This is tradition now.
I only blog during or on the cusp of Lent and I only do it once despite the fact that I think the blogging is a wonderful thing that I should really, really be doing.
*Sigh*
If there actually is anyone out there reading, and this actually isn't just a diary hanging on a precipice above the public eye, i am truly sorry for my inability to blog. I simply don't seem to have the push and drive to write at length without an interaction from a safe audience...
"What on God's green earth does that mean?"
Thanks for asking, random stranger, I'll do my best to tell you.
In the brightened tunnels of my weird mind there float many ideas for what I could be doing with my life:
-Work on Masters
-Write fiction book about lovable loser (semi-autobiographical)
-Start podcasting
-Blog (holy crap, I am very badly doing that one right now!)
-Become dynamic Catholic Speaker...change name to Christopher East...get gigs only because of the sub-par cursory reading of my name...
The first is possible, I am in the process of applying for funding and admission in Saskatoon right now.
The second is also possible, as I have essentially written the entire thing in my mind but am hampered in putting pen to paper because I have written two books in the past, finished both and both were absolutely terrible. In essence, I'm having the 'What's the points?'.
-Any idiot can do the third and fourth, and not to give you an existential crisis to deal because I am doing the fourth right now, I am...just...really...really...
...bad at this.
I am, I just am. Nothing that I write comes out anywhere near as funny or meaningful as what I have in my head. My attempts at meaningful advice to friends or a larger audience are generally met with little in the way of respect (Rest in Peace, Mr. Dangerfield) because I have made such a large headway in establishing myself as "The Funny One" in just about every group I am in.
This should not upset me, as it would seem to everyone that I want to be the funny guy, but there are times in life when you just don't feel like being funny and you must be serious...and most of the time when those times come up, I am met with both an unspoken distrust (as if my seriousness is facetious) and quite often someone quite audibly and unabashedly asking me to morph back into the funny man. It is my lot in life.
So let me tell you a story, here it is in two parts:
I was 15 years old and walking with a fellow Grade 10 from the basement shop located in our Elementary School back to the High School building a few hundred feet away. I had a funny feeling as we walked that distance, like something terrible was about to happen. When we got back to the High School we filed into the gym with the entire school was waiting for the Student Representative Council's assembly for one of the Spirit Days that was taking place that week.
This particular day, small pieces of paper had been handed out to all 125 students in the school (it was a very small town) and we were asked to write the name of a fellow student who was the winner in a number of different categories:
Some for perceived beauty...
Some for perceived talent...
And some for lack thereof...
For you see, one of the categories was for the student that was perceived by his or her fellows to be the purveyor of the absolute worst jokes.
And I won by a landslide.
Holding back tears as a young woman who was perceived to be both popular and beautiful read my name, I pretended to be sarcastically inclined to think this was an honour. Throwing my waffle-press shirt covered arms in the air above my abnormally gelled head, I ran towards the stage at a a good clip wooing like a patron of a sports bar and searching the crowd for a comrade. I did not search for supporters or people that would find my fake happiness funny, but my 15-year old mind did scan the crowd for something that I had never found in all the years I attended High School...
Empathy.
I wanted someone to see past my fake attitude. I wanted them to look deep in my soul past the act I was putting on, the act that was confirming for everyone around that indeed this unfunny person deserved his unbelievably mean-spirited award, and see my anguish.
All I saw was anger. It was not enough to vote me the person at my school who told the worst jokes, I could see I was meant to show shame and sadness while receiving the award and pretending that there was none made people hate me. The rest of the week people from all grades made sure that they told me how much I deserved the award that I had won.
Part 2:
Adult M., trying his best to make his way through adult life decides that dead air, sticking your foot in your mouth and saying something unfunny or with poor comedic timing was unacceptable.
So I scripted my life. What?
I repeat: I SCRIPTED MY LIFE.
The back pocket of my worn out, quasi-slim, acid wash jeans was for a period of at least two years the proud receptacle for cue cards for conversation. A sample from my days at SIAST:
Thursday (The Heading)
Talk to ______________ about the assignment. If ________________ is also there, make sure you make as many puns in a row as possible. Yes, puns are the lowest form of wordplay, but ____________ likes them and always tells you how funny you are. Since we are having Lifespan Development today, make sure you tell that story about how the instructor asked you out of all 150 students what an episiotomy was in class and how everyone went wild because of your answer.
____________ just got back from her trip to BC, make that marijuana joke you thought of, she was probably high the whole time she was there, that's what she told everyone.
You shared a little too much about high school in _____________'s class on Tuesday, so make sure you steer the conversation away from that as it was depressing and made people ask too many questions about what you were like in high school and why you weren't popular.
Be funny!
It was written as if an another person was giving me advice simply because it made it slightly more meaningful to follow, or at least I thought so at the time. I scripted my life to be better, to make people laugh more and to avoid awkward references to the past.
It failed on the last front, and also on the first...and if I had to try so hard with the second, what does that tell you about how much I loved myself and respected my honest and true character?
I am now unscripted, just as a formerly educational television network claims to be, and I assure you much happier but I am still hampered by one thing that makes blogging hard, writing harder and making a podcast nearly impossible: How am I supposed to script my book/blog/podcast for an unseen audience that can't react and join in on the conversation? How am I supposed to write something beutiful when I used to write things down was for such an unbeautiful reason?
I went from extrovert with no friends to introvert with many, I find my strength in the concocting of illustrious and illuminating fantasy (a l Walter Mitty) and every day I am so pleased with it that I decide I must share it with other people so that they may also find joy and meaning. The problem now is, how do my genuine feelings and personal philosophy come out instead of just my humour?
On one plain I don't care, because I love myself, but on another plain I do, because one of the characteristics of an introvert is an informed knowledge of just who you are and how you feel inside...and when other people don't see that it bothers you because you know they are believing something that is not the truth, rather than caring because you need them to like you. If you are singled out and told by someone that you are a., b. and c., its going to make you mad because you have searched your soul and know that they are completely and absolutely wrong.
But how do you change that view without sounding defensive, needy or angry?
I guess we'll see.
Until next(?) time, just remember that Jesus loves you so I do too.
Mitchell
