You Should Start a Blog!

I was sitting with my roommate, Terror, a few days ago, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and generally polluting my health, when she noticed that one of my craigslist "missed connection" postings received twenty e-mail responses in 24 hours.

"You should start a blog," she told me. "If you can get responses like this from anonymous bitching and moaning, you may be able to find some people willing to read less anonymous bitching and moaning."

"People make money by writing blogs?" I said. I wasn't joking. There are theories that I was born in 1820, and then one day, I stumbled into a black hole and ended up among cellphones and social networking websites. I was truthfully under the impression that all blogs, by nature, sounded either like this:

"Liberals suck, and Obama sucks, and Republicans suck, and it's all Obama's fault, and OH MY GOD BRITTANY MURPHY IS DEAD!"

Or like this:

"im siting in my room alone and cuting my wrists i dont think ill get over u and thsi blog is where my heart can bleed and bleed and bleed and bleed...."

Terror and I had come up with various financial schemes before. Our first coherent idea began when, bored over the 2009-2010 holiday season, I made a bunch of custom bumper stickers for myself and my friends.

Generally Speaking, I'm a Little Disappointed

What About ME?!

If You Were Dead, There Would Be Less Traffic

We came up with many more ideas, but time, laziness, and academic demands eliminated these ideas.

But then, a series of magical events happened. In March, after two years of sweating blood as an adjunct instructor of English composition at a community college, I was laid off during Oregon's "Let's Lay Off Teachers!" campaign. I met with my boss, who told me there was nothing that could be done, I was one of the last people hired after graduating with my MFA (Master of Fine Arts - or Master of False Academics) in 2008...And then he told me he'd be glad to write me a stunning recommendation letter for another adjunct position where I could work for two years for low pay and no benefits before getting laid off.

I considered this for a while in a panic. I saw my future in front of me. Me, walking fourteen miles in the rain to my unassigned parking spot in the unpaved lot. Me, angrily lesson planning in my office, knowing that I could spend four hours creating a speech to be rivaled by Obama himself: "Yes We CAN learn pronoun errors!" - read positive reviews about my stunningly friendly teaching approach on my school reviews and on rate my professor - and at the end of the year, I would not only not have a full time job, but I would have to keep my fingers crossed that my low-pay-no-health-insurance job would be renewed for another year.

And then I went to Barnes & Noble, bought several LSAT test-prep books, came home, and registered to receive unemployment. Terror moved in with me after graduating from college.

So now we're back in our kitchen, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and looking up skin-burning substances for our future front-door security system. (Knock on the door? Auto-release spray buttons, activated during the hours of 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. BURN OFF YOUR FACE!) And that's when I learned that there are people who make money writing blogs - and I thought - bumper stickers and t-shirts? If people think that I don't suck, they may be interested in them!

So, here's what I figure. I figure that since I have money to support me for now, and I'm already spending eight hours a day browsing the job databanks, I'll take a shot at gaining a following here. If I'm successful, I can then complete my lifelong dream of waking up at noon, going to sleep at 4:30 a.m., and remaining in my underwear and a ratty t-shirt for the duration of the day. I never have to cut my hair again. I can drink beer before coffee. I don't have to stand in the rain to smoke.

And I can finally bitch and moan in an organized fashion.