Potato Chips

This is for my childhood friend, Mike Bultman -- and perhaps no one else. Yesterday Mike left the following post on my Facebook page.

"hey there. Just wondering if you've given up your blog, are doing it somewhere else, or anything. It brings joy to many and I'm sure that many of us miss it! Time is a factor, I'm guessing. Hope all is well!"

Again, I am dubious as to there being "many." But it's nice to know that at least Mike misses this thing. And the truth is, I miss it, too. It's been eating at me for months that I haven't blogged. Yet I haven't been able to bring myself to do it.

Good ol' Mike.

I could blame a number of factors: The fact that I work longer daytime hours than at any other time since I began this blog; the fact that I moved yet again and have been busy furnishing an empty apartment from scratch; the fact that the comedy's been picking up, and I've been traveling frequently for weekend gigs; the fact that this has been a brutally hot, humid, hellacious summer, and all I've wanted to do is draw the blinds, crank up the AC and watch horrible reality TV.

All of the above are true, but they don't explain why I haven't been writing in this blog. The simple fact is, I haven't been writing because I haven't had anything to say. And then the longer I don't write, the harder it is to start writing again. Even coming up with these few lines has been a tremendous effort. It's like my creative muscles have atrophied (along with my actual muscles, but that's another story). So it just becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy: I don't write because I don't feel like writing, and then because I don't write, I can't write, and because I can't write, I don't write. (Is that a self-fulfilling prophecy or a catch-22? See? I suck! I've lost all mastery of even the most cliched idioms!)

Also, I blame Facebook. Truly. Remember, when I started this blog in 2004, there was no Facebook. There wasn't even MySpace! (I think Friendster was around, but that site was just sad.) But I spend a ridiculous amount of time on Facebook these days. It has become my primary medium of communication. (Although I still don't understand why close friends of mine send me Facebook messages instead of just emailing me. That's annoying)

The point is, every passing thought I have winds up on my Facebook page in the form of a status update. By day's end, I have nothing left to say. And while this is satisfying on one level -- the comments from my 2,479* Facebook friends provide instant gratification  -- it ultimately leaves me rather empty. Sort of like nibbling potato chips throughout the day but never actually sitting down for a meal.

Mmm... Carbs.

On the other hand, I wonder if anyone even READS personal blogs anymore, Mike Bultman notwithstanding. Just as Facebook has hampered my ability to construct a fully realized blog, it has also contributed to America's ever-growing attention deficit disorder. After all, with so many status updates to get through every day, why would one take the time to read anything longer than 140 characters?

Essentially everyone with a Facebook or Twitter account is a blogger now. Or at least a micro-blogger And the shorter and snappier your updates are, the greater the likelihood that someone will read them. And comment on them. And God knows, we gotta have those comments. Just like those potato chips.

And yet... and yet... there is a price to all this, at least for me. Because while I always loved getting comments on my blog posts and watching the number of readers climb through the years, at the end of the day I wrote what I wrote for one person: me. It fed me -- and not just chips. It offered perspective on and gave meaning to my life, certainly as much as the comedy did, and probably more. It made me a better writer and a better comic. And probably a better person.

So I have to start doing it again. I just do. Not blogging is as detrimental to my psychological and spiritual self as not working out is to my physical self. It's a grind, to be sure, but the results are worth it. So thank you, Mike Bultman. Yours was the gentle push I needed to get off my metaphysical fat ass. (My actual ass is, sadly, not nearly as fat and bulbous as it used to be, but that's another story.)

And now, for no reason whatsoever, I'll leave you with a photo of me and a giant dog name Chloe:

At my boss's barbecue in Hauppauge, Long Island.

Aug. 21, 2010.

More to come.

Homo back. ♥

*And counting.