Blogging

Blogging

I got to looking at what I've done on this blog over the last little bit, and there's been a real lack of writing and posting for Big Stupid Tommy. I don't know if an apology is in order, but I do apologize to anybody who's wanted to read, but come back to find the same thing that was up last Thursday.

I don't know that an explanation is necessarily in order, but here goes all the same:

The primary reason is scheduling. I'm working days again. And, unfortunately for the blog, I don't have one of those jobs where you can look at a blog or write something down to post if you have a spare moment. Sometimes I wish I did, but there are other benefits to not sitting at a desk all day, as well.

The secondary reason is one of priorities.

I've said it a couple of times. I started this blog as a way to prime my writing pump. I was wandering around saying "I'm a writer," but I wasn't getting much done. I started writing here as a way to make myself write a little. To get myself started in the mornings, or in the evenings. To get my writing motor warmed up. To get a few words out on the page, consequential on non-consequential. I figured if I had an audience, even if it were a couple of friends and family members, it'd make me write something down.

I did so under the belief that writing something is better than writing nothing.

And it's helped me get back into a writing routine. In that regard, blogging's been a good thing.

Problem was, there were some days that the only things I was writing were for this blog. Which isn't a bad thing, but it doesn't do a lot toward finishing a project with a defined set of goals, with starts, finishes and all the fuzzy bears in between.

And for a while there, back in the spring and early summer, writing for Big Stupid Tommy was the only writing I was doing. For a long stretch of time. Part of it was preparing to move. But part of it was just laziness. And for that, I apologize.

So, I've backed off on the blog a little. Not entirely. I still post things. In spurts. Last Thursday I posted 6 things, which is more than I've posted for a couple of week-periods lately.

But, I've been writing on other things. Short stories, mostly. But there are a couple of things that have bouncing around in my head that I haven't quite been able to set to concrete. It's kind of like when you know you have to sneeze, but it's just not quite ready to pop out of your head, yet. Sometimes, you can lean your head back, and it will come. Other times, you just have to let it come on its own.

And lately, it's come on it's own.

I'm still around. I've lost a few readers over the past few weeks, judging by the drop in daily hit counts. That's the ego part of this whole blogging thing. And, I'm sorry to say, I was sad to see that I got more hits from people looking for boobs or pictures of Tommy Lee's private parts than I did actually reading.

The last reason is one of apathy, I'm sorry to say.

There's just not been a lot going on in my life or in the world that I felt compelled to comment upon.

In my life? I sleep, I eat, I work, I write. I take a dump twice a day. I watch Netflix movies. I see my friends. Not a whole lot interesting going on right now.

In the world? I'm sick to death of the presidential election. I don't feel that either candidate's much better than the other in terms of my own political views. And the santimony and derision with which each side comments upon the other only serves to turn me off of the political process in general. I suppose it's the result everybody having been raised in an environment where we had a visible, known enemy. Now, sometimes we have to set ourselves up as the good guys and name somebody else as the bad guys, just so we have a reason to keep going.

I watch Hurricane Ivan's progress with a detached fascination. I love disaster movies, but disasters, not so much. I do find myself wishing that these reporters the networks and news agencies set up in the winds of a hurricane get sucked out to sea. Here, let's ask the fishermen and women with 19 kids who live in the shanty town outside Kingston how they feel about the 155 mile an hour winds coming through.

I don't get to watch much baseball. Part of it is that I live too deep in the sticks to get cable, and too deep in the forest to get a clear line of site for satellite. Hence the rant Saturday. Fox is the only baseball I get to see, and if there's not Fox Baseball, then there's no baseball for me.

A couple of people mistook my rant for ignorance that baseball is shown on other channels, and that the Fox daytime exclusivity clause doesn't apply some days. You get that a lot when you call your site Big Stupid Tommy, people wanting to explain how it is.

My rant, folks, was that baseball is doing such a horrible job promoting itself in the time of the season that it should be making its biggest push for it. We've got tight races, a couple of players closing in on record numbers (Barry and Ichiro, for a couple). This is something baseball should be falling all over itself to promote, at the expense of local telecasts.

It was doubly appalling to me that I didn't have baseball on Saturday to see. Pennant stretch run, and no baseball. I maintain, a mistake on the part of Fox and Bud Selig, and further proof in my mind that the farther away baseball gets away from either, the better off it would be right now.

But I digress.

Football season started this weekend. The Titans won. I stunk it up in my pick'em league. The first week is usually pretty bad for me, since I pay very little attention to the off season news and the pre-season movements. This offseason, I paid even less attention. Hence, I stunk it the hell up in the pick-em league.

And, lastly, I'm officially tired of hearing about that guy who cut his arm off to get out of under the boulder. Do NBC and the publishing company of that guy's book fall under the same corporate umbrella? He's been on every NBC show known to man lately.

My solution to that whole hiking/boulders falling on you problem? Don't go hiking where boulders might fall on you. In fact, don't go hiking at all. Do your exercise like I do, riding the stationary bike in front of the TV, watching an episode or two of Futurama or The Simpsons. No boulders falling on me. Brain cancer, from the TV, maybe. But I'd have gotten that, anyway. And I'll just cut that out with a steak knife.

It's not like I'm using it, anyway.

And then I'll be on Oprah.