Saturday, February 29, 2020

Leap Day

Long-time readers of this blog should know that I mostly only post on Leap Day because long-time readers of this blog are me.

When I reread my last Leap Day post, I was surprised to find that actual measurable amounts of effort appeared to go into it. I can't say I totally followed what I was getting at, but there sure were a bunch of sentences saying some stuff.

Four years have gone by since then and I can say definitively that I've become a better writer. I now use a lot more exclamation points and since most of my writing takes the form of articles for an internal newsletter at work, I rarely have the chance to write anything that might be considered interesting. That's good! By sticking to empty platitudes and cliches, I get no furrowed brows and very few critiques. People are happy to let my writing wash over them like a lukewarm shower in a motel. It's serviceable if you absolutely have to clean yourself up or, if it's the last day of your work-mandated conference and the networking events are over, you can just ignore it completely and wait for the familiar water pressure at home. What I'm saying is, no one reads what I write unless they absolutely have to or are actively avoiding being productive (I can verify this. Statistics from mass email services are great for providing a window into how many people just don't give a fuuuuuck).

Writing with personality in my own voice even in a short burst like this reminds me why I don't do it anymore. It's hard! And this has to be posted before midnight! And I hate editing!

This is me pressing publish and hoping I don't find any typos four years from now.

1 comment:

Rachel C said...

I stumbled across my college blog about three hours ago and am reading through (and reliving) all the painful tribulations of being 19, having my parents pay for my whole life, and somehow still finding reasons to be miserable. What can I say--it was rough.

Anyway, I saw an old comment from you (ca. 2008), clicked the link to your blog, and lo, a post that's less than 10 years old! I didn't even realize Blogger was still active. I'm excited to know that I could go in and update this blog...but I won't, probably, because shitty HTML/CSS designed pages went out about 10 years ago.

Hope you're well in the middle of all this nonsense. If you find this comment four years from now, I will probably not need to remind you what "nonsense" I'm referring to.

Glad you're a better writer now. I went in the opposite direction.