On Being a Blogger

One of the weirdest things about being a stay-at-home "online publications editor" (a.k.a. "blogger") is you develop a warped relationship with The World Outside.

It becomes strange to meet people that aren't on Twitter. ("I've heard of that. What is it?")

Like a 16-year-old teeny bopper, your ears perk up every time somebody in a 500-yard radius mentions Facebook.

You find your relational skills wanting when people ask about work. But God forbid they venture to introduce advertising -- worse still, Google or Apple -- into the conversation. Like one of Pavlov's dogs responding to the dinner bell, you're suddenly frighteningly animated. Aggressive. Opinionated. Passionate.

And the problem is, nobody else will be. Because they have real jobs involving spreadsheets and mergers and affairs. They will observe you in polite interest, the way one would a monkey playing with its own feces, and tactfully locate the nearest exit.

All those topics that made you a charming college co-ed -- the opinions on Shakespeare, on socialism, on Adorno and jazz? Out the bloody window. (Where did they go?)

It probably doesn't help that you've come to think of showers as optional. You've also developed violent feelings about the consistency of morning coffee, and thrice-worn pairs of socks no longer strike you as dirty.

What's more, you've come to understand that the charming vices of writers in history were not idly cultivated. You, too, have begun to chain smoke and drink before noon, mostly to stave off the abject (but romantic) creative loneliness.

Every once in awhile you'll come across a grad school kid who goes, "What you do is really cool!" And then she'll embark upon some misguided rant about a paper that's due tomorrow. And you will glare. Because that paper-due feeling she so loathes? That is your life. Every. Day. FOREVER.

Once sufficiently alienated among outsiders, you gravitate to the nearest computer, or whip out your BlackBerry and compulsively check email in an effort to look busy.

Congratulations: you have become the walking, talking, less interesting shadow of your website.