I don’t know if it’s good form, or proper form, to reflect upon something that’s still in its nascent state. After all, I still have 23 more posts (at minimum) to do. That said, I’ve been full of reflections lately.

In no particular order:

It’s actually not that hard to blog every day

What’s hard is when you get a pretty amazing response to a post, such as this one from this past Thursday. Why? You can’t phone it in the next day. One does not simply walk into follow substance with nonsense — you have to raise your game. And then, once you do, you realize that you pretty much have to always be in that state of raised game. 

It’s interesting to realize who cares about what you do

It’s interesting to see who comes out of the woodwork to say something about your work. You rediscover people. It’s cool.

Being personal in your writing is hard, and scary

I don’t mind sharing stories, good and bad, about my life, and yet putting something in writing is invariably different. Writing really crystallizes things. Showing and telling people you’re flawed and damaged is a big thing. I think I chose to do so in an effort to rip the Band-aid™ off. I did it; it’s done. I can delete the post but I can’t really go back. You know?

Being self-reflective really makes you emo about everything else

I’ve been following with some interest the case of Oakland Athletics pitcher Brandon McCarthy, who got nailed in the head by an Erick Aybar line drive and had to have brain surgery.

I like McCarthy a lot. I had him on various among my fantasy baseball teams this year. I’ve liked him since I read this ESPN The Magazine story on him and sabermetrics earlier this year (also, he’s awesome and funny on Twitter – I’ve always loved the last line of his bio). While I’m a Jays fan, the Oakland A’s are the best story in baseball this year by a large amount, and losing McCarthy during the stretch run is damning. But the thing that really got me was that his wife Amanda was fielding all sorts of tweets about him and his (precarious) health while he was in the hospital, and when he was in, and then out of surgery. Most of them were from well-wishers, which was great. A few people tweeted the video of McCarthy getting hit to Amanda, which was stupid and cruel, to which she responded (justifiably) with frustration and anger.

But there was also this guy:

For what it’s worth, Amanda was pretty gangster about the whole thing, and the internet rallied behind her. But I’m moved to wonder what the fuck this guy’s problem was that he thought that a legitimate life/death situation, or, at very least, a situation requiring positivity and sportsmanship, deserved to be treated in such a way.

I don’t know if it really just dawned on me today that people don’t get the internet, or the internet’s promise, or common decency, or whatever, but every iota of my body wanted to rip the guy’s throat out.

Seriously, internet, new rule: Don’t be a bunch of jags. Because you know what? Even you and your vast army of idiots can’t ruin something awesome. Case in point: BMac tweeted this two hours ago:

So yeah. Suck it, haters.

This is the eighth post in my #30posts challenge. Don’t know what that is? Read this.