Portrait of the would-be writer at C2E2 2012. Appropriate soundtrack: the theme from Laverne & Shirley.
The Fable of Why This Blog is C2E2’s Fault
Tag Archives: writing
Midlife Crisis Crossover Celebrates 1st Birthday, Threatens to Begin Repeating Itself
On April 28, 2013, the blog you’re presently skimming celebrated its very first birthday. Strange but true! I would’ve marked the occasion sooner and in a timelier fashion, but longtime readers might’ve noticed I had a hard time shutting up about that blasted C2E2 event for a few minutes. Even though our official six-part photo gallery is completed, I still have at least three posts’ worth of C2E2-related material in store from a different angle. Out of respect to my readers who might not be as enthralled as I am by local comics conventions, a broader, general-audience digression seemed in order. Also, I’d like to mark the occasion sometime before next New Year’s.
It was a singular event that inspired me to launch this humble site out of a combination of frustration and curiosity. (Expect the story behind said event in an upcoming entry. Enough time has passed, I think, that I can share it with fewer sour grapes.) I set forth on this strange journey to discover the answers to a long list of questions for myself, including but not limited to:
1. How many consecutive evenings in a row can I find a reason/excuse to write about something before I stumble and fail?
2. How much am I willing to sacrifice for the sake of writing?
3. Can I start such a project without a preexisting audience?
4. Is it possible to build an audience from the ground up? Not counting spammers?
5. What sorts of writing will I like best? And what kinds might become a dreary chore?
6. Is there a question #6?
7. Can I enjoy myself without being jealous of those who do this regularly for money?
8. Will anyone I know even care?
9. Am I alone in this?
10. Do I really like writing? If not, what am I supposed to be doing with my life?
Welcome, New Bloggers! Your Default “About” Page is Showing.
Far be it from me to convince myself that 350+ consecutive daily MCC entries and fourteen years of Internet participation experience (dating to the era when Usenet was ebbing but not dying, and “social media” wasn’t a labeled thing) are sufficient credentials to hoist myself upon an ornate pedestal and begin dispensing wisdom from above to fellow WordPress users about The Correct Way to Do Blogging. For reasons that would require a separate entry altogether, I don’t even like dispensing constructive criticism to other online writers, let alone have the ego to declare myself in the sensei business. One glance at MCC’s minimal visual design should provide evidence enough that I have a multitude of lessons yet to learn for myself.
Regardless, longtime bloggers can agree on a few of the most basic of basics. Today’s message is about one of those super-basic basics.
“Very Inspiring Blogger Award” Nominee Considers It an Honor Just to Be Allowed Internet Access
I’m well aware that my scattershot topical approach, my avoidance of narrow specialization, my complete lack of millions of share-happy friends, and my refusal to curse probably sabotage the chances of Midlife Crisis Crossover ever being seriously considered for the sort of major awards that have committees, budgets, perks, or multiple voters. I appreciate it, then, when another writer in the Internet trenches takes the time to send an encouraging gesture in my direction.
The Very Inspiring Blogger Award is one of many such gestures available to us. It’s not an official commendation with a nomination process or a governing body or a brick-and-mortar hall of fame that our family could visit on our next road trip. Quite the contrary, the VIBA is a pass-it-on pick-me-up that comes when least expected, means no harm, and provides opportunities for networking and paying forward to others.
Special thanks are owed to Tony Roberts at A Way With Words for this duly acceptable nomination. It’s especially noteworthy to me because Tony is one of only three other WordPress.com users from Indiana that I can recall encountering in MCC’s eleven months of existence. If I include WordPress.org, the head count expands to a whopping four. Truly we Hoosier bloggers are a mighty, tiny army. (If any other Hoosier bloggers are out there, that’d be nifty to know. I can’t even hear you breathing.)
A Crisis of Purpose Down at the Dollar Store
Acquired today for $1.00 from a Super Dollar Tree in Indianapolis. Sigh.
I visited such a store today with my wife when we took her grandmother errand-running. The Super Dollar Tree down the street from her house is where she stocks up on her birthday and holiday cards a few times per year, plus whatever other impulse items she can hoard on her way to the register. As she did her thing, I wandered off to check out their selection of books, to see what works had been downgraded from original retail price to rock bottom. I’m in no danger of running low on reading matter anytime soon, but the thrill of the scavenger hunt is tough to resist. One never knows when a diamond in the rough might turn up/ My last such acquisition was a dirt-cheap copy of Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!).
…Every Word Handwritten.
The Greatest Story “Words With Friends” Ever Told
Final score: 507-276, this writer.
The Perks and Drawbacks of Night-Owl Writing
Goodnight, moon. And stop staring over my shoulder while I’m working.
I write almost exclusively at night, after everyone else in my time zone is asleep, shortly before I pass out myself. The MCC archives would reveal a minority of daylight entries (most of those on weekends) if the current blog template included time stamps. Part of the blame rests on my circadian clock, which has been set on “evening person” ever since my previous job, where I found myself scheduled and honed over time for night-shift work out of necessity. Thanks to years spent as a restaurant closer, mornings are anathema to me; evenings, I come alive. Afternoons vary.
The Joys of List-Making, Outlined and Enumerated
Longtime MCC readers are surely aware of my addiction to writing lists. I confess before you now that my lifelong listaholism extends beyond what you’ve seen here in the past. In our household I appointed myself Chief Grocery List Officer. I keep track of all the comic books I own on Excel sheets. From 2000 to the present I’ve kept Notepad files of every single movie I’ve seen in theaters. Many a Post-It has died in service to my never-ending attempts to remember what chores and repairs need to be done around the house. All the odd sights we see on vacation each year have been made possible by lists, though those are always collaborative efforts with my wife the list-enabler.
It’s no surprise to myself that my list fixation is a frequent motif in my writing. At one point several months ago, I wondered if perhaps the MCC blog concept should have been built upon a rigid list-based foundation from the get-go. Fortunately for the sake of format flexibility, I bypassed that option and instead dreamed up a premise more convoluted and impossible to justify in a single sentence.
Why are lists my thing? The reasons are many and varied:
How The Empty Chair Stole Christmas
I’m not usually one for reblogging, but this post represents a milestone: my very first guest post on another blog!
The folks behind “Freshly DePressed” blog invited me to share a synopsis of my experience with having two entries slapped with the WordPress.com “Freshly Pressed” label. In previous FDP posts, past Freshly Pressed candidates have listed common symptoms associated with their fifteen minutes of fame, such as temporary euphoria, post-Pressed depression, and misplaced sympathy for actors who refuse to sign on to any movie that’s not instantly Oscar-worthy.
Enjoy! Also I may have to begin soliciting possible names for my theoretical new mascot. Please keep in mind “Obamachair” sounds lame and partisan, and “Chairy” is already taken.
Hi, my name is Randall at Midlife Crisis Crossover. I was Freshly Pressed twice. Once for The Day An Empty Chair Ruled The Internet and again for Midlife Crisis Crossover 2012 in Review, Assuming the Next Thirteen Days are a Complete Write-Off. It’s been four months since I was first famous; three weeks since my encore.
One evening while pondering my blog’s tiny but breathing audience, I noticed millions of Americans were ignoring me and paying attention to an empty chair. I could write and entertain. It could not. This imbalance seemed unfair. However, the chair had the advantage of being lectured on live TV by a famous actor/director. I can’t say for certain that that’s happened to me yet. Advantage: chair.
Out of frustrated cognitive dissonance I wrote “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet”, the underlying moral of which was, “No chair should be this famous.” Imagine…
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WordPress.com Magic Elves Offer Colorful Second Opinion of My 2012
Important part first: Happy New Year’s to one and all!
Here’s hoping 2013 will be Best Year Ever for all of you, whether you’re planning to expand on your 2012 achievements and victories, secretly wishing for a complete do-over, or were born within the past hour and have no basis for comparison.
Since most readers are either partying or recovering (depending on how soon this is being read), I’ve allowed myself to relax a little more than usual tonight, spending more time with family than with keyboard. It’s my understanding that correcting this imbalance at least three or four days per year is strongly recommended by most of my relatives, biased though they are. That meant less time for writing and more for board games, but in my mind it’s an exchange more than fair, even though my wife and son refused to let me unleash our Scrabble set and trounce them both just once.
In lieu of an overlong piece about New Year’s resolutions (expect something along those lines tomorrow, because of worldwide mandatory blogging bylaws), the following Very Special Report is provided as a treat for my fellow blog stat junkies, or for fans of cute animated fireworks.
“Freshly Pressed” Post Saves Earth, Foils Millennia-Old Mayan Armageddon Scheme
If there were a Mayan Galactus, he would dress exactly like Tomazooma.
Clearly someone had meddled in the long-term machinations of those pesky Mayans. Who could have saved the day, and all the days after it? Did God smite them? Was their forbidden stronghold located and smashed to pieces by a South American super-hero team? Did a suspicious policeman stumble upon their ringleaders and call in reinforcements? Did their primitive doomsday device slip a cog? Or did their sleeper agents forget to set their alarm clocks for the right time to rise up and decimate?
I was clueless. My mostly ordinary work day failed to shed any light or unearth new evidence to this mystery…for the first half of the day, anyway. At lunchtime I found my answer.
Midlife Crisis Crossover 2012 in Review, Assuming the Next Thirteen Days are a Complete Write-Off
Midlife Crisis Crossover was launched April 28, 2012, as a creative attempt to do something different with my spare time, my ostensible talents, and four decades of accumulated monumental mistakes and mental minutiae. Though it wasn’t my first blog, it was my first time attempting a blog without an immediate support system or preexisting audience. The MCC experience has been eight curious months of dedication, persistence, failures, sleep deprivation, loneliness, stubbornness, prayer, and occasional wild luck. Over the course of the first 240 posts I’ve discovered new peers, made new friends, learned new things about myself and HTML, improved 2% at photography, and remembered one or two stylistic rules I’d forgotten since college, with several more still repressed and yet to be rediscovered.
The infamous empty chair, a.k.a. “Obamachair”
For its outstanding achievement of Attracting an Audience, “Empty Chair” is the first and only entry in the MCC Hall of Fame, even though it was about political events and my incredulous disdain for same. If we set it aside in a class by itself, my memories of 2012 look like so:
* * * * *
“Liebster Award” Nominee Ruins Own Ceremony by Forgetting to Make Any Controversial Remarks
In recent months I’ve received notification not once, but twice by fellow bloggers who were kind enough to think of me and notice my low follower count when brainstorming their nominations for the Liebster Award. For readers new to the blogosphere: most blogging awards aren’t decades-old ceremonial traditions determined by committees or democracy. Most of them are congenial badges passed from blogger to blogger as a way of promoting each other’s talents, encouraging networking, and spreading good cheer whenever our malicious Site Stats page is lying to us about our traffic stats. In my mind, I think of them as Mega-Likes.
I’ve dragged my feet on my Liebster Award acceptance post for a few different reasons. I kept forgetting about it. Other writing ideas kept crowding past it to the forefront of my brain. I didn’t feel worthy. The Internet got in my eyes. The dog ate my acceptance notes. That sort of thing. However, I knew I needed to move forward on it soon, because I may be in imminent danger of disqualification. The Liebster Award can only be gifted to bloggers with a low number of followers. Evidence shows the threshold was 3,000 followers or less at one point in Liebster Award history; as of the most recent Draconian revision, new nominees must now have less than 200 followers. A lucky streak last week left me dancing on the edge with exactly 200 followers for a day, until the balance and my humility were restored when a bitter Twitter spammer dropped me after I refused them the courtesy of an undeserved return Follow. Even at 199 followers as of this writing, my hard-earned Liebster Award is two new spammers away from getting me summoned before a Liebster Award Internal Affairs review board, surely a fate worse than zero-traffic.
NaBloPoMo Success Celebrated with New URL, Facebook Page, Self-High-Five
My NaBloPoMo 2012 Merit Badge
For the record, NaBloPoMo on Midlife Crisis Crossover remained on target and on schedule, with 31 posts in 30 days that broke down as follows:
vacation photos: 7
things about movies: 6
Things containing Thanksgiving or Black Friday: 4
Revolution recaps: 4
convention photos: 3
random photo collections: 1
Geek Demerits: 1
MCC Request Line: 1
family anecdote: 1
fiction: 1
political griping: 1
NaBloPoMo iambic pentameter: 1
When I began November, I somehow thought the results would be more random by the end. Too late to diversify now, I suppose.
About that bonus 31st post: I usually limit myself to one post per day, but two converging events demanded equal time within the same narrow time frame. I was glad to finish them both for the sake of the readers interested in each respective piece, but it was not the most pleasant experience of my November.
In addition to “Yay NaBloPoMo!”, we have two more MCC announcements:
1. I’ve taken the plunge and officially purchased the domain name, just to see what happens. https://midlifecrisiscrossover.wordpress.com and all contents should now redirect to http://midlifecrisiscrossover.com. The speed of DNS propagation to other ISPs as a result of the URL update may vary, so the site may act uncooperative for some readers for a short time. I’m told this should pass in a few days.
2. MCC now has its very own Facebook page! Readers who Like MCC on Facebook will enjoy numerous benefits, including but not limited to:
* Instant notice whenever new entries are published! (Twitter already does this for me, but my Facebook involvement trumps my Twitter use by a wide margin.)
* The ability to Like and/or comment on each MCC entry without using the Web-based WordPress Like button or comments section! (For those who prefer one set of tools over the other, now you have more options for validating or refuting me.)
* Access to exclusive MCC Facebook content! (Whatever form that may take. Stay tuned!)
* Another “Like” to throw on your Facebook “Like” pile! Who doesn’t need dozens more of those?
As always, thanks for reading and supporting. Questions and requests always welcome.
Pumpkin Flavored Everything
In that blessed golden age when my sister and I still had Dad in our lives, years before we would begin taking turns conducting periodic manhunts in vain, we never saw him happier or more vibrant than when Mom would let him dress us in our Sunday finest so we could walk with him door-to-door around the neighborhood, knocking on doors and extolling the virtues of the Great Pumpkin.
NaBloPoMo 2012: the Best New Month of My Calendar Year
Before settling in at WordPress last April, I kept an infrequent blog for several years as an adjunct creative outlet for my geek message-board experience. It was a fun tool with purposes uniquely assigned to it, but hardly connected to the traditions known throughout the world of blogging at large. (I suppose the term is “blogosphere”, but that still sounds odd to me. Is that used within the community itself, or just a catchy label that the mainstream media affixed to it?) A friendly Thursday alert from The Daily Post was the Internet’s first attempt at teaching me about the concept of NaBloPoMo. Apparently that information was need-to-know and the Internet thought I wasn’t ready in my thirteen previous years of participation. Perhaps the Internet exhibited wisdom beyond words in withholding this knowledge from me. Regardless, now that I know, I refuse to unknow.
Area Man Marks Six Months of Consecutive Daily Blogging with Self-Promotional Solipsism
After long deliberation and some preparation, I launched Midlife Crisis Crossover on April 28, 2012, with “The Train Job“, my satirical plan to unite all the incongruous neighborhoods of Indianapolis with a haphazard subway plan that would still be more functional than the marginal mass-transit options of our reality. With that entry serving as my ribbon-cutting ceremony, I committed myself to creating one new piece every day for as long I could keep finding reasons to write and ways to test myself. If I were ever to be serious about finding a purpose for this alleged writing talent, then I needed to knuckle down and see if I could activate it on a regular basis without waiting for other Internet users to provoke or co-opt it.
“MCC Request Line” Prologue: What Do YOU, the Viewers at Home, Think I Should Try Out?
I’m trying something new here. Bear with me while I work out the details and set up my premise.
A few of my MCC commenters, the greatest Internet citizens of all time, have suggested works they think I ought to check out, either because they might be aesthetically rewarding, or because they’re likely to instill the kind of garment-rending anguish that I can only exorcise through verbal backlash in this particular venue. Some are things I’ve thought about but merely never took the time to sample. Some I’ve not tried or have actively avoided because of the awfulness I can sense emanating from them at a great distance. As my way of showing my appreciation for your suggestions, I’d like to give them a shot and then write about the results here. Since I have a few such requests lined up, an umbrella title seems in order.
Internet Commenters Demand Legislation Against Complex Sentences
Hello, readers. How are you? I am hunky-dory.
Today was a good day. I got to rest. I ate good food. I watched some DVD extras. One was a documentary. It was about A Night to Remember. That movie was about the Titanic. The documentary was not fun. The photos were okay. The narrators were all very old men. They talked a lot. Sometimes they talked for many minutes. They talked very slowly. Sometimes there were very long pauses. Then they talked some more. They were nice men. I felt like a great-grandchild. I did not see the last fifteen minutes. I stopped the DVD early. I was sleepy.
Then I got on the Internet. It has interesting pages. I wanted to read a movie review. It was about The Master. I have mentioned that movie before. Joaquin Phoenix is angry and confused. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is charming and maybe evil. Amy Adams is happy and unhappy. I may go see it. I have not decided. My city is not showing it yet. Maybe they will show it in October.
The review was written by a movie critic. Her name is Lisa Schwarzbaum. Her boss is named Entertainment Weekly. She has worked there for decades. She likes itty-bitty foreign films. She also likes movies about sexiness. Sometimes I do not agree with her. Sometimes I do. She uses big words and long sentences. I can usually understand her. Sometimes I also use big words and long sentences. Sometimes she mentions really weird movies. That does not bother me. Sometimes I also talk about weird things.
Ms. Schwarzbaum liked The Master very much. She gave it an A. Her review had big words and long sentences. This was the last sentence of her review:
The cubism of the concluding third of the picture allows a disoriented viewer to consider this singular movie not only as a character portrait, but also as a photographic travel diary, from the days before Instagram, by an important artist following the itinerary of Americans seeking salvation and prosperity when an exterior world war was over but interior psychological battles raged.
The word “cubism” threw me for a moment. I looked it up on the Internet. It has dictionaries and WikiPedia in it. I found Cubism in there. Now I understand the whole sentence. “Cubism” is a good word for a Paul Thomas Anderson film.
Some readers did not like her review. They really did not like her last sentence. A few readers said mean things about her. One reader said this direct quote:
…it is exhausting – why does she have to create super complex sentences with thesaurus worthy big words – it doesn’t impress me, it belittles me. and that last sentence, WTF? I’d hate to be stuck next to a cooler with her, attempting to carry on a conversation about the latest small town drama. Know your audience.
Her audience does not like long sentences or big words. “Entertainment” is a big word. Lisa’s words are mostly shorter than “entertainment”. They should rename the magazine Things Weekly. The audience would like them better.
Another unhappy reader said this direct quote:
“the cubism of the final third……….” this sentence is not only THE most pretentious piece of critical crap I’ve ever read, it also convinced me not see the probable load of “important” blarney that inspired it.
The Internet has many pretentious pieces of critical crap. I have read some of them. I usually do not rank them. Some reviews can be pretentious and not crap. Sometimes I like pretentiousness. That word is even bigger than “entertainment”. It does not scare me. I used to be an English major. Other English majors scared me. One time our class talked about “Murders in the Rue Morgue”. That is an old story about gross murders. One victim was stuffed inside a chimney. One classmate had a theory about the scene’s meaning. He used the phrase “return-to-the-womb motif”. I was very scared. I wanted to leave class immediately. Now I am older. I have conquered that fear.
Ms. Schwarzbaum probably writes how she wants. Maybe she even thinks that way. Her writing made other people sad. She should rewrite her last sentence. It should be many sentences. The sad people might like the new sentences. They could look like this:
The movie shows you things about each character. Some of those things are very different from each other. It takes place in the past. The old places tell one long story. It is better than random photos. The story comes after a war. People were not happy yet. They had a lot to think about. They tried to make money and be saved. The movie is very good. The director is neat.
Shorter sentences can be happier sentences. The biggest word in those sentences is “different”. That word should not be scary. I think Liza Schwarzbaum is a different writer. Maybe I am a very different reader.
Well, got to go. Have a nice day. I will see you all tomorrow. My next entry may have commas and more clauses in it because of pretentiousness. I hope you will not hate my important blarney. I promise I will not read it aloud to you with extra long pauses. That might make it worse.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 