Looking back at what I’ve written in this space I see: cyclical depression, self-pity, snap judgments, juvenile sarcasm, biased reporting, overextended metaphor, bile & bitterness, ephemera, the occasional well-turned phrase, the more occasional successfully humorous paragraph, and the even more occasional good short essay. I’d say “If you don’t like that mix you shouldn’t read this”, but that’s pretty obvious; if you don’t like that mix you aren’t reading anyone’s weblog anyhow.

For my own sake and others I should probably say “goodbye my internet friends forever” at this point and stop, but I’m compulsive, so that’s not happening.

I was a consistently good writer when I had a deadline and got paid for my work. LJ is a sketchbook where I can dump words and rearrange them and play around without getting it perfect and trying to sell it, but it’s ‘also a broadcast medium where anyone who happens by can read it and judge me by it. The combination of these things makes me look like even more of a self-indulgent dick on the Internet than I’m capable of in person; I’m Dorian Grey but my portrait is out in public. I offend or piss off several people a week now, and they’re usually right.

When I look closely at my work, follow a few style rules, and think twice about everything I can turn out decent chunks of prose and get less hate mail. But it’s easier just to dump my id into the funnel and keep moving.

I bet if I ever get loose of this crapload of neuroses, illnesses, brain malfunctions, and life blockage this thing gets burnt like a teenage diary.