Why the Good Life Sucks
I have a strained relationship with this blog. I created it as a way to have an immediate avenue to vent my spleen, wax poetic about my kids, or update you on exciting or self-deprecating developments in my life and career. That's all worked fine for the most part and would work even better if I had more bile to cleanse, if I was more comfortable talking about my children on the internet, or if I had the sort of life and career that actually developed.
This kind of thing used to be easier when I drank. I could write a twenty minute radio monologue two or three commentaries and a newspaper column every week before I stopped drinking 16 years ago. One of the most jarring realizations of sobriety, I'm afraid, is that you are not as righteous, poetic or interesting as you thought you were. It's a humbler, healthier way to think, but humble healthy thinking does not a writer make. Writers -- especially humorists and social commentators (know by their common name: Gas bags) -- grind out pearls from the utter irritation they feel with the world around them. When the world around us turns pleasant and fulfilling we have to either fake our outrage, like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter do, or we have to be quiet. Or, I suppose, find work with a greeting card company.
So, I can't decide whether to rename this blog, Tom's Special Sunny Place or to go start a fight with my wife. Of course, the very idea that I'm looking for the downside of having a pleasant and fulfilling life gives me hope that I'm every bit as neurotic and self-absorbed as I ever was and my best gas bag days may still lie ahead. Keep coming back.
This kind of thing used to be easier when I drank. I could write a twenty minute radio monologue two or three commentaries and a newspaper column every week before I stopped drinking 16 years ago. One of the most jarring realizations of sobriety, I'm afraid, is that you are not as righteous, poetic or interesting as you thought you were. It's a humbler, healthier way to think, but humble healthy thinking does not a writer make. Writers -- especially humorists and social commentators (know by their common name: Gas bags) -- grind out pearls from the utter irritation they feel with the world around them. When the world around us turns pleasant and fulfilling we have to either fake our outrage, like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter do, or we have to be quiet. Or, I suppose, find work with a greeting card company.
So, I can't decide whether to rename this blog, Tom's Special Sunny Place or to go start a fight with my wife. Of course, the very idea that I'm looking for the downside of having a pleasant and fulfilling life gives me hope that I'm every bit as neurotic and self-absorbed as I ever was and my best gas bag days may still lie ahead. Keep coming back.
posted by Tom Bodett at 1:24 PM
4 Comments:
Worry not - I shall return!
Great points. I only journal when I'm down...now looking back over the last 20 years, I know my life hasn't been THAT bleak!
The life-affirming thing is that I always dated my stuff and I see huge gaps of what I assume where happy times.
Ah, the pen can leave such nasty remnants.
Writing...hmmm, thirsty work indeed.
But do not fret, I can see to it that the blog is lushly represented.
It's true. When life seemed especially bleak, I took out my pen and wrote pages and pages of downright cynical, pretentious rants. Once I remembered that I was not a rebellious teenager anymore, I burned all that stuff and now I only try about the positive... but let me tell me, it is so boring. It's a dilemma. Write about the negative and it's an invitation into a downward spiral. Write about the positive and it bores everyone to tears...
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