Thursday, January 2, 2014

1,103 Days Later

Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It has been 1,103 days since my last post.

Technically that isn’t correct; I’ve had a smattering of failed projects along the way and had a short, but fun go of it over at droppingletters.com.  While I am still holding out hope that we can pull our hats out of our collective asses over at officesharks.com someday, it is high time that I return to the scene of my original failure, where I first discovered my gift of mediocre story-telling and poor grammar.  

Welcome back to The Augmentee.

I’ve never been big on New Year’s resolutions.  Lord knows I have enough bad habits but I’ve settled into a comfortable cycle of fat-drunk to fit-sober and back that operates on about an 8-month wavelength.  This year, the fit-sober just happens to fall in a January – it’s like an eclipse. 

In times like these, it’s important to seek inspiration from venerable sources such as Cracked.com’s David Wong, who offers this gem to the newly resolved: 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person

I won’t bore you with a full review of the article (although it is brilliant and I encourage you to read it) but I will cite one brief passage:
Being in the business I'm in, I know dozens of aspiring writers. They think of themselves as writers, they introduce themselves as writers at parties, they know that deep inside, they have the heart of a writer. The only thing they're missing is that minor final step, where they actually fucking write things
But really, does that matter? Is "writing things" all that important when deciding who is and who is not truly a "writer"?
For the love of God, yes.
I cringed a little when I read that, and I couldn’t understand exactly why.  After all, I have NEVER presumed to introduce myself as a writer at a party and I have the heart of a slightly-overweight, 33-year old cigar smoker, but I felt exposed anyway.

Because I would say “I like to write.”  I would list it as a hobby if I were filling out the kind of questionnaire that asked me to list hobbies.  Which is all well-and-good except that I don’t actually fucking write things.  I enjoy writing the way I enjoy golf, exercise, and reading books – I remember a time when I used to do all those things, and now just whimper about how I don’t have time but still list them as my hobbies on theoretical questionnaires. 

So, in honor of the challenge set forth by David Wong in the pages of Cracked.com, I’m throwing open the shutters of The Augmentee and I’ll endeavour to post something weekly of some value, to somebody.  I’ll see you chumps on the message boards. 

For those of you not interested in clicking on the link, here's the embedded photo of Lenny Kravitz wearing a gigantic scarf:


Via Upscalehype.com

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