Last night, I was hanging out in the kitchen with my new roommate, S. and telling her how I never got more than 6 hours of sleep, woke up at 6am to go running and was always in the shower by 7 thirty at the latest and was never tired during the day.
This morning, I overslept, had to shorten my run, didn’t shower until 7:45, was completely exhausted all day and ended up coming down with a cold.
Tonight, I told her I thought that I’d jinxed myself by speaking the words so adamantly in our kitchen.
Since I was feeling kind of crappy, I ended up telling her that when it came to things like running and doing lots of activities like yoga, I felt like I was bringing my B-game.
“I’m noticing a lot of B-game trends in my life,” I explained. “I’m actually thinking of doing a blog post about it.”
“Did you say a blog post?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your blog?”
“Huh?”
“What’s your blog about?”
“Oh, um nothing. I guess it’s kind of a B-game blog, come to think of it.”
“So, who reads your blog?”
“Oh, nobody, really.”
“Nobody?”
“Well, I mean my family reads it. A few people I’ve never met before read it. Some scattered people from throughout my life get it emailed to them, I think.”
She laughed. “How often do you write?”
“Well, I used to write a lot. Then I gave it up for 3 months, and now it’s sort of sporadic. You know….B-game.”
“Were those the 3 months when you were running and doing yoga every day?”
“Oh….no. It was the 3 months after I wrote about my yoga teacher announcing to the whole class that I was on ‘Lady Holiday.'”
“So, you were mortified because she told 10 people that you had your period, and solved the problem by putting it on the Internet where everyone could read it?” She was doing something in between smiling and laughing.
I was struck, wondering why I’d done such an illogical thing, until I remembered that the purpose of my blog was to embarrass myself. “Well,” I explained. “It only dawned on me after the fact how truly embarrassing it was. And then my new coworker Googled me and found my blog. I was appalled, so I locked the blog and stopped writing it.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, a few months later the same coworker told me that everyone knew my blog wasn’t really me, that it was an online persona. I mean, it’s a blog, but I don’t exactly tell the truth all the time. It’s not really real life.”
“You enhance it?”
“Well, enhance it, write in metaphor, put events in the wrong order, pretend I think things that I don’t, and every once in a while, I flat out lie. Anyway, after he told me everyone knew it was an online persona, I felt better and started blogging again.”
“That’s all it took?”
“But not everybody really gets it. I wrote a blog post about my friend’s pole-dancing party and switched around a few things to make a better story, but she was so mad I don’t think she’s really speaking to me.”
“You lost a friend over your blog?”
“Oh, and apparently people at my new company read the very same pole-dancing blog post. So my greatest concern – having a co-worker read something embarrassing about me on the Internet – has been brought to life. Except it wasn’t actually a bad thing, at all.”
“Wow.”
“I feel like that pole-dancing post is probably the most embarrassing thing I’ll ever write, and so at this point, it can’t get worse. Why not just blog with reckless abandon?!”
She was incredulous. “That’s your logic?”
“Yeah, I mean, what do I have left to hide?”
“But…you lost a friend over it!”
“Exactly. It can’t possibly get any worse!”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“Why? In fact, I might even write a blog post about this very conversation.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re going to put that in writing?”
“Put what in writing?”
“You’re going to write, ‘It can’t get worse?’ Do you have any idea what you’re asking for when you actually write, ‘it can’t get worse?'”
“Oh my god. Yeah, and remember how yesterday I said I never got tired and today I got tired? What if our kitchen is some kind of weird mythical circle where every word you utter comes back to destroy you?”
We were silent.
“So…I shouldn’t do it, should?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“I mean, maybe I should do it, right? Just to see what happens. How bad can it possibly be?”
“You just said it again. ‘How bad can it get.'”
“So when I talk in the kitchen, the Universe answers?”
“Or the Devil. It’s not like you’re getting good results.” She started searching on her computer. “Maybe it’s that Nordic God, Loki. I think in the Nordic tradition, life is miserable, but when you die, you spend your afterlife in a battle, until Evil eventually wins.”
“So, what you’re saying is I should blog with reckless abandon, because Evil is going to win anyway.”
“Kind of.”
“Should I be afraid to write this?”
“No.”
“I kind of want to see what happens. You know.. if anything happens. I mean, how much worse could it get?”
“Well, I guess we’re going to find out.”
Not Technically Tech 