Being a Blogger in Podunk, Kansas makes me something of an oddity. That's probably because nearly no one had ever heard of a blog before I started doing it. (I do know of a couple people from my town who have blogs but they don't seem to be doing it for the same reason I do.
For fame and glory.) And they certainly didn't think that it was something that you could make a career of--not that I'm all that successful at it, but....
I know that a percentage of my readers are from my town and the surrounding area, and a very large percentage of those people are Facebook friends of mine. It makes for tension sometimes. My
Valet Post spurned hate mail via Facebook and I lost a more than a couple "friends" who thought the post was directed at them. (And to one of the "friends" I lost--yeah the post was about you. Learn to f$%&ing drive
bitch! There's going to be a follow up article to that post pretty soon. So if you thought the first one was offensive, hold on to your seats, folks!)
Doing something different in a small town can bring some level of notoriety, in my case that was compounded by a rather well read article in our county newspaper.
And here I thought print journalism was dead! So I'm a freak. I get it. You can stop pointing and whispering now. Seriously! Contrary to popular belief, I won't steal your souls and lay your secrets bare on my blog purely for the enjoyment of my readers.
I gotta derive some enjoyment from it too. Well I won't steal your soul anyway....
But what I find more interesting than anything, is the people who are drawn to me just because of that notoriety. Here's why this is funny to me. I, like most writers, write about what I know and just make up the rest. The fact is, I'm not all that creative so that means if you are interesting, even a little I will get around to blogging about you. (If you need examples of that type GNO into the search bar and see what comes up. My girlfriends are well aware that I blog about them and occasionally email me sound bytes to use.) Please note that I write in broad generalizations! Something you said/or did might spurn a blog post but I'm not singling you out. And I'm certainly not calling you out!
For clarifications sake this is how my mind works. Yes, that photo you posted on Facebook of your daughter in her
hooker dance gear, it spurned a post about my views on the sexualization of our daughters but I'm not calling your parenting into question. It's not personal. It's not an attack. It sparked something in my head. Nothing more. Another example, I have family members whose children do the pageant circuit and although I would never put my kid in a pageant (I thank God for autism, sometimes.) I would never question why they do it. I have friends who are former pageant queens and they assure me that what I see on
Toddlers and Tiaras is WAY off base and that pageants are wonderful, self-esteem promoting events. But I'm sorry I just can't understand dressing little girls up
like hookers and parading them around like circus ponies. (And to my family members that might be reading this I use the pageant thing as an example. I have way fewer "views" on pageants than I do say, dance costumes.)
For those of you that don't get it by now, I get paid to blog. Not every post. Hell, not even the majority of the posts, but sometimes.
And those posts are clearly marked because it's the law. I get paid for my opinion on other websites and for magazines. This is what I do. (Along with take pictures.) I'm a writer. And it's taken me a long time to be able to say that with certainty. I'm proud of what I do. I'm proud of what I've accomplished. And I'm proud of my celebrity status, even if I
still can't lead our Labor Day parade because I didn't catch a 100+ lb catfish earned by being an oddity.
Peace Out!
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