On Acceptable Blog Content

What makes blogging awesome is that it's free (good for my currently income-challenged state), it allows me to have some semblance of a social life (in the form of regular commenters I will probably never meet but can still claim as friends), and provides me with an outlet to show the world how oh-so-clever and quirky I am (with the accompanying ego-massage a happy side-effect).

What sucks about blogging is that since I don't have one of those popular, daily, laser-focused blogs about a specific topic, I'm forced to search and scrape for material. Now, I could start one of these blogs and get a sizable readership if I simply commented on Judge Parker every day, but if there's one thing blogging has taught me, it's that I really don't have the attention span to write a post every single day, so I continue with my own minor obsessions.

The main problem is that most of my obsessions are, how you say, uninteresting to most people, or at least to the people I know read my blog, and I'm simply too considerate of a host to bore you all with why I think the vast majority of my fellow Colts fans are morons, for example. I've also learned to never, ever write a blog post about people I actually know, because boy howdy will it make me look foolish in a few years. And since I work at a hospital, I've stopped writing about professional foibles, as it would be frowned upon, even though I've always snipped names and confidential information. Plus, after five years, working with the mentally ill is no longer the new and exciting adventure it was when I first started.

The other major pitfall of my blogging style is that it is my overarching goal to appear happily deranged, rather than disturbingly deranged. This is tricky because I literally have no idea how many of my quirks are socially acceptable. For example, last Friday, I couldn't find my work keys, and while I was asking a coworker to let me in my office, he asked if I checked the pants that I wore yesterday and I reflexively answered "These are the pants I wore yesterday" before I could consider whether or not most people actually wear their pants 2 or 3 times before they wash them. I don't know. Apparently not, as he kind of chuckled and said, "Yeah, I've done that a couple times myself if I think they didn't get too dirty or anything." So, note to self: never admit you wear pants multiple times again.

So, basically, my posts are limited to

A) Bizarre, but funny, things I think about.
B) Strange random encounters I have with odd people in public places.
C) Interesting hobbies.

Choice C is going to be the sticking point. Right now, my hobbies are pretty uninteresting, and would probably reveal way, way too much about my nerdy loser core. For example, no one wants to read a blog post about how my party in Secret of the Silver Blades won an epic battle over Marcus the Archmage, despite his medusae turning three of my fighters to stone. If you do, well, I certainly don't want to write it, so I'm afraid you'll be left wanting. Similarly, I'm not sure the unwritten blog post "My Dog Keeps Jumping On Me Even Though I Ignore Her When She Does" is going to be one for the Greatest Hits reel.

So, I must find some new form of hobbies, preferably ones that involve strange and interesting people to interact with. Frontrunners include joining a community choir, finding out if the Richmond Symphony Orchestra allows Mellophonists in, trying to start an angry letter-writing campaign demanding the inclusion of mellophones in the RSO, and obtaining a mellophone and honing my somewhat rusty mellophone skills (I still remember all of the fingerings and can play "When the Saints Go Marching In," at least, and in my experience mellophone parts were never overly complicated). Since the mellophone angle sounds like a bit of an expensive long-shot, I think I'll take the choir route.

I still own all my cross country shirts too.

I saw a woman out for a run today, and immediately became sad. I used to love running, even though I've never been very good at it. I always just assumed I sucked because I was weak and didn't practice enough, but it turns out that I apparently lack the lungs to do it. I haven't been to the doctor for it, but I have what appears to be a very bad case of exercise-induced asthma, as I exhibit all of the symptoms: lungs filled with mucus, a constant ineffective cough, shallow breaths that burn through the entirety of my respiratory system, and light-headedness.

The really sad part is that every time I would go running, I would come up with a reason to convince myself that there was nothing major wrong with me. I was just out of shape. Or it was the cold air that burns my lungs. I was getting over a sinus infection. There was always a perfectly good reason why my respiratory system was completely failing me, and the answer was always "Work through the pain and it will be easier tomorrow." It never was. Today, I doubt I could run two miles before I'd have to stop for lack of air. In high school I could do at least ten.

But now I have this fancy new insurance card, which I'm told can help get me some healthcare. As such, I think in the next few days I'm going to find a doctor and schedule an appointment for a checkup and examination.