spur thought or understanding in someone else.
I guess that is the beginning point of my Manifesto and how I determined the content I would strive for and the format of my essays. First, on one random day I cut, pasted and did word counts on a wide range of opinion page editorialist and Houston Chronicle columnist articles and somewhere between 700 and 750 words looks like what the assignment editor is typically looking for in a column.
George Will, bless his precise heart, had the two columns I checked come in at 749 each. In some cases I would gladly read longer articles from certain writers. On the other hand 750 words are about the maximum you want to hear from E. J. Dionne Jr., et al.
I checked the last column of the late William F. Buckley and it was a tight 640 words. Upon his death, the writer in me was impressed and inspired by the stories of his ability to write salient columns to meet the next days deadline in an hour’s time and for having a knack, if you will, for writing that I can appreciate.
Until now, it’s admittedly a trait I have only been able to exercise and hone through well-written sales letters, training manuals, marketing plans, customer service responses and the occasional inspired response to a “Dear John” letter or conversation. So, 750 will be my target word-count and I hope to post, nee publish, two or three columns a week. Initially, Tuesdays and Fridays with maybe a Weekend Special in there or something snazzy like that.
Also, as of July first I have decided to go without television for a year partly as a way to create time to write (TV is such a drug and time-waster for me) and partly with the idea of giving me an experiment to write about at some time in the future when I’m struggling for a column idea. See, I’m already shilling to the blogopsyche.
I am also operating on the typical assumption that we might be on opposite ends of the spectrum on any number of issues where I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change my mind. So I’m going to try and write about stuff I think everyone can probably agree on or at least relate to in some way. The sqiushy grey stuff in the middle that gives us all fits, if you will.
I welcome your comments and will dutifully read them but my fragile ego would much rather see a bunch of Atta Boy’s and agreement rather than hear from people who think I want to have some tiring back and forth debate with you about my essay or viewpoint.
Finally, all of these essays, including this Manifesto, will eventually be available on my site, www.gregeast.com; remember our motto, “I’m not on MySpace. I own my space.”
Next Up: My Blog Manifesto, Part II (What makes me an expert on anything?)
Ugh, I guess with these words I’m now officially a blogger. I cringe at the term in all of its forms; blog; blogger; blogosphere…actually blogosphere is pretty cool but the others…
I think most bloggers would more appropriately be called Web Diarists, since that’s what so much of blogging (ugh!) has become. Online regurgitations of what someone ate today and how they felt; only pertinent for a short time and perhaps never of interest to anyone but the writer or their close friends; their very close friends.
I much prefer the term Web Essayist. Although certainly no more worthy than the aspirations of the rest of the blogosphere rabble, I will aspire to a goal of writing web essays or columns that at least appear to mimic writing which is commercially viable and built around a consistently fair and unique viewpoint that may spur thought or understanding in someone else.
I guess that is the beginning point of my Manifesto and how I determined the content I would strive for and the format of my essays. First, on one random day I cut, pasted and did word counts on a wide range of opinion page editorialist and Houston Chronicle columnist articles and somewhere between 700 and 750 words looks like what the assignment editor is typically looking for in a column.
George Will, bless his precise heart, had the two columns I checked come in at 749 each. In some cases I would gladly read longer articles from certain writers. On the other hand 750 words are about the maximum you want to hear from E. J. Dionne Jr., et al.
I checked the last column of the late William F. Buckley and it was a tight 640 words. Upon his death, the writer in me was impressed and inspired by the stories of his ability to write salient columns to meet the next days deadline in an hour’s time and for having a knack, if you will, for writing that I can appreciate.
Until now, it’s admittedly a trait I have only been able to exercise and hone through well-written sales letters, training manuals, marketing plans, customer service responses and the occasional inspired response to a “Dear John” letter or conversation. So, 750 will be my target word-count and I hope to post, nee publish, two or three columns a week. Initially, Tuesdays and Fridays with maybe a Weekend Special in there or something snazzy like that.
Also, as of July first I have decided to go without television for a year partly as a way to create time to write (TV is such a drug and time-waster for me) and partly with the idea of giving me an experiment to write about at some time in the future when I’m struggling for a column idea. See, I’m already shilling to the blogopsyche.
I am also operating on the typical assumption that we might be on opposite ends of the spectrum on any number of issues where I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change my mind. So I’m going to try and write about stuff I think everyone can probably agree on or at least relate to in some way. The sqiushy grey stuff in the middle that gives us all fits, if you will.
I welcome your comments and will dutifully read them but my fragile ego would much rather see a bunch of Atta Boy’s and agreement rather than hear from people who think I want to have some tiring back and forth debate with you about my essay or viewpoint.
Finally, all of these essays, including this Manifesto, will eventually be available on my site, www.gregeast.com; remember our motto, “I’m not on MySpace. I own my space.”
Next Up: My Blog Manifesto, Part II (What makes me an expert on anything?)
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