Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The New Blog Entry

They were good, worthy, lovable, dear people; but unfortunately they kept asking me about the new blog entry, and that was horrible.

If I met on the street dear and lovable acquaintances, they invariably asked: "how's it going with the new blog entry? Innumerable eager people look forward with great excitement to your new blog entry. It's become obvious that you're writing a new blog entry. I hope it will be posted soon, your new blog entry!"

It's true; I had dropped certain hints. I was so foolish, so careless, as to have allowed it to become obvious that I was planning on posting a new blog entry. Now I was screwed.

I was upset, my situation insupportable.

If I logged in merely to check my RSS aggregator, sure enough, here they came, a blizzard of AIM and Gtalk and Jabber and MSN and Skype instant messages: "When will it finally be posted: your new, your wonderful blog entry?"

I was close to collapse.

"If only I had never had the idea to drop such hints, to let it be known that a new blog entry was growing and blossoming within me!" was my desperate, silent, internal cry.

My rage was equal to my shame. Only with a great effort of will could I suppress my dread enough to visit homes and LiveJournals whose charm and hospitality had once delighted me.

For my aggregators and linkers, people in every respect of enormous worth, I had suddenly become a source of great unease. When I met with them, they treated me as if I was a troubled and sensitive child given to depression and despair. Everyone can easily imagine how this pissed me off. For these most worthy people in the world, these high-ranking Metafilter and slashdot and Reddit contributors, these editors of link-rich weblogs and newsfeeds, I had become a source of pensiveness and anguish. Gently and tonelessly, in quiet funereal voices, as if we were speaking of a matter absolutely devoid of hope, they asked me: "how is it going with your wonderful new blog entry?"

"It's coming along," I whispered.

I did not believe myself, and my beloved linkers and aggregators merely smiled their tired and disappointed smiles. They smiled as a person smiles who wishes to make clear that he has decided to renounce everything in this world which is shiny and attractive and has earned 5-starred customer reviews which were helpful to many people.

Once they told me, "if you aren't going to post your new, successful blog entry, perhaps it is better if you don't come to see us, or to visit our websites. To see a blogger, or even the IP address log trace of a blogger, who, instead of posting his new, innovative, comprehensive, provocative, remarkable blog entry, merely always promises it, hurts us, and therefore we would like to ask you to put off visiting us or our websites, until you are able to post your new and excellent blog entry."

I was crushed. "Oh, if I had only never revealed that I was at work on a new and respectable blog entry. Oh, that it had never occurred to me to promise what I could not deliver! If only I had never thought to mention that a new and beautiful and exciting and comprehensive blog entry was in progress and would soon be posted!"

I cried this aloud, feeling that I had been absolutely pwned. I learned in full measure that agony which afflicts the blogger who promises earnestly, believing himself capable of it, to deliver a new and astouding and thrilling blog entry, but whose promise is more visible, and has a higher Google page rank, than the blog entry itself, by reason of the blog entry itself not yet having been posted.

I could no longer appear in those streets and supermarket aisles and IRC channels and newsgroups where one is in the habit of asking a blogger about their new blog entry.

So, eventually, I made a decisive end of this confining and horrible situation.

I deleted my blog and began to twitter instead.

(with apologies to Robert Walser)