[An unedited version of this was published at my ridiculous Tumblr earlier today]
Today is October 1. A month ago I essayed a project/challenge called #30posts, wherein I tried to write a blog post a day throughout the month of September. The results were interesting.
As a writer, and a person, I feel pretty happy with it. Writing every day (I actually missed a few days — hey, 27/30 ain’t bad, is it?) made me more attuned to my actual work as a writer, and, moreover, put me more in tune with my life as, well, me.
The internet is an interesting, weird, endless place. My work is one one-trillionth of a percentage point of what’s on there, and so what I put on there isn’t actually important or immense. What I found important, however, was that one month and thousands of views later, I feel closer to a lot of people in my life.
My life is largely spent on the internet. I kind of hate how true that is, but there it is. I’m active on social networks because I like them. I like trying to keep in touch with people I like, love, and am related to. I like making new friends and developing those relationships any way I can, and, these days, that means via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and whatever else. With #30posts, I think I got to the heart of something important. I can’t say that I have any real knowledge of what that is, just that it is.
There are only a few people who know me. Who see me, or, more to the point, who get to see the actual me. One will be on TV this week; one sleeps with a copy of Cannery Row nearby; one comes through every single time, whether it’s helping me put furniture together or just general being-a-good-guy-ness; one is amazingly lost right now but I hope he comes back to the flock soon so I may mock his backpack and his near-sexual relationship with his bicycle. For most everyone else, I’m somewhat impenetrable. I hate this. I hate that I can only connect with some people via writing, if at all. It’s not that I’m more truthful or openin print, either — I’m a pretty no-boundaries, no-bullshit kind of individual. I suppose that’s just the way things go, though.
With #30posts, I think I let a lot of people in, and it felt good to do so. I think that the project wasn’t important at the outset, but in time, it became important. It became something more than it was meant to be. And I’d appreciate if you took a look, and maybe kept that whatever-it-is going.
Here’s the whole whackload of ‘em:
- September Challenge
- Too Much Forethought
- Why
- The Point
- Montréal, je t’aime
- On Being Sick (the first “big” one)
- On “On Being Sick”
- One Week In (best image)
- The Things I Do
- We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve (important)
- Things We Accept, Deserve, and Make Do With (important)
- Last Part of the Quotation Triptych
- The North Star (somewhat magical)
- Chasing the North Star
- The Wisdom of Mike
- Soundtrack (good tunes)
- Messythink
- Postcards
- POP Montréal Day 1
- POP Montréal Day 2
- POP Montréal Day 3
- POP Montréal Day 4 (people liked the scattershot POP blogging)
- Housekeeping; Polaris Music Prize
- Make Changes, Get Happy (this was also a “big” one)
- Songs For Your Friday (featuring Matt Paxton, Late July)
- Almost Done
- September 30
Read one of them, or many of them, or none of them. If you like what you read, please share. If you like what I’ve attempted, try to do it yourself.
The internet has so much awesome on it, but we can still make more of it.
And we should.
