Here's how I'll start: the most important thing is that you're writing. It's my theory—and plenty of people disagree with the theory, so bear with me—that there is an immense emotional satisfaction that comes with the act of writing. Writing words on paper or a screen or even specifically a BLOG is akin to opening up the cage that normally imprisons your thoughts and feelings, which shouldn't be held inside, they should be made FREE, and so writing is the key to get you there. Plus, the act of writing is the act of creation, and that creation sticks around long after the thoughts have been freed and fly away into the outskirts of the infinite universe. You have something now that you can touch, feel, reread, say Yes, I Did That. Pride in making nothing into something. It's fulfilling. Trust me on this.
You need to trust me because it's possible that you haven't felt it yet, but I promise you that it's true. It just takes time and patience, is all. Well, and also there needs to be motivation to write, which I can understand at this point in your life might be difficult to come by. Rare are the jobs that offer this type of writing opportunity. There are more excel spreadsheets out there than short stories. I write a lot at my own job, but writing "child has a bruise on his arm, no additional information provided" over and over does the opposite of fulfill. It threatens to drive me insane. I am happy when I am here, at Puke on Your Birthday, writing what I want to write. I am here today to tell you that you can be happy too.
I realized something recently and I will share this confession with you now: I don't think PoYB has done a good enough job providing for you that opportunity for happiness. I say often that you can write whatever you want and send it in and I will publish it, but that's too broad. I also say that we have an album chosen and disseminated every week and that you can listen to it and write a review, but I'm seeing now that that's probably too specific.
I stand by my promise that Record Club will never die, but I think now is the time to remove my foot from the pedal slightly. The fact of the matter is that not everyone finds the necessary emotional fulfillment that all humans need in this very specific way, writing an album review. In fact, many to whom I've spoken about this (my wife, for example) find the act of having to write an album review the opposite of fulfilling. To her and to many others here, having to channel your creative energies through a quote "review" unquote might feel like being boxed in. Okay. I get it.
So here is a new proposal. I want you to write for this blog. Here's what I'm thinking. I think that every person needs to find their joy in writing in a different way. Album-of-the-week clubs might not be it for you, so let me ask: what do you want to write about? Let's find that thing, and let's get you started.
What I'm proposing is that you—yes, you, the person reading this—start your own weekly column here on Puke on Your Birthday. We can work together to figure out what that will look like, and how it will operate, and when it'll be posted, and all those details big and small, but ultimately, after workshopping your idea, you'll be free to write to your heart's content on a weekly basis. Crucially, you'll be writing about exactly what you want to write about, and in way you want to write it. My hypothesis is that this will lead to fulfillment.
I'm going to try to speak with many of you individually throughout the rest of this calendar year, and pick your brains over whether this might be something that would interest you. I can't give any specific examples here because I'm speaking generally. But if you want an example of what a "blog column" might look like, feel free to take a gander at any of the weekly bullshit I'm already getting down on the page throughout the rest of the week here. Going through a list of Beatles songs, exploring a list of movies, using old home recordings of a high school garage band to speak nostalgically, literally rewriting old blog posts from a lost medium, and yeah, exploring a ton of music in a myriad of ways. I'm not asking you to do any of this specifically, but I am asking you to explore yourself and figure out what regularly writing for joy and comfort might look like to you.
It might not even have to be something specific. You could do some variation of "My Thoughts" and just write 500 words about whatever you're thinking about this week. Or you could specifically name exactly what you are going to do each week, kind of create a theme. It really doesn't matter. What I want is the building of a habit, writing regularly each week so that it becomes you, and once that happens, you might find yourself feeling pretty damn great about yourself and what you're doing.
My long-term concern about this blog (not including the probability that Blogger will one day all of a sudden cease to exist and we'll lose everything) is that there will come a day when I won't be able to spend as much time building this place as I do now. That there will come at some point a promotion to a job that precludes me from writing twelve blog posts a week and facilitating others from blog contributors. I don't know when or even if that will happen, but it's a pretty decent possibility.
And so this is my way of preparing. This is the final step. I still hear people refer to this place at "Joe's blog," and I disagree with the description every time. But now is the time to finally call it "our blog" and fucking mean it. I feel really great when I write something here, and I want that feeling for you too. Let's talk.
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